Subterranean Homesick Blues Discovering the basement treasures of Southern Pines By Bill Case • Photographs by John Gessner
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round 1952, my mom found a tiny, tarnished silver coin in a dark, recessed area of our home’s basement floor. The ancient “half-dime” bore the date 1846. It was hard to fathom how the 106-year-old piece had made it to our basement. Perhaps the coin dropped out of a worker’s pocket when the basement foundation was poured — a remote possibility, since few coins of that vintage would have been in circulation when our Hudson, Ohio, house was constructed in the 1920s. The half-dime puzzle was one our family never solved. My mother gave me the mysterious half-dime after I began collecting coins as a pre-teen in 1960 but, over time, my interest in numismatics fell away, and I lost track of the coin. Perhaps it has been rediscovered by another mother in some other dark basement, launching a whole new family puzzle. Thoughts of the half-dime returned when a Southern Pines restaurant server told me about her own belowground discovery at the Belvedere Hotel. She said the basement of the structure contained an iron-barred cell rumored to have once been a town jail facility. What other treasures might lurk in underground Southern Pines? Catacombs? The Phantom of the Opera’s dungeon? Or maybe just Al Capone’s vault? With thoughts of Geraldo Rivera dancing in my head, I started my prospecting by following up on the server’s jail cell tip. According to a
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spokesman for the police department, there was no record of any jail having ever been located at the Belvedere Hotel. Undeterred, and with time on my hands until the afternoon four-ball, I contacted Melissa McPeake, a member of the family that owns the Belvedere building and several other area hotels. When asked about the supposed jail, Melissa responded, “Well, I’ve never heard that before. But there is an iron-bar door that provides an entry point to a room in the basement, and we’ve always wondered about it. Maybe it was a jail door. You’re welcome to check it out.” Ah-ha. When Melissa and I descended the very steep basement steps (approximately the width of an iPhone 6), we came upon an iron-barred arched door in a remote area of the basement. The door looked like something out of an English castle dungeon in the Middle Ages. The only thing missing was Errol Flynn. But the absence of any actual jail cells cast considerable doubt on whether the forbidding door had ever served a role in incarcerating prisoners. It seemed unlikely that the space had ever been a black site interrogation room used by Andy Taylor and Barney Fife. Perhaps the iron bars guarded the hotel’s wine cellar, or served as a barrier protecting mail for the U.S. post office that had occupied a portion of the building long ago. But, no jail. Tips regarding the whereabouts of buried treasure often lead to less than satisfying ends. But once on the hunt, you gotta keep looking. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I was contemplating my next The Art & Soul of the Sandhills
