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The Many Lives
of the Ocean Drive Pavilion
The picture with
fish in the top corners is Roberts Pavilion at 2 years of age in 1938
The
first pavilion at Ocean Drive opened the first week of June 1926.
The Horry Herald made first mention of it May 20th in a story
about the activities of Ocean Drive Estates, a company from Florence, SC
that was selling lots it divided up from tracts bought in March and
April from the Case and Edge families. According to the May 20th
story, "....materials for a large pavilion and bath house are being
assembled."
On June 17th Ocean Drive Estates ran an ad in the Horry Herald
promoting their development as the only one on the Atlantic Ocean with
15 advantages found nowhere else, including a Dance Pavilion, Bath
House, Artesian Water, Gasoline Filling Station, a large 50-room hotel
under construction, a spacious park, a proposed salt water swimming
pool, saw mills to furnish building lumber, boating, good fishing,
crabs-shrimps-oysters, plenty of game, and a safe strand for
surf-bathing and automobile racing.
Belle Edge, part of the Edge family who sold tracts to Ocean Drive
Estates a year earlier, paid $10 each for two lots from Ocean Drive
estates on May 14, 1927 which must have included the new
pavilion--family histories said she bought it "around 1928." Four
days later the Horry Herald announced that the Guaranty Realty
Company of Asheville had taken over sales and development of Ocean Drive
Estates, bussing in visitors from all parts of North and South Carolina
(an early form of 'timeshare' sales?). Guaranty Realty noted they
were renovating the Ocean Drive Hotel for a May 15th opening. A
story in the Florence News Review described the hotel as having
80 beds, a 16-foot boardwalk for promenaders with the aim of extending
it up to two miles from one end of the development to the other.
By then they were using Pullman busses to bring in visitors from
Virginia as well as the Carolinas.
In the summer of 1928 the Colonial Orchestra of Florence was hired to
furnish entertainment for the season for the hotel and its
hardwood-floored pavilion. The hotel's 65 guest rooms were to be
complemented soon by 25 additional cottages for rent.
The original Ocean Drive Drive Estates / Edge pavilion has been
described as "square, one-room, wood-frame, hardwood floors, wrap-around
porch, and shuttered windows. Nearby was a drink stand with a
wrap-around porch. A boardwalk ran from the pavilion toward the
beach, and their were two bath houses next to the pavilion."
Belle had Dwight Case manage the pavilion in 1930 and 1931. He
booked orchestras, some from Chadbourne and Florence, there during the
summers and had preaching on Sunday nights. Among the preachers was Mr.
Cashwell from Gastonia. Dwight hired a Negro band from Myrtle
Beach to play there once. He also moved the piano out of the
family home to the pavilion for those who might want to play and he held
an occasional square dance there.
An admission was charged for the dances, but many people drove from
miles, sat on the pavilion porch and listened "for free." (Early 'Napsters'
trying to get music for nothing). Some people watched the bands
and dancers through the open windows. There was a rush on the soft
drink stand during intermission and many strolled the boardwalk.
Belle was busy up the street in a boarding house she had taken over and
where she opened Ocean Drive's first cafe downstairs in what had been a
garage. Although no longer standing today, it was located across
the street from where Hoskin's cafe stands today.
Dwight eventually opened two versions of Case's Place, novelties and
gift shops, one on what is now Main Street on the West side of
Hardwick's Cafeteria (now Duffy's Seafood) and another on Highway 17
next to where Dick's Pawn Shop now stands.
In May of 1938, after Roberts Pavilion had been built, Belle leased her
pavilion and drink stand to a man who remodeled it and changed it into a
skating rink. He skipped town the second year of the lease.
After several years Belle had the pavilion and drink stand torn down and
leased the property to an amusement company (see pictures of the
amusement park next to Roberts and the later concrete pavilion).
Early pictures of Roberts show a variety of structures on its South
Side. There was a bowling alley and others. Was one of them
the original pavilion?
Belle moved the two bath houses across the street. Once became a
grocery store and the other Ocean Drive's first hardware store operated
by Purley Edge. After a few years they were moved off the corner
and Belle leased the corner to the new owner of the Beach Shop. |
