When Newberry College opened the thrift store Shop Around the Corner in 1997, Joe was the faculty member who worked with the community project. He taught his students the importance of caring, as well as book learning. Joe is an unabashed believer in helping his community. He also worked in the community with the Literacy Council and other agencies when there was a need. It became their home, and Joe and Mary and their family became a part of Newberry. It’s what she did for their now beautiful house on Harper St. She loves fixing up something old with character. She grew up in an old, beautiful 1912 home with antiques, art and history. Mary knew that the Harper Street house had good bones and enormous potential, even the dirt yard with no landscaping had potential. This was the time in Newberry’s past when very few old family homes were being sold to folks not from here. There were not many houses to choose from back then. They moved here with two young children and bought an old dilapidated house on Harper Street with great potential. Newberry College had hired him to teach sociology. The McDonalds came to Newberry in 1981 from Knoxville, where Joe had earned his doctorate in sociology. They love their adopted town and have worked for years in various ways to support and enhance the arts and the lives of all people in the community. The tower remained neglected and empty.Īll of this worried Joe and Mary McDonald. None had any idea of the history of the building and its visual importance to the downtown. Many said Newberry was too small to support such a venture. Most said it would be too expensive to renovate. The potential buyers found it too small or too large, never just right. Developers came and went from far and wide with varying visions of modern boutique hotels, spas, and apartments. Since that time there has been talk of many possible buyers of the hotel. It reminded the community that 28,000 square feet were vacant and decaying, except for the store fronts on Main Street. In 1998 the matching tower of the Newberry Hotel, which had been closed in the 1950s, was like a sore thumb sticking up on the corner of Caldwell and Main Street. The Newberry Opera House was renovated and reopened in 1998, ushering in two decades and counting of renewal in downtown Newberry. Both buildings and their towers were emblematic of a time of recovery and renewal in the history of Newberry County. Visitors who came to the Opera House needed a place to stay. The architect deliberately tied them together with the two towers. This version of the hotel with the corner spire was built in 1878 after a fire destroyed an older hotel on the property. The Newberry Opera House was built in 1881. If you stand on the square in Newberry and look around, you can see two towers on two historic and iconic Newberry buildings, the Newberry Opera House and the Old Newberry Hotel.