Structure classification
Commercial
8 documented locations on file.
The Bulk Button Showroom
Thirty-two oversized sample buttons line the gravel forecourt of a low cinderblock warehouse outside Caldwell Siding, each painted to represent a different retail shirt-button style once distributed by Mid-America Fastener & Notions Supply. The company appears to maintain the display in a semi-official way; a plywood sign by the drive still advertises "Trade Visitors Welcome Thursdays," although the showroom windows are papered over and the lot is usually empty. The hook is a rotating pedestal near the road holding what looks to be a 9-foot "pearl finish" four-hole button, reportedly turned by hand for seasonal cleaning and for one day each year during Button Days. Several residents independently referred to an unresolved matter involving whether the exterior samples count as signage, inventory, or "demonstration assets," which suggests the file will bear expansion.
The Carpet Remnant Castle
The Carpet Remnant Castle, a castellated retail facade assembled from stuccoed block and decorative parapets, stands at the south edge of Dunlee Cross just off a divided state highway and behind a long, low flooring warehouse. It appears to date from the late 1970s or early 1980s and is still used, at least intermittently, for the sale of discounted carpet ends, vinyl offcuts, and rolled indoor-outdoor turf. A weathered roadside panel credits the site to the Sandhills Floorcovering Clearance Cooperative, though county business listings now show three related ownership names and one dissolved development corporation. The hook detail, and the reason this likely warrants a full dispatch, is the presence of a raised “bargain battlement walk” above the showroom windows that was reportedly opened to shoppers during holiday sales before being closed for insurance reasons. No public hours were posted during the most recent pass.
The Colossal Payphone
Eleven feet of enameled steel handset, laid flat across two masonry piers, serves as the principal public bench of downtown Latch Creek, and has since the Latch Valley Telephone Cooperative erected the full structure — a payphone roughly two stories tall, beige and navy in the cooperative's colors — as an advertisement in 1989. The keypad is painted on; the cord, a run of flexible conduit thick as a culvert, is real, and is inspected. The coin return, a hinged steel door at knee height, functions as the town's lost-and-found; the cooperative's successor office empties it Mondays and logs the contents in a ledger said to run back to 1991. Unconfirmed but persistent is the claim that the pedestal housed a working line until the 2003 merger, and that the number is still assigned. The office that could settle this keeps counter hours that did not overlap with the correspondent's visit.
The County-Shaped Orchard
A 41-acre demonstration orchard planted in 1968 on the exact plat outline of Harnett County, the plat being available from the assessor's office at no cost. Full appreciation of the shape required an observation altitude of approximately 850 feet, which no one in the county possessed for fifty-one years. Recent aerial documentation confirms the outline to within one tree. Status: nominal.
The Left-Handed Lane
Lane 13 at Tolvana Bowl was laid mirror-image during the dark of a 1961 winter build and sanctioned for left-handed league play in 1967 rather than repoured. It is the only lane of its kind under continuous certification, in an eight-lane house that stays open to 2 a.m. for the freight trade. That is how it was found.
The Undrawn Raffle
Since 1961 the Squannock Volunteer Fire Company No. 1 has offered a raffle for a 1961 Evinrude outboard motor and has, at each annual meeting since, resolved by motion to postpone the drawing. The motor waits in its sealed crate in the firehouse bay window; tickets remain on sale, the raffle being the Company's principal fundraiser for precisely that reason. The minutes of every postponement are complete and may be consulted.
Verniel Bros. Courtesy Sample Carpet Barn
Six oversized carpet sample books, each approximately 11 feet tall and fabricated in painted sheet metal, stand fanned open in front of a low retail warehouse outside Riverton Gap under the name Courtesy Sample Carpet Barn. The business appears to have sold discount flooring, remnants, and roll ends, while the display was apparently maintained by the Riverton Gap Merchants Association after the store's partial closure in the late 1990s. What merits a full dispatch is the surviving roadside sign promising "SEE ALL 842 PATTERNS FROM THE HIGHWAY," despite the visible books showing only broad color fields and one still-legible label for a discontinued commercial loop called Provincial Oatmeal. A second, smaller sign refers to a 1988 demonstration permit and to "approved turning radii for tour coaches," suggesting a promotional arrangement more elaborate than the present gravel lot would indicate.
Whale Costco
A 480-foot reinforced-concrete gray whale on the central Oregon coast, originally poured as the shell of a marine-themed walk-through attraction and now operating as a standard membership warehouse. The food court is located directly beneath the blowhole, which functions as a skylight and code-mandated smoke vent.