Historic Downtown Wilson
Stop by and stay a while in Historic Downtown Wilson, North Carolina, located at the crossroads of Southern charm and modern innovation. Once heralded as “the World’s Greatest Tobacco Market”, Wilson is now a thriving city of almost 50,000 people. Nearly 2,000 people work for BB&T, one of the nations’ largest financial services. Other large employers include Bridgestone Tires and Merck, Sandoz and LiveDo pharmaceuticals. The city is 
home to Barton College, Wilson Community College, and the Eastern North Carolina School for the Deaf. Just as the city has transformed from a tobacco-based economy to a more modern one – Wilson is North Carolina’s first “gigabit” city and boasts its own municipally owned and operated high speed fiber optic system – Historic Downtown Wilson is going through a similar revitalization. The“five & dime” stores of yesteryear are the bones of modern loft apartments and boutique shops. Weathered brick tobacco warehouses are being reborn as businesses, restaurants and apartments and a burgeoning arts community is experienced at the historic Boykin Theater, the Wilson Art Center, the Oliver Nestus Freeman Roundhouse African American History Museum, and Imagination Station Science & History Museum. It also hosts multiple concerts series and two annual festivals: the Whirligig Festival held the first weekend of November and the Eyes on Main Street Outdoor Photo Festival held 100 days beginning in mid-April.
The piece de resistance – and the arts-driven economic engine that is the centerpiece of Historic Downtown Wilson’s revitalization – is the Vollis
Simpson Whirligig Park featuring the fanciful, wind-driven pieces created by the late Vollis Simpson. A farm machinery repairman, Vollis began making gigantic kinetic sculptures at his family farm in Wilson County when he was nearing retirement age. He kept making his “whirligigs”–seven days a week– until about six months before he died at the age of 94 in May of 2013. By that time, he was famous. The story of Wilson’s campaign to use the renowned whirligigs to recharge its downtown has catapulted the community into the national spotlight. Grants from ArtPlace America, the Kresge Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts have helped the project come close to its goal of opening the Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park and Museum. When Phase I is completed toward the end of 2017, the park will feature more than 30 whirligigs, a multi-purpose shade structure, performing arts stage, and beautiful landscaping. Adjacent to the park is the new craft brewery, 217 Brew Works, and Whirligig Station, one of two remaining historic brick tobacco warehouses which is transforming into a folk-art branded celebration of the creative genius housing the Whirligig Park Visitor Center and Gift Shop, office space and 91 apartments.
More information may be found at www.wilsonwhirligigpark.org, www.HistoricDowntownWilson.com and www.whirligigfestivalnc.org.
