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Art major converts old railroad depot in Carrboro into a theme bar on track
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Published: November 28, 2008
CARRBORO
Open the right door at the new Station Bar in Carrboro, and a mural that looks like a page from a graphic novel takes up the wall ahead. The rest of the room features a decoupage of vintage movie posters that add a touch of history gone yellow at the edges.
The room isn't an art gallery. It's the men's restroom at the Station Bar, which opened this fall as an addition to the Southern Rail restaurant in Carrboro.
"It's a weird thing, but we have the best bathrooms by far," bartender Jessica Potter said. "People will come and spend five minutes in there, not because they're using the bathroom, but because they're checking out all the stuff."
Maybe it's because the bar, which used to be a working railroad station, was designed by an artist: Mike Benson, 42, a former freelance photographer for Rolling Stone magazine.
He started out as an art major at UNC Chapel Hill.
"I took all the art classes they offered at Carolina and avoided all the math classes," he said. "I lived in Hanes (Art Center) for a while. I went to UNC until they threw me out."
After graduating from the Savannah College of Art and Design, he moved with his wife to Washington, where he opened an art gallery and networked with embassies in the area to bring in art exhibits. An Icelandic company, Emmjay Investments, helped finance a project to convert his gallery into a restaurant called Cafe Saint-Ex, the first of three restaurants that Benson owns.
The Bensons and their two daughters decided to move back to Chapel Hill when a friend called to tell them that a set of old train cars from the Carrboro station were going on auction. Benson created a railroad-theme restaurant, Southern Rail, which opened on St. Patrick's Day.
When he heard that the Oriental-rug company occupying the other part of the building was pulling up stakes for Cary, he saw potential in the site for a bar.
As is Benson's restaurant next door, the Station Bar is about railroads. To give the establishment the feel of a railroad station, Benson laid down steel tracks and bought several trains at auction.
"This was the hub for the University of North Carolina," he said. "We wanted it to look like the trains had just pulled into an old rail station."
Benson estimated that Southern Rail and the Station cost about $1.5 million to build. The startup cost for the Station totaled $300,000. The trains account for more than half that sum.
The building has gone through several incarnations since the city used it as a station. It served a brief stint as a music venue, with REM playing there at least once, according to a faded advertisement hanging on the wall.
The Station is well-stocked with historic signs, railroad murals and plenty of old lanterns, another auction find.
The Station's bar used to sit in D.C.'s Hotel Washington. Benson, who bought it for $3,000, said that it served F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and many important members of Congress.
The place is also home to "Carrboro's most dangerous piano," which is painted with dancing
Day-of-the-Dead skeletons. It bears an inscription from Stanley Kubrick's film Full Metal Jacket: "The dead only know one thing.... It is better to be alive."
Benson called the Station's single room a mishmash of furniture.
"People call it Carrboro's living room," he said. His bartenders agree.
"It's Carrboro; we're family," said Joe Miller, 23. "Whether you like it or not."
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