Qualla: Historic Campbell Building

Historic Campbell Building: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Duncan Blount, CC BY-SA 4.0. Reuben Edgar Campbell came out of a monazite mine and built a general store. That was the first one, somewhere in Cleveland County, North Carolina. The second was in Shelby, where he and his wife Ester Yelton lived above the retail floor in 1916. The third opened on November 9, 1923, in the booming textile town of Lawndale. By 1927, Campbell and his partner J. Ogburn Lutz were ready to consolidate. They built a fourth and final Campbell's Department Store, five stories of local brick and locally rolled steel, and they closed the other three to put everything into it.

Image: Duncan Blount | CC BY-SA 4.0

Historic Campbell Building: Made in Cleveland County

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Duncan Blount, CC BY-SA 4.0. The grand opening fell on March 9, 1928. The Cleveland Star ran a celebratory piece two days earlier, listing the local suppliers with the pride of a small town watching itself succeed. The bricks came from the Bostic Brick Company in Bostic, North Carolina, a few miles east. Eig...

Image: Duncan Blount | CC BY-SA 4.0

Historic Campbell Building: Shelby in 1928

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Duncan Blount, CC BY-SA 4.0. The town was at one of its peaks. The railroad reached it. Charlotte sat forty-five miles east. The textile industries of Cleveland and Mecklenburg counties fed money through the regional economy, and Shelby had positioned itself as the leading shopping center between Charlotte a...

Image: Duncan Blount | CC BY-SA 4.0

Historic Campbell Building: Closing and Drift

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Duncan Blount, CC BY-SA 4.0. Campbell's Department Store closed in 1950. The chains had won, the way the chains were winning everywhere in mid-century America. The building stayed with the Campbell family, who turned it into a furniture store. The furniture store ran for twenty-five years. Then a restaurant ...

Image: Duncan Blount | CC BY-SA 4.0

Historic Campbell Building: The Franklins

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Duncan Blount, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 2014, a Shelby family named Franklin became the second family ever to own the Campbell Building. They spent three years rehabilitating it, from October 2015 through June 2018, working carefully around the features that mattered: the original mezzanine and its railing overlooki...

Image: Duncan Blount | CC BY-SA 4.0

Historic Campbell Building: What It Is Now

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Duncan Blount, CC BY-SA 4.0. The first floor and mezzanine house Greenbrook Design Center. The second floor, the third floor, and the rooftop are an event venue called Uptown Indigo, where Shelby celebrates weddings and reunions and milestone birthdays. The Historic Campbell Building belongs to the Central S...

Image: Duncan Blount | CC BY-SA 4.0