OctoberTour ran with 12 historic sites, dozens of vendors, live musical performers, and a joust.
The weekend’s festivities filled the Bell Tower Green and the West Square neighborhood with trolleys and tourgoers seeing this year’s sites.
Patron’s Party
Starting with the Patron’s Party, the weekend had a lively beginning. With a Renaissance theme, partygoers sported their best golden-clad garb while they danced, wined, and dined at the Walter McCanless House on Confederate Avenue.
Charlotte-based Next Level Band filled the space with classic jazz and pop hits, while students from the American College of the Building Arts in Charleston, South Carolina, showed off their trades. These students demonstrated skills in stone masonry, historic plaster molding, woodworking, and blacksmithing to interested participants. Between demonstrations, they spoke about the relevance of their trades in historic preservation work.
The star of the show, however, was the live joust that happened around 9 p.m. Riders from the Diablo and Talonae houses faced off on real steeds for a joust “to the death” in the front yard. Cars and the trolley shuttling people to the event stopped on the road to watch as the horses—ridden by men in full armor—charged full speed at each other with lances down.
After exchanging a few blows back and forth, both knights dismounted their steeds to continue the battle on land. It was a fiery swordfight that ultimately ended with no mortal wounds.
OctoberTour and Bell Tower Green Festival
With one of the largest tour routes to date and the largest festival location, downtown was bustling with historical site attendees. Local food and beverage vendors like Luna Pizza, Mean Mug Coffee, New Sarum Brewing Company, and others lined the streets around the Bell Tower Green. Local artists and vendors filled the space around the stage where musicians played from start to finish of the tour times.
Nine different houses made up the trolley route, with the other three located a short drive away from the West Square neighborhood. Many patrons focused on the houses closest to Bell Tower Green—the Murphy-Murdock House, Dr. Josephus Hall House, and Fletcher Smith House. Throughout the weekend, these houses often had lines to get inside.
Each site had a plein air painter painting exterior and interior scenes of the sites. Those paintings are sold at the thank-you event for volunteers and homeowners to commemorate the tour. Along with the 10 mums given to each house, those keepsakes have become staples of the OctoberTour events.
With more than 300 volunteers to make the weekend happen, the logistics of training and coordinating volunteers was a challenge that the Historic Salisbury Foundation staff had been working on for weeks.
At St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, volunteer tour guides came from the congregation and had trained weeks in advance. Assistant Principal at East Rowan High School and St. Luke’s member Michelle Whitson delivered part of the church’s tour alongside her husband, Reggie, and son, Malachi.
“I was very excited to see that we were on the tour this year. I think it’s a great opportunity,” Whitson said. “It is one of the most historic buildings in the area, and it’s a great way for people to come in and see our beautiful space.”
During her docent training, Whitson learned more about the church she has attended for decades. There is a piece of plastic covering the outside of the stained glass window facing East Council Street, which she had never known the reason for. The plastic was installed after an incident in the 1960s when someone threw a Cheerwine bottle through the window.
“A lot of people, when you say that, they get this very sad look, and I get that. But it’s a Cheerwine bottle in Salisbury. I think it helps me understand why things are where they are and helps us understand that we open our space up. Even when you open your space up, things might happen, but you still open your doors because it’s the right thing to do,” Whitson said.
With 985 tickets presold before Saturday, the event was set to nearly double last year’s attendance. It drew visitors from across North Carolina and beyond. With 50 years behind it, OctoberTour organizers now look to the 51st edition.
For more information, contact the Historic Salisbury Foundation at 704-636-0103.
