Antique store steeped in local history
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From left, Teresa Conner, Ivan Gibby, Terrie Stephens and Frank Calhoun are pictured inside Calby’s, an antique store downtown. Conner and Stephens have recently partnered with Gibby and Calhoun to lease the business for a year.
Jessica Webb
editor@thesmokymountaintimes.com
With its 1940s Bennett’s Drugs sign still proudly displayed on the front of the building, Calby’s on Everett Street in downtown Bryson City is often photographed as a marker of local history. New life is being breathed into the antique store.
Terrie Stephens and Teresa Conner, who previously ran booths at Buttermilk Farms, have partnered with Ivan Gibby and Frank Calhoun, who own the building and the shop, in a one-year lease to operate the store.
“We were dealers in an antique mall for 4-5 years, and Teresa ran a thrift shop before that,” explained Stephens.
She specializes in items like records and Conner likes to refurbish old things and give them new life.
The two had outgrown their rental booths and were looking for a new opportunity. Given the challenging rental market in the area, they reached out to Gibby and Calhoun by way of a mailed letter with a proposal.
“We needed a place to lease to help us grow our businesses, and we were interested in the building because of its history,” Stephens said.
Gibby said he was pleasantly surprised, as he didn’t want to close the shop but had essentially done so in December due to health reasons after operating it for 31 years.
“It’s been surprisingly smooth,” he said of the new arrangement.
“We’re excited to be here in a store in downtown Bryson City and be able to be here in the middle of it all, and we’re excited that Frank and Ivan gave us the opportunity to be here,” Conner said.
Gibby and Calhoun purchased the building from Mary Alice Bennettt Greyer in August 1993 and through the help of friends, opened in October. The antique store has remained in the old pharmacy area of Bennett’s while Frank ran the flower shop that operated in the other side of the building, which used to be the soda fountain area or Bennett’s, until they sold it in 2006. That space is now the Friends of the Library Bookstore. Ivan ran the antiques side, with his Mom, Blanche, also helping. The focus was primarily on china dinnerware, silver and glass.
On how the antiques business has changed, Gibby said it’s more eclectic now, and that it’s changed from “the beautiful to the more practical and collectible.”
Of the shop, he said, “It’s still Calby’s, it’s just a new focus.”
Shop visitors will still get to see Gibby a lot, and if they have the time, it’s worth sitting for a spell.
A storied place
“Calby’s” is a mashup of Calhoun and Gibby’s last names. Gibby is a seventh-generation Swain County resident. His grandfather, Ash Thomas, had a business next door and his aunts briefly had a dress shop as well.
Both what is now the bookstore and the antique shop were Bennett’s Drugs. Bennettt acquired the bookstore side after Myer’s Grocery closed, explained Gibby. They opened the wall, he said, and moved the soda fountain to that side.
Gibby and Calhoun originally wanted to reopen the soda fountain but decided against it because they would have had to have all new equipment.
Bennett’s Drugs operated in the space from 1905 until it closed in 1990. Dr. Kelly Bennettt was well known not just as a pharmacist but as a photographer and for his civic engagement.
In a Nov. 24, 1993 article for Asheville Citizen-Times, George Ellison writes that Kelly Bennettt became known as “the Apostle of the Smokies.” He was one of the major forces, alongside friend Horace Kephart, in the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains national Park and a peak is named in his honor. Bennettt was also mayor of Bryson City for 14 years, served five terms as a state senator, two as a state representative and was involved in many other civic efforts to better the area.
His father Dr. A.M. Bennett was also a pharmacist, and operated out of the pharmacy, and his brother P.R. Bennett was a medical doctor who had a clinic upstairs. Years later, his daughter Mary Alice Greyer was also a pharmacist.
Upstairs in the apartment Gibby has left what was once the operating room with its drain in the floor and skylight much the same for its connection to that history. He said it is probably the closest the area had to a hospital in its day.
Like others who grew up in Bryson City, Gibby has lots of memories of Bennett’s Drugs. As a little boy, he would come in with his grandmother when she got her prescriptions. Then, when he was older, she would let him pick them up himself.
“I’d always get a little pocket money to by an Orangeade,” Gibby said, saying the store was known for its legendary Orangeade. Many of the dishes served for lunch were also popular, such as the egg salad.
The store was a hang out spot for teenagers in his day.
“When I was a teenager, after school we would gather up here sometimes in Bennettt’s and have a Coke or Orangeade and titter-tatter like teenagers do,” he recalls.
He recalls a story when one afternoon, sitting at a booth toward what is now the back of the antiques store, his friend pulled a pack of cigarettes she had filched from her mother. They all tried them, and he said it set him into a coughing fit. It was the first and last time he ever smoked.
Even today, there are remnants of the old store itself and homages include a marker near the front door, photographs on the wall and even the old Bennett’s Drugs prescription bags.
The store is open Mondays-Saturdays.