History
The Woman’s Club of Fayetteville was founded on November 6, 1906, as the Civic Improvement Association (a.k.a. Woman's Civic Improvement League). Originally, its goal was to protest the proposed destruction of the Market House, a historical city building. According to club literature, it wasn't until 1920 that it was named "The Woman's Club".
The club is responsible for the first library in Fayetteville, launched between 1907 and 1910 on the second floor of the Market House. Private donations filled the shelves until the 1910 book reception from which the available book number rose to 725 books. At that time, subscription rates were $2.00/family, $1.50 for individuals, and $0.50 for children. The library became public (and free for all Cumberland county residents) on December 18, 1933.
During World War II, the Woman's Club opened their doors to provide a home for unmarried working women flooding into the city at that time. Thirty young, single women, a housemother and hostess packed the four bedrooms with dormitory type furniture to serve their needs. The Woman's Club also provided space for any other women's organization to meet in the house free of charge in an effort to accommodate the town's growing need for social outlets.
In 1941, the club purchased the "Slocumb House" but later renamed it the "Sandford House." Thirty years later, the club petitioned the National Register of Historic Places to make the Sandford House, the Oval Ballroom (a relocated free-standing room), and the Nimocks House historic landmarks. All three buildings are located on Heritage Square in Fayetteville. In 1972 and 1973, the petitions were granted. Today, the club restores and maintains these historic landmarks on Heritage Square, open to the public by appointment.
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“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“It’s not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)