Arts Council Looks to Expand Campbell House

“It’s a little bit segmented here. It’s a house. We don’t want to mess with the house and tear down walls and things like that because we want to preserve this house as much as possible,” Executive Director Chris Dunn said. 

The Arts Council’s main limitation is the size of the building. 

“When we have a wedding here, and there’s a threat of rain, most of the time, they cannot go inside. We just don’t have the space. When we do our awards ceremonies, we try to do them outside because we can handle more people, but when it rains, it is like packing sardines in that one gallery to do an awards ceremony.”

The largest room currently is the Brown Gallery, which can sit between 40 and 50 people theater-style. The new gallery would fit at least 120 comfortably. 

“This (addition) will help us alleviate the size restrictions,” Dunn said. 

The Arts Council could host more musical events, art lectures, workshops and larger gallery shows.

Dunn said they plan to embellish the addition’s ceiling, working with master plasterer Patrick Webb and other artisans to paint it. It would be “on par” with the fresco paintings featured in numerous churches in western North Carolina and based on models from Southern Pines. 

This addition would be one of a few updates to the house. The Arts Council previously revamped the kitchen and enclosed the back patio to create more gallery space.

The project would be on the left side of the house, which is now just an open lawn. Dunn said the Arts Council wanted to avoid encroaching on existing landscaping and is working with Glenn Bradley, one of the top historical landscape designers in North Carolina, to restore the grounds to what it was like in the mid-1900s.

“We’re not changing any of that. We’re actually going to improve it. Clean it up. Make it pretty,” Dunn said. 

Ray Owen, development director of the Arts Council, said the Campbell family bought the property in 1946 from Jackson Boyd, the younger brother of James Boyd. The original home once existed across Connecticut Avenue as part of the Boyd estate.

“This is the biggest remaining block of the original Boyd estate, which was about 100 feet in front of Weymouth,” Owen said.

The Boyd house, also known as the Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities, was built by architect Aymar Embury in the 1920s. Jackson Boyd, “with a team of mules and logs,” moved a part of the original house to where it sits now. Owen said the home included a wing off the back, but it caught on fire and burned down.

“It was the brick chimney and brickwork that acted as a firewall and saved this (section) from burning.”

Major W.D. Campbell designed the landscaping and brought ballast brick from Charleston to reface the exterior of the building — “a nice fireproof material.”

The Campbell family later gave the property to the town in 1966, requesting “that it be used for the cultural and social enrichment of the community,” according to the Arts Council website. 

The home also contains office space for the town's parks and recreation department and Boy Scouts of America on top of the Arts Council galleries.

Owen said the addition would help “inspire and strengthen the community through art” and fortify the N.C. scenic byway. The byway crosses North Carolina and includes roads passing through historical and cultural areas. 

As a cultural corridor in Southern Pines, Owen said it highlights the “pillars” of the area, including literature, arts, longleaf pine preservation, equestrian and outdoor lifestyles and community design. 

He also emphasized how the expansion of Campbell House would help the local economy. 

“And it feeds into our cultural economy, and the people that come here will potentially stay in the hotels, eat in the restaurants and come to know our community. So that is our vision — that this will be part of the cultural economy that Southern Pines has supported in the most phenomenal way throughout its history,” Owen said.

Dunn and Owen spoke with the town council on Tuesday evening, receiving its concurrence to pursue future steps, including finishing the plans, getting an estimated cost of construction and then fundraising.

Dunn said the project’s cost estimate could be anywhere between $750,000 and $1.3 million to create.

“The Campbell House is a public building. It’s available to the community,” Dunn said. “It’s free and open to the public — when we’re open — and this will just add on to what you can do.”

The Arts Council galleries are open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on most third Saturdays from 2-4 p.m. Currently on display are pieces from the Young People’s Fine Arts Festival. The Campbell House is located at 482 E. Connecticut Ave.