Coffee Pot - Winston Salem, NC
Posted by: 
3newsomes
N 36° 05.452 W 080° 14.572
17S E 568160 N 3994292
Symbol of Old Salem - 1858 tin coffee pot (16 feet in circumference and more than 12 feet in height)
Waymark Code: WM66PP
Location: North Carolina, United States
Date Posted: 04/13/2009
Views: 26
From Wikipedia:
The Old Salem community (and Winston-Salem as a whole) is popularly represented by a tin coffee pot, originally built by Moravian Julius Mickey in 1858 as an advertisement for his tinsmith shop. Traditionally said to hold "740 gallons of coffee", it was originally located at the intersection of Belews Street and Main Street in front of his shop. That location was the border between Winston and Salem before the two towns merged. When the cities merged in 1913, it came to symbolize the joining of the two communities.
The pot was knocked down numerous times by traffic. Finally in 1920, after the pot was struck again by an out-of-control car and knocked from its spot, the city forced the coffee pot's removal from its place on the street for violating advertising laws and for traffic safety reasons. An outcry from residents, led by Wachovia Historical Society head Henry Fries and Moravian Bishop Edward Rondthaler, had it restored, but placed in a much safer location, further back from the road. The pot was finally moved for good in 1959 when the plans for Interstate 40 went through the location at Belews and Main. The Coffee Pot is now owned by the City and is located at the north end of Old Salem at a traffic island formed by Old Salem Road, Main Street and Brookstown Avenue.
From the Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel, April 10, 1966, Bicentennial Edition, by Chester Davis, Staff Reporter
... While the Mickey coffee pot properly can be described as a land mark and as a symbol of this city, it is an even better example of the imagination of our citizenry. Over the years it has become the center of [numerous] legends...
It is said for example:
--That the coffee pot provided a place of concealment for a Yankee (one version says Confederate) solider in a time of peril.
--Akin to that tale is the report that when Gen. Stoneman's federal troops rode through Salem in 1865 they were greeted at the town limits and led to the pot where they were served hot coffee.
--It was commonly believed that the coffee pot, when it stood in its original location, marked the boundary between Salem and Winston.
--The trap door in the coffee pot is believed by some to have provided an early mail-drop for a British spy in the Revolutionary War. (Persons who date the pot back to this time are also inclined to believe that the troops of Gen. Cornwallis were served coffee from the pot when they marched through Salem.)
--Visitors in Salem often are told that the coffee pot serves the Moravians at Easter Sunrise Service time and during Love Feasts as a place to brew coffee in wholesale lots.
Perhaps no one group can tell more tales about the coffee pot than the men who grew up in Winston and Salem at the turn of the century. For them the great pot held a fascination which, particularly at Halloween, was over-powering. The stories of pranks which centered on the coffee pot are endless, and some of them are true.
There was one Halloween when a group of teen-agers, using black powder and a dynamite fuse, fashioned a fire cracker of almost atomic potential. The story is that they "blew up" the coffee pot although this is somewhat of an exaggeration. The fact is they battered it and spilt its seams to the point it required a fine of $3 each for the 18 youngsters involved to repair the damages...
Price of Admission: 0.00 (listed in local currency)
Height of object in feet: Not listed
Size of a typical object of this: Not listed
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