herstory

In 1937, Joe and Sylvia Gray, with the help of Joe’s brother Melvin, built a building in downtown Greensboro at 607 South Elm Street. They ran a furniture business at this location, sending new North Carolina furniture to New York. Realizing that trucks were returning from New York empty, the Grays began buying repossessed surplus furniture held in stock houses after the Depression, and importing these wares back to Greensboro for repair and sale. Before long, the business, known as Carolina Sales Company became too big, and in 1939, they moved across the street, buying the building at 606 and 608 South Elm Street.

Joe and Sylvia’s first child Michele was born in 1943, when the family lived on the third floor of their store. The second floor was filled with boarders, four apartments to be exact and the downstairs held the retail space, now more than simply furniture. Following WWII, the store had morphed into an army surplus business with extensive catalog sales sending pup tents, army bags, and canteens to boy scout troops and hospitals around the country company. In the building’s large third floor warehouse Sylvia would busily mend army goods, brought up via pulley from the back alley. In 1952 Sylvia and Joe’s second son David was born and the family, now too big for the two third floor rooms moved to Sherwood Street and eventually Starmount. In 1953, while the family lived at Starmount their third child Sidney was born, named after Joe’s brother Sidney who died as a fighter pilot in WWII and received a purple heart posthumously. The business of work ware and surplus continued to thrive, and Michele recalls coming to her mothers store on the school bus and turning her head as the bus passed Blumenthals, the local work wares competitor just north on the other side of the railroad tracks. Blumenthals was remained in business at its original location until 2005 (two years after Elsewhere’s founding) when the building was bought by a downtown developer and transformed into condos

In 1955, Joe Gray unexpectedly died, leaving Sylvia with three children to raise and the business to run. The ten year period following Joe’s death leaves an uncertain void in the stores history and the apparent decline of the once thriving surplus and catalog sales company. At some point, Sylvia began buying the ends of fabric bolts from local mills. Upholstery, denim, and copious amounts of finishing ribbon were purchased for cheap and re-sold. The boarding house was quick to shut down, the last remembered resident, a Ms. Pate, with her firey red hair, is recalled to be Joe’s good luck charm. She moved out of the boarding house only weeks before his death.

During the late 70s Sylvia’s inventory expanded to include general thrift items such as toys, books, dishes, housewares, wigs, and knick-knacks, junk, whatsamacalits, parts and pieces and particulates, bits and bobs, furniture, glass, etc etc etc. Shopping daily, Sylvia increasingly filled the three-story building until only a small path between the boxes and piles remained. It was said that she would shop twice a day at the local salvation army and goodwill. It is said that she would be followed by a host of other women store owners, who would snatch up objects that she handled but returned to the shelf. Over time her inventory began to become more or less a collection, more or less a hoard, more or less an archive of rehersed memory detailing her tastes, interests, and perception of value. Ribbons were tied around tissue boxes stuffed with toy cars, each individually labeled with tiny white stickers detailing date, year, and often an exorbitant asking price. The floor was packed with objects. Some shelves were so full of things that they were spilling out into the aisles. Strings of objects were tied together like charms, each individually knotted. Dolls were preserved in Roman Meal bags, strung together with various other bagged collections, like dresses, jewelry, plastic toys, dried out pens. Sylvia would buy things for the buttons, cut them off, and stow them in jars. She would take piles of ribbons home with her in the evening, wash them, iron them, and roll them around a pencil to sell. Sylvia wrote phone numbers on the wall of her office. The higher shelves were almost empty, save for one or two objects that had found their way above the wreckage, presiding over a sea of treasures. This was just the downstairs, for the upstairs too was filled. Fourteen rooms full of stuff had accumulated in the dark, in addition to the remains of the mad experiments of an inspired and aspiring furniture entrepreneur, David Gray, who throughout the 80’s and 90’s produced a series of injection molding designs and a line of fine furniture made of glass and metal.

Sylvia worked in the store until the day before she died. The astounding accumulation amassed over her lifetime remained in a mountains of things, boarded up after her death in 1997. Interestingly, her house was not overridden with things, only her store.

Today, people still stop into the store and tell the story of Sylvia, a brash saleswoman who refused to take guff, wouldn’t barter, and insisted “Pay, Then Play!” If she liked you or you were family, something might cost $5 or yours for free, but if in one look she knew you were trouble, the cost was $25 and going up if you resisted. A note to visitors: if we ask you if you if Sylvia would allow you to buy anything, we’re probably sizing you up!

today we tidy up: this is our story

In 2003, George Scheer (Sylvia’s grandson) and Stephanie Sherman, collaborating writers and friends, took a spring break trip to the South with friend Josh Boyette, and stopped in Greensboro to see George’s grandmother’s old store. The box of things they brought back with them to George’s Philadelphia apartment demonstrated that shared fictions can be told through things, and as a collection have the power to expose ideas that stimulate communities. This exchange fostered the idea of making the Greensboro store something other than itself, and something very similar to what it was: a thinking playground and creative community, the dream fueled by the fantastic combination of the Mixed Up Files of Ms. Basil E Frankweiler and Gertrude Stein’s Paris salons.

In May 2003, George recruited two friends from Michigan, founders Josh Fox and Matt Merfert, and together, they moved to the store to excavate and explore, clearing just enough space in the front of the store to make room for a couch. Declaring “Nothing for Sale!” the crew began the extensive process of discovery and organization. Without neither roadmap or design the group set to organizing, sorting, categorizing, and shifting the vast collection of things, guided by the simple understanding that through organization the place for a community would evolve. Founders Stephanie Sherman and Allen Davis joined them in October. Elsewhere became a 501(c)3 non-profit organization in 2004, and launched its artist residency program in 2005, bringing 35 creative producers across media and discipline to Greensboro to create new works using the collection. Soon the store where nothing was for sale became a living museum, and to this day continues the ever evolving process of “moving things around.” Thanks to a first lucky grant from Greensboro’s United Arts Council, some chance movie shoots, a new-work commission, and an active, incessant, and absolute fury of volunteer efforts and the creative inspiration of artists, Elsewhere made it to the five year mark, which seemed to be a launching point for solid longevity through state and national grants enabling our current sustainable growth.

Almost daily, Elsewherians discover new objects that reflect Sylvia’s fascinating mind and life, and whose placement and preservation reference the eccentric process by which the objects of her collection were ordered. This mass of objects tells a cultural narrative about material excess, consumption, and overproduction. The re-ordering of things and the curation of collections speaks to the potential to re-imagine collaborative creativity and the role of place and presence in telling a community’s story. The salience with which visitors and artists alike share in the immersive experience of this unique site, speaks not to an idea but to a shared narrative written in attics and basements across the country.