In Elloree we found the Cleveland Street Cafe open and decided to give it a try. It was a coffee shop/bakery, but they also had some excellent sandwiches.
The downtown section of Elloree consists of a one block business section. As with so many of these downtowns, none of the buildings serve their original purpose. The buildings are either empty or converted to antique stores or religious organizations. Several of the buildings featured a balcony that extended over the sidewalk, reminiscent of the French Quarter in New Orleans.
We found one “Prayer Alley” with a bit of irony.
On the south side of the main street we found what appeared to be a railroad station. At least, that’s what we thought it was based on the architecture.
A sign over the door identified the building as the district office for the former Orangeburg County School District 7 district offices. Even as cool as this building is, I couldn’t imagine running a school district from here. Orangeburg has now consolidated all of the separate districts into a single county-wide district.
As we walked back to the main street we were accosted by a woman crossing from the other side. We were wondering what we had done wrong, or if someone was upset because we were taking photos. It turns out that she was the owner of a new art gallery and was delighted to have folks from out of town visiting. Christa introduced herself and told us about some of the shops in town and invited us back this Friday for a food truck event.
We took Christa’s advice and wandered into a couple of the antique stores. One was more like a thrift store with a few interesting small antiques. It was guarded by a friendly old great dane. The other had more furniture and even had a very nice Washburn B-14 banjo for a very reasonable price. I played it, but I resisted taking it home with me.
Time was slipping away from us and we had other places in Calhoun County to explore, as well as a long drive back home. Back in the car we circled around to one of the back streets and made another discovery, a teapot shaped building.
This was the entrance to the now-defunct Teapot Museum. The museum housed the collection of Dr. Julian and Sybil Boland and included thousands of teapots. Dr. Boland died in 2014 and the museum closed. In 2019 there were plans to reopen the museum, but it appears that COVID got in the way. There was no indication that this was still a museum – no signs, nothing. Just an interesting building.
From Elloree we headed back north and back into Calhoun County. We were finally getting around to the two targets that had attracted my attention in the first place.
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It’s funny to me that I’ve tracked your blog enough that last Monday, I actually wondered where you were exploring on that MLK day. Looks like a successful excursion.