It’s just
up the road, not the whole sprawling Bogue Banks house where Alice Hoffman
lived from 1917 to 1953 but an important remnant of it—the old town hall. A search began in 2013 after Corrine Geer,
who had worked for the town in the mid 70s, said the old building was sold at
auction when the new building replaced it. Discoveries made since correct past
misconceptions.
Let’s start at the beginning. When John Royall sold about 2,000 acres of
Bogue Banks’ property to Alice Hoffman in 1917, her purchase included at least
one house, which, according to Capt. George Smith, who lived in Salter Path at
the time, Royall had built for a physician, named Dr. Allison. In an
unpublished autobiography, Alice Hoffman confirms that she rented this cottage
built for John Royall’s physician and that John Royall’s family had a home
nearby.[i]
Earlier stories mistakenly had her living in a fishing/hunting lodge, which
Royall had built for himself.
In a 1964 court deposition, Capt. Smith, speaking of the physician’s
cottage, recalled that, “…he hauled materials for the house from Morehead City
in his boat …and helped Royal build the house….” Alice Hoffman rented the
physician’s cottage before buying property from John Royall. Royall, according
to Capt. Smith, “overhauled the house he had built for Dr. Allison to suit Mrs.
Hoffman.” Smith used his boat to haul from Morehead “materials … used in
changing the house…” and helped Royall “overhaul the house.” These changes
involved the addition of a bathroom with running water, which Alice had
requested. John Royall also added a sun parlor for her. [ii]
Alice then made further additions, including two more bedrooms with
bathrooms and, later, added to the kitchen. The expanded house is frequently
described as a sprawling home, reputed to have seven cellars. She called it her
“Shore House.”
Shore House
All evidence from Alice’s papers suggests she remained in the remodeled
cottage when she bought property from Royall. We know on one occasion she was
looking for a gardener and said she could offer him a “bungalow,” which the
Royall family had recently vacated. We also know she ordered materials to build
at least one shed.[iii] We do
not know what happened to John Royall’s house or other buildings that were on
the property. We assume most of them were razed or sold off. (See “Locating
Alice’s House” post.)
The assumption, for years, was that the original structure Alice lived
in was also razed when the Roosevelts began to develop the area. An early Shoreline Editor George Eastland and
others talked about a small portion of Alice’s house that was saved. He thought
it was a bedroom, but others disagreed. “It was a kitchen area from the Hoffman
house,” said Don Brock, who used it as an office when he first started working
for the Roosevelts. This small L-shaped portion of Shore House was placed on
the corner of Yaupon Drive and Salter Path Road.
Some early residents considered it an eyesore and made a case that
having a “commercial building” in this location was not in keeping with the
covenants of Pine Knoll Association, the only homeowner association in
existence at the time.[iv] So, in 1974, Don Brock agreed to move.
At the time, there was no town hall building. Unofficially,
space at the Atlantis Lodge was serving that purpose. When Brock moved, so did
the remnant of Alice Hoffman’s house. It was placed on the municipal site and
became the first town hall.
When the new town hall was
built, the old one could have been destroyed, but it was not. Former Town Clerk
Corrine Geer said John Collier, a surveyor who had retired here, bought it at
auction and moved it to Salter Path around 1979, but she did not know where.
In the meantime, by accident, I overheard Morehead City native Bill
Taylor talk about how Alice Hoffman’s house had been divided into parts and
sold at auction. Some time between 1953 and 1955, Alice Hoffman’s
furnishings had been sold at auction, a fact confirmed by Robert Frippin, who,
along with another Morehead City resident, Frank Marino had attended the
auction and purchased furniture. Bill Taylor thought the second auction took
place in the early 1960s. His father, owner of a plumbing supply business, bought two sections of the house, one
fairly large section with several rooms and one smaller part consisting of one
room. Bill remembers the house as having green siding.
His father and older brother undertook the job of moving what they had
bought to Shackleford Street, in Morehead City. Bill said: “It was quite a
site.” He recalls that they undertook the move on a Fourth of July weekend. His
older brother, who had been given the job of measuring the buildings,
miscalculated the height of the larger section. They were moving it on a
flatbed truck. When they got to the bridge, they discovered the structure was
not going to clear the bridge. They were stuck. It was the old drawbridge, of
course. Traffic was backing up, and Bill’s father climbed up and started
sawing. They finally got it over the bridge. Once installed on Shackleford
Street, the two sections of the house were used for plumbing supplies until the
Taylors’ business closed, and sadly, those two remnants of Alice Hoffman’s
house were later razed.
I wondered if someone else had bought other parts of Alice’s house or
other buildings on her property in the 1960s and moved them somewhere else in
the area. Bill Taylor thought the three sections of the house—the two his
family bought and the one used as a town hall—represented the only parts of the
house that were saved, but he was not sure.
So, it became more important than ever to find what happened to the old
town hall. Several tips led to dead ends. Then, an exciting discovery! The
section of Alice Hoffman’s house moved by John Collier in 1979 is still
standing. It is today a beautiful, well-maintained home in Salter Path, on the
sound side of the street. Clara Mizelle is its owner. She said she bought it
for $1,000. Over the years, she has upgraded the house, adding new siding, but
the outline of the house is exactly the same as it was when serving as Pine
Knoll Shores’ first town hall.
Photo of Clara Mizelle’s house in Salter Path
Photo of the house beautifully
decorated for Christmas 2014
Below is a map created by Walt Zaenker showing the various locations over the years of Alice's house or parts of it on Bogue Banks:
(A version of this article was first printed in The
Shoreline in 2011. It was updated in 2013 and again in 2014.)
Post Author: Phyllis Makuck
To contact the author or The History Committee
[i] Alice
Hoffman. Unpublished autobiography with other etters and other papers at East
Carolina University Joyner Library, Special Collections.
[ii] News Times, “Capt. George Smith Recall
Olden Days on Bogue Banks,” June 13, 1967. Newspaper article was based on a
1964 Court Affadavit, provided by Morehead City Attorney George W. Ball.
[iii] Alice
Hoffman. Letters and other papers at East Carolina University Joyner Library
Special Collections.
[iv] Pine
Knoll Association files, box 1. Reviewed with permission of Board Secretary
Linda Cumberland in 2011.