DREAMCATCHERS ANTIQUES - dreamcatcherantiques.com
104 South Main Street - Greensboro, GA 30642 (706) 453-4334

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The Copelan Building

Two hundred years ago, the Greensboro corner of Main and Broad streets looked onto dirt roads with the sights and sounds of stagecoaches passing.   Memory Statham owned the land where he built, and operated a hotel with his wife and four daughters.   After Memory’s death in 1856, the women continued to operate the hotel with the help of an enterprising young man, Ned whose role was “house-boy, porter, waiter, and general utility man” (Rice, 1961). Ned would meet the trains and solicit customers, hawking the Statham Hotel as having the prettiest girls in town, often getting into fistfights with rival solicitors.   

During the Civil War, the hotel served as a meeting place for women making bandages, blankets, and other military provisions.  On several occasions, the hotel was a makeshift hospital.  During the years of Federal occupation, an officer was stationed in Greensboro for the purpose of controlling and humiliating the citizens.  The man was so despised that one day a marksman took up station at an upper window of the Statham and killed the rascal with one shot as he passed below.  In 1889, Mrs. Statham sold the land to E. A. Copelan, who tore down the old hotel and built the current building, then known as the Copelan Bank.

In the 20th century, the building served as a drug store, and general store (Mr. I. Block’s, Mr. Ashley’s and Mr. Christie’s).  It was subdivided into four sections, which have held barbershops, stores and restaurants.  In 1996, a tornado took part of the roof and a tropical garden was planted.  Today, the building is the home of Dreamcatcher’s Art, Antiques, & Collectibles… but whispers of the colorful past at the corner of South Main and East Broad can still be heard on a quiet summer evening.