ABBEVILLE, Ala. (AP) - There is something about a simple glance down Doswell Street to the Archie Theatre in this small Henry County town that makes Guen Woodham smile.
No, the theatre isn’t showing movies. It hasn’t in a long time. But the renovated façade makes it look like the Archie of her childhood, when tickets were about 35 cents and Cokes were a nickel, where Spencer Tracy or Cary Grant or Marilyn Monroe filled the screen and where the town came together for endless evenings of entertainment.
The neon highlights of the Archie are back. The marquee doesn’t list movie titles, unless “Welcome to Abbeville” is the next Oscar winner. But the theatre, which was used for nothing but storage until 2001, represents a downtown that found its old roots by doing a lot of new work.
“We’ve talked about trying to have a tag line for downtown,” said Woodham, director of the Abbeville Chamber of Commerce. “I like ’Neon and Nostalgia’.”
The Archie is one of many downtown buildings restored to resemble how they looked in the 1950s. The vintage signs are everywhere: Coca-Cola; Rexall Drugs; Philco “Famous for Quality the World Over.”
The Coca-Cola sign sits atop Huggin Molly’s, a downtown restaurant owned by Great Southern Wood CEO Jimmy Rane. The pressure-treated wood magnate is quick to stress that the vision for downtown Abbeville was a collaborative effort, but the look and feel of downtown coincides with Rane’s passion of all things 1950s.
“We knew we had good bones in the community in all these old buildings and we wanted to try to preserve what we had,” Rane said. “There was a film done in 1958 called ’Abbeville is Great in ’58.’ A lot of us remember that project. It was sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce.”
The nostalgic look of Rane’s Huggin Molly’s (named after the subject of an old Abbeville ghost story legend) set the tone for the rest of the downtown restoration. The restaurant has an old soda shop/drug store feel in the front, with plenty of old posters and other memorabilia. Grab a milkshake there and be frozen in the fifties, a federally registered service mark of the restaurant.
Abbeville’s nostalgic downtown is most often compared to Mayberry, the fictional North Carolina town used as the setting for The Andy Griffith Show.
Rane, however, likes to think of Abbeville as Bedford Falls (or Pottersville) the fictional New York town used as the setting for the 1946 Christmas movie It’s A Wonderful Life, in which a man is shown how different life in his small community would have been if he had never been born.
“I just like the feel of the town, honestly,” Rane said. “I grew up here and there is something very warm and comforting to ride through town and see it alive again with cars on the streets and the lights at night. It’s the kind of town where you ride down the streets and people wave at you.”
The key to Abbeville’s new old downtown has been consistency, Woodham said. Downtown revitalization takes place in fits and starts in many towns. Sometimes money is available and sometimes it isn’t. Woodham said Abbeville has been able to avoid gaps of inactivity due mostly to Rane, whose passion for downtown is evidence with regular investment.
“It is easy for buildings to go into disrepair,” Woodham said. “That hasn’t happened in Abbeville.”
Some believe downtown investment is a waste of money. Rane doesn’t hold to that philosophy.
“I live here. My mother and dad both lived to be 95. I’m 69. I hope I will be here a while and I want Abbeville to be viable, alive and living and growing. It is absolutely worth the investment and I would do it many times over and hope I am not finished investing,” Rane said.
Woodham understands that the return to the 1950s downtown look, where times were happier and simpler, must be balanced with jobs.
“As a chamber of commerce, it is hard to look a young person in the face and say yes, you should work here,” Woodham said. “We know how important jobs are and we know it is a lot to ask a young couple of come live here if they have to drive to Dothan to work.”
But Woodham said a town can progressively seek jobs and still maintain the look of yesteryear.
“I don’t know of anyone who wants the look and feel of this town to change,” Woodham said. “Certainly we want to offer opportunities for everybody, but the nostalgia and feel of downtown is important.”
The future of downtown development in Abbeville, as expected, means continuing to step back into the past.
A museum or similar attraction is in the early planning stages for the downtown square. Planners are still working on the theme and look.
Rane, meanwhile, recently moved another Great Southern Wood office downtown and he would like to do more with the Archie than fix the façade.
“A long-term goal I’ve had is to reopen the movie theater and show old movies. I don’t know what we would ever be successful here showing first-run movies, but I’d like to see us show some of the old movies.”
Don’t be surprised if the first movie shown at the renovated Archie is “It’s A Wonderful Life.”
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Information from: The Dothan Eagle, https://www.dothaneagle.com
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