Where There's Trains, There's Smoke -Downtown Expands West

For the first half century of Downtown Sanford’s growth, commercial development focused on the streets fronting the railroad, Chatham Street on the east side and South Moore Street on the west. In 1914, the Wilkins-Ricks Company went outside this congested area, building a substantial brick store on South Steele Street, one block removed from the smoke and grit of the railroad. Others in the business community soon followed the Wilkins-Ricks lead and shifted their attention to underdeveloped lots on Steele and Carthage streets. In January 1924, the Sanford Masons unveiled plans for the construction of a three-story Masonic Temple on the north corner of Carthage and Steele. The "magnificent monument to Masonry," with stores on the street level, professional offices on the second story, and a "beautiful, attractive and most inviting" meeting hall on the top story, was dedicated September 18, 1925. As the Masonic Temple neared completion, the Lee Furniture Company announced plans to construct a five-story showroom and office block on the south corner of Steele and Carthage.

With road crews nearly completing a Sanford-vicinity section of US 1 (The National Highway) one business leader was prompted to declare Sanford would be "the best distributing point in North Carolina from the standpoint of both railways and highways”. A new and thriving brick industry at the nearby community of Colon meant more jobs and more money pumped into the local economy. The Sanford-based Edwards Railway Motor Car Company was poised for a national expansion; the innovative firm captured 37 percent of national market share in the sale of gasoline-powered railway cars during 1923, and in March 1924 it opened sales offices in New York, Washington, and Chicago. Major downtown building projects were being announced on an almost weekly basis. When the local press warned that “parking room for automobiles will soon be at a premium in the business section”, it was clear that Sanford was on the make.

In late 1909, the entrepreneurial Belk brothers, William Henry and Dr. John, wanting to expand their franchises paid a call on an old schoolmate from Union County, Hugh McRae “Mack” Williams, who owned a dry-goods business in Sanford. Williams’s son, Jim, had worked in the Belks’ Waxhaw store for three years before going to work for his father in 1906 when Williams opened a store in Sanford. The Belks had heard the father-son team was doing well.

Mrs. Emma Hart, then a young seamstress, was working in the Sanford store when the Belks came in to talk business with their old friend and she overheard the conversation of the three businessmen. Recalling the meeting years later, she said the three talked about their childhoods, about local crops, about business and payrolls in the town. Henry Belk had looked Williams’s store over, and soon they were discussing doing business together. Then, in the midst of questions about the economy, Henry abruptly changed his line of inquiry. “Never mind all that,” Belk said. “Mack, how many churches are there around here?” Williams told him and Belk followed with another question: “Do the people here attend church services pretty well?” Williams assured him that Sanford was as fine a Christian community as the Belks would find anywhere. “In that case,” Henry said, turning to his brother, “I don’t think we can go wrong by coming to Sanford.”

The opening of Williams-Belk Company in Sanford January 1910 extended the Belk name to eastern North Carolina, where the Belks were not well known. Aside from a few textile mills on the edge of the Piedmont region, eastern North Carolina was farm country. Cotton, tobacco, and corn were the prime cash crops. But if towns like Sanford were unlike bustling Charlotte, they resembled Monroe, which the brothers knew very well. The streets filled on Saturdays when farm families came to town to shop and pick up supplies. This was Henry Belk’s kind of town.