Turning something old into something new
By Staff
Melissa Dozier-Cason, FCT staff writer
RED BAY – From the outside, the building looks no different from the other businesses down Main Street but when you step through the doors the past comes alive.
The Red Bay Museum displays pieces of the town's history ranging from the old hotel check-in desk to an old soda fountain counter.
The museum is an extension of a community project provided by the Red Bay Civitan Club.
In the 1980s, the club commissioned an author to write the town's first history named One Hundred Years of Memories, An Oral History of Red Bay, Alabama. (1888-1988), Scotty Kennedy said.
The Civitan members began gathering items in the 1990s in order to one day have a museum to have them displayed. That dream became a reality in January 2005, when the Red Bay Museum opened its doors to the public, Kennedy said.
"Everything in the museum has been donated, purchased, or borrowed by private citizens for display," Kennedy said.
The first display in the museum is the Red Bay Hotel display. The museum has the original registration desk and staircase on display right as you enter the museum.
The display also includes a room door and key hold. The items were restored and put in the museum.
The Red Bay Hotel's neon sign hangs above the registration desk.
The next large display is the Faust Drugstore display. This display includes the original marble soda fountain counter used in the original drugstore. The soda fountain equipment is also on display at the museum. The drugstore display also has the medicine cabinets seen in the prescription area of the drugstore.
"We tried to take different stores and show how they were once set up during the early 1900s," Kennedy said.
The museum also has a dry goods store on display which includes a postal area because post offices were once located in dry good stores, Kennedy said.
The most popular exhibit at the museum is the bank exhibit, which portrays what Red Bay's first bank, Bank of Red Bay, looked like. The bank window counter, vault and ceiling lights are included in this display.
"This was found in an old funeral home building," Kennedy said. "It had burnt but we were pleased with the results."
The museum also displays items from different area churches and food services from the early 1900s.
Upstairs, the museum showcases a border's room, a kitchen that features an early electric icebox, a jeweler's repair bench and other items from the time period.
The last display at the museum is the Tammy Wynette display.
The display showcases different gowns worn by Wynette, who once called Red Bay home, and her wedding gown worn when she wed country star George Jones.
"The gown's were purchased from eBay, and the wedding gown was donated by her daughter Georgette," Kennedy said.
The Wynette display also has different posters from benefit concerts where she performed to benefit Red Bay School, and other concert memorabilia.
The Red Bay Museum will be expanding into the next building soon to make room for more exhibits and for their thift store, Kennedy said.
The museum is funded through donations, and merchandise such as Red Dirt T-shirts, which are dyed with Alabama red clay.
The museum is open Tuesday and Thursday from 1:30 to 4 pm. Admission to the museum is $3 for adults, $2 for students, and children six and under are admitted free.
