- Title
- Our State
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-
- Date
- March 2002
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-
- Place
- ["North Carolina, United States"]
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Our State
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ft№ saq
шщ «МВЯЩ а
Tlv w.v -Ic-banc. Mebane was built around this company," says Robert Phipps.
same year as the town charter.
Since then, those old indus¬
tries, along with the sweet
smells of a lost era, have
faded away. The town itself.
on the other hand, is thriving.
With its prime location at a
near-midpoint of the Triad and
Triangle, easy access to eight lanes of
interstate, and proximity to two do/cn
18 * hit Stan Mtin /i
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tar heel towns
Mebane
Ivr more than 1(H) years, the White Vurniture Company guided
the ebb and flow of town life ; today, this community on the
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та псе/
Orange County line flourishes by virtue of its
prime location midway between the Triad and Triangle.
by Si san L. Comer
The aromas ol lacquer and cured
tobacco wafted through the
childhood of fourth-generation
Mebanitc Joy Albright. In those days,
the quest for a library book and a
cherry smash from the old-fashioned
drugstore in downtown Mebane took
you past the big tobacco warehouses
and Mebane's premier employer. White
Furniture Company, established the
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colleges and universities, Mebane's
population has mushroomed by 53
percent over the last decade. More
and more people arc discovering this
quaint and unpretentious manufactur¬
ing town where the Fourth of July still
draws a crowd, you can still meet for
a burger and malt downtown, and the
kids still play lots of baseball.
Ghosts of furniture past
“We can’t go a day or two without
someone telling us that they — or
someone in their family maybe three
generations back — have worked
here." says Robert Phipps, manager
of The White Center. After the vener¬
able White Furniture Company, mak¬
ers of fine reproduction antique
pieces, ceased operation in 1993,
Phipps and his wile. N.C. Agricultural
Commissioner Meg Scott Phipps, pur¬
chased the 300,000-square-foot aban¬
doned building and began leasing it
for warehouse, light manufacturing,
and office space. (While the two still
manage it. they've since sold it to her
father, former Governor Robert Scott,
whose mother was a White.) The his¬
toric building, which is listed on the
National Register of Historic Places,