SALISBURY — This year will mark the 50th anniversary of the Historic Salisbury Foundation’s OctoberTour, and the foundation has been working on the lineup for at least three years in an effort to make the event one of the most memorial.
The lineup was announced on Thursday on the lawn of the Fulton-Mock-Blackmer House, a home that was bought and stabilized by the HSF’s revolving fund in 2012. The OctoberTour is the foundation’s largest fundraiser, and portions go to the revolving fund, which allows HSF to buy properties, stabilize them and then sell them to people interested in saving them.
The lineup announced on Thursday included many homes that were on the first OctoberTour route in 1975, such as the Charles Torrence House, along with one recently-restored home that has never been open to the public in the Harry-Pfaff House.
“We’ve been working very hard to make the 50th a truly great year for what it means to Salisbury. I was born and raised here, so it means a lot that this is going as well as it is,” said Tripp Clement, the chair of the OctoberTour committee for HSF.
The event will be centered around a festival at the Bell Tower Green this year, said Events Coordinator Wesley Ewart. As part of that, the Bell Tower itself will be open along with both the Utzman-Chambers House, 116 S. Jackson St., and the Presbyterian Session House.
The Bell Tower is owned by Bell Tower Green, Inc. and was built circa 1892 as part of the original First Presbyterian Church. The church itself was razed around 1971, but the Bell Tower remained as the only standing portion and one of Salisbury’s premier landmarks.
Both the Chambers House and the Presbyterian Session House are owned by the Maxwell Chambers Trust of the First Presbyterian Church, with the Utzman-Chambers House being built circa 1814 and standing as the first location of the Rowan Museum. The Chambers House was included in the original OctoberTour.
Chambers himself, one of the most prominent historical Salisbury businessmen and a large benefactor of the Presbyterian Church, was buried near the modern intersection of West Innes and South Jackson streets along with other members of the Chambers family (and the family horse according to legend). When he died and the land was donated, the Presbyterian Session House was built over the gravesite circa 1855.
The tour will also include the Hambley-Wallace House, located at 508 S. Fulton St., which has been featured intermittently on prior OctoberTour events and has continuously been one of the largest draws.
The Hambley-Wallace House was on the original OctoberTour, along with the Charles Torrence House and the Henderson Law Office.
Hambley needed a residence suitable for entertaining investors, leading to the scale and setting of the house. Designed by the Charlotte architectural firm Hook and Sawyer, the two-and-a-half story house and its grounds use locally quarried granite.
The house’s architectural features include a steeply pitched roof pierced with spires, pinnacles, turrets, gables, towers and chimneys. The landscaping of the grounds was completed in 1904.
The property includes a carriage house, stables and servants’ quarters, also in the Chateauesque style.
Hambley died of typhoid fever in 1906. The house was sold by Hambley’s widow to John Norwood in 1917. Leo C. Wallace and his wife, Ella Belle Cohen Wallace, acquired it in 1927. It continues to be owned by members of the Wallace family.
“This has been a culmination of years (of work). I first started over two years ago, and we just wanted to try to make sure that we got some of the most important houses on tour, plus the Bell Tower and the Session House and Henderson Law Office, where Andrew Jackson studied law,” said Clement.
The properties that will be open to the public for the 50th OctoberTour are:
Hambley-Wallace House at 508 S. Fulton St.
Andrew Murphy House at 229 W. Bank St.
Dr. Josephus W. Hall House at 226 S. Jackson St.
Utzman-Chambers House at 116 S. Jackson St.
Presbyterian Session House at the intersection of West Innes and South Jackson streets
Henderson Law Office at 200 S. Church St.
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church at 131 W. Council St.
Fletcher Smith House at 201 S. Fulton St.
Charles Torrence House at 428 W. Bank St.
Harry-Pfaff House at 501 W. Monroe St.
General John Steele House at 1010 Richard St.
Jacob C. Clapp House on the Catawba College campus
Walter McCanless House at 200 Confederate Ave.
Dylan Ellerbee, chair of the HSF revolving fund committee, pointed to the restoration and preservation efforts put into those buildings and others throughout the area as evidence that “Salisbury is not normal.” He said that the community goes above and beyond through efforts such as the revolving fund itself.
“I don’t know about you, but I spent a lot of my childhood looking out the window of my parents’ car, watching the world go by,” said Ellerbee. “A lot of what I saw, the theme that developed, was houses and structures that were falling down and we still see those when we drive around. Every time I saw a shed that had a piece of tin peeled back, or I saw a cabin where the chinking was gone or a house where it was leaning into the ground, I thought why isn’t somebody doing something about that?
“As I got older, I started to see mobile homes and new homes being built next to these historic structures, and I started to realize that what families were doing, is they were making a business decision that the older house wasn’t worth fixing up, was too expensive to fix up or was too scary to fix up.”
Those decisions are why the revolving fund exists, said Ellerbee, as it allows the foundation to step in, stabilize the home and make the restoration more economically feasible.
Of course, Ellerbee was speaking from the porch of the Blackmer House, one of the revolving fund’s largest success stories. The home was severely damaged in a fire in 1984, with the future of the former home of famed actor Sydney Blackmer in jeopardy.
Ed Norvell, the current president of the HSF, personally paid for a new roof to be put on the home, saving the home from decades of weather damage.
In 2012, the foundation purchased the home through the revolving fund and further stabilized it. The Dixon family purchased the home in 2014 and, along with architect Al Wilson, restored one of Salisbury’s most storied properties to its current state.
The OctoberTour is the Historic Salisbury Foundation’s largest fundraiser every year and has grown exponentially from where it was 50 years ago. At the time, HSF Ticket Sales Chair W. S. Swaim told the Salisbury Post that the event raised over $6,000. That funding was used to officially start the foundation’s revolving fund.
Last year, the foundation estimated that it raised approximately $150,000.
