Robert's Hall: A Living Century of Lynn Haven History

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to Haven 444, Lynn Haven's community podcast, where we share the stories of our history, our community, and the people and places that connect us. There are buildings we pass so often that we stop really seeing them. They become a part of the landscape. Familiar walls, old buildings, a doorway we may have walked through a hundred times without ever wondering who walked through it before us. Roberts Hall has been standing in Lynnhaven for more than a century, and over those years, an extraordinary amount of ordinary life has happened inside these walls. Children came here with pennies in their pockets, families gathered, politicians talked, fish were fried, graduations were celebrated, soldiers were supported, music drifted from upstairs, and generations of people found one reason or another to come through the door. And today, if you spend a little time inside Robert's hall with Arlene, those stories begin coming back to life. For this episode of Haven 444, we're taking a walk through one of Lynn Haven's oldest buildings, not simply through its runes, but through the memories still held inside them. And perhaps the best place to begin is with a general store, a pocket full of change, and Papa and Kitty Lloyd.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

For about actually 54 years, Papa and Kitty Lloyd had a general store here, a Mercury that had a wide variety of goods in it. Up at the front, they had little tables where people could sit around and talk. This is where the mail was delivered. And originally this was backwards. And so by the time Papa and Kitty Lloyd rented this building downstairs, all the children came here for every child. But there's about a week goes by, but somebody doesn't tell me where my money sells this building right here. And the Papa and Kitty Lloyd and how kindly worked children. They were real good with the children. And the children came out, there was so much lunch money spent in this little store. And then I think James Finch can tell you his stories about the building too. The groomer has it that he used to go around with his little red wagon and collect bottles from the back of the building, come around the front, and take him back to Papa Lloyd and he'd let him have some candy and stuff for it. And he and Papa Lloyd would be sitting there. He would if a kid would come in and he knew he wanted some candy, and I said, Well, this is that from over there. I I need I need that moved over here. Okay, go get yourself some candy. I don't think I like it here. Let's move that over there. If you could see the space in the middle of the floor there where he was. And he he walked right there, and you could see grooves in the store in the floor where he sat for 50 years. And I think I like to come up with this little thought in my mind that he had everything all around him, he had his checkerboard, he had his moonshine, he had his cigars, he had everything sitting around him, and the guys would come to the back. Now I do know I have talked to people that did this, that the women go to the front and talk to Kitty Lloyd and get all the gossip going, and then the guys will come back and talk to Papa Lloyd back there. The back.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

As Lynnhaven changed, the building changed with it, and because it was one of the largest gathering places in the area when the community needed somewhere to meet, celebrate, work, or simply come together, Roberts Hall was often where they came.

SPEAKER_02 4:53

During World War II, they had women and seamstresses in the north room sewing items for soldiers, for the troops, for local, for whatever. And this is the largest building in Bay, it was the largest building in Bay County. So anything that was really big, a lot of it happened here. And especially local, then Cavelin stuff. There's a lot of poly chicken upstairs, and they had fish fries, and they had graduations upstairs from all the kids. When the school burned down, they had they split classes between the bank building and here.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

Once shared these same rooms. There were serious moments here, certainly. But there was also music, and upstairs for years there was dancing.

SPEAKER_02 6:22

The odd fellas were getting old, they didn't have as many people, they didn't have the people to really keep it going, and they stopped it. It used to be weekly dances up here. Hank Sr. played up there with the Neil McCormick band on and off for several years, and he was just another guy in the band. And but I would give my IT a photo of that band on the stage. I have yet to find somebody with that band on the stage. In fact, for years, Lucky Mud played here every Sunday. And they played, you know, just downstairs. And they had musicians come in from all over the place.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

Music leaves the room differently than almost anything else. The last note disappears. The people go home. And eventually even the dancers become memories. For years, much of the upstairs of Roberts Hall sat quiet, quiet enough that something remarkable had almost been forgotten. The murals were still there.

SPEAKER_02 7:35

So for many years, like 50 years, basically nobody was up here, but Athelas that clean forgotten, there were even the murals here. The guys came up and said, whoa, who painted this? And the story was that it was an itinerant artist. It was just passing through town. His name was John Salon. And he was a professional landscape artist, training institute, art institute in Pennsylvania. And he lived here. He raised his family in St. Andrews. Some of my family knew his family, kind of things. And after we had done a certain amount of renovation, we had invited the public in for opening kind of day. This is as far as we've gotten on the renovations so far kind of thing. And this lady, I was standing here as one of the people up here supposed to help the visitors, and this lady came up and she goes, That's my that's my grandfather's work. And it was. And she is now a member of our lodge. And she's an odd fellow, and she's a Rebecca now. She brought trunks down with all the old history stuff we set in the floor here and looked at all John Selm's old history and books and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 9:02

There's something extraordinary about a piece of history surviving long enough for a family to find its way back to it. But the murals weren't the only part of Roberts Hall that needed saving. By the early 2000s, the building itself had reached a very different moment in its history. And for a group of people who cared about Lynhaven's past, admiring Robert's Hall was no longer enough. They decided to do something about it.

SPEAKER_02 9:41

And so when I wasn't working on one of those nights, I started going with her. And that was in 2007. In January of 2008, we decided we wanted to take on a renovation project of a historic building. So we set our sights on this building because it had been set to be demolished, we had heard. And it was a nice, it looked bad. It was actually structurally very sound, but it looked bad. So in 2008, we sent an envoy from the Lynn Haven Harrison Society of three men to talk to the Ockfellows, which owned this building. And they said, Well, we'd love to have you renovate our building for free and give it back to us and everything, but uh but we can't allow you to do that because of liability. And so we determined that if we were owners, which the Othfellows owned the building, and they were allowed to work in the building because they were owners. So 14 of us joined the Ockfellows, so we could become owners and work on our own building. And we did. In May of 2008, we started working on this building. And we started with the exterior of the building. It had this horrible brick covering that they used to do because during World War II they couldn't get lead paint and they couldn't get paint. So they just kind of covered it up. And it was ugly as homemade sin. And so we took all that off and painted the back of the building in time for the Fourth of July parade. And we started working on it ever since.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

Saving an old building is really one grand moment. It's years of work, one repair, one coat of paint, one project, one volunteer, and one decision at a time. And perhaps the best measure of whether a historic building has truly been saved isn't simply whether it's still standing. It's whether or not people are still walking through the doors.

SPEAKER_02 11:53

We rent this building out, and that's how we have the income to maintain the building.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

And they are. Roberts Hall continues to belong to the life of this community, while at the same time holding physical pieces of the life that came before it. Sometimes history survives in a photograph or a written record, and sometimes it survives in an object that has simply remained in the room long enough to tell another story.

SPEAKER_02 12:46

This is an old electrical board from World War II. Civil Air Control Taverty Board, 1942 to 1945. They had these boards at the top of tall buildings looking for enemy planes. And they had one on top of Marie Hotel downtown and one on top of here. And people would volunteer and they'd take eight-hour shifts for watching. And then you may call it up.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

Some are documented, some have been passed down. And apparently, at least one may still be wandering around upstairs. Before we finished our visit, I had to ask Arlene one more question. Does Robert's Hall have a ghost?

SPEAKER_02 13:41

I'm here alone a lot, and I hear noises upstairs going on, and I know what no one is up there, and we just call him the man upstairs. That's the man upstairs kicking up his heels.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

Every building that's been around this long deserves at least one good mystery. But there was one final question that mattered much more after everything Roberts Hall has survived, and after everything people have done to keep it standing. I asked Arlene what she hopes happens to this building in the years ahead.

SPEAKER_02 14:18

People would love it enough to keep it going and save it. And people would become active enough to actually help save it.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

Maybe that's ultimately what preservation comes down to. Not simply saving old wood, old windows, or old walls. It's caring enough about a place to keep giving it alive. Time has a way of changing. The people, the streets, the names we know by heart. But some places manage to hold on to the reason they mattered in the first place. And Roberts Hall is still very much alive. Music is still played here, comedy shows still bring people together, weddings and receptions are still celebrated inside these walls. And they still gather for no occasion at all, other than celebrating this gift of community. They still laugh here, celebrate here, make memories here, and add their own stories to the ones that came before. And perhaps that is the best future any historic building can hope for. Or even this city by the bay of 22,000 people and growing. Not simply to be preserved, but to be loved and cared for. As long as people continue to walk through these doors and continue to support the work of keeping Roberts Hall standing and continue to believe that places like this matter, that communities like this matter, its story will not be finished, but simply keep growing. For Haven Four Four Four, when Haven's Community Podcast, Our City. Our city.