Stephanie Klein-Davis | The Roanoke Times

Two boys enjoy a ride on the Mad Mouse steel roller coaster

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• The last days of the pavilion

Pavilion memories

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A history

1908: First Pavilion building, a one-story building next to a hotel, is built at Myrtle Beach.

1920: Pavilion burns; it is replaced by a two-story wooden building in 1925.

1944: Second Pavilion building burns.

1948: New Pavilion building erected with reinforced concrete. Also in 1948, the traveling Husted Brothers carnival is placed near the Pavilion building, creating the Myrtle Beach Pavilion & Amusement Park.

1950: 14 rides are added, including the trademark Herschell-Spillman Carousel, which features frogs, lions, ostriches, zebras, giraffes and more.

1954: Pavilion survives Hurricane Hazel, which devastates much of Myrtle Beach.

1957: Pavilion acquires German Baden Band Organ. The 2-ton pipe organ was first exhibited at the 1900 World Exposition in Paris, and has 98 keys and 400 pipes. Twelve lifelike figures spin and dance to each tune.

2006: Pavilion owners Burroughs & Chapin announce the Pavilion will close this fall.

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. -- Calliope music cuts the muggy air. Little boys and girls lick cotton candy; even littler ones gawk from their strollers with great big eyes. A roller coaster car zips overhead, clackety-clack. The breeze is salty, the lights are bright.

Welcome to the Myrtle Beach Pavilion on a summer's night. This summer, just like every other summer since at least 1948, the Pavilion is lighting up the Myrtle Beach skyline. But, as almost everybody knows by now, this summer is its last.

Longtime owners Burroughs & Chapin Co. say the beachfront amusement park, with its $5 million roller coaster, its century-old carousel and its 20-foot German pipe organ, is awash in red ink. They say the Pavilion, once the heart of Myrtle Beach, was superseded years ago by other attractions. They say time has passed it by.

"The stark reality is that the Pavilion has not been a viable business for a number of years," said B&C president Douglas Wendel at a March 9 press conference announcing the park would close.

In a move sure to be felt in Roanoke and many another working-class city in the Southeast, which for decades has been the tourist bedrock on which Myrtle Beach stands, the park will close its doors for good Oct. 1.

"Myrtle Beach is probably my favorite place in the world," said 38-year-old Roanoke heating and air conditioning salesman Gregg Flora, who no doubt speaks for many. Flora, who went to Myrtle Beach just last month, reminisced recently about childhood trips to the Pavilion -- about riding the rides, playing Skee-Ball and Pac Man and eating footlong hot dogs at nearby Peaches restaurant.

He called the demise of the Pavilion "kind of sad."

"Maybe they can find something bigger and better," Flora said.

If anyone knows for certain what's coming in the Pavilion's stead, they haven't said -- though rumors of pricey high-rise condominiums are rampant on the street. B&C vice president Tim Ruedy said whatever replaces the Pavilion will include public spaces "for festivals and concerts and events." He also said it will likely be built with an eye to an upscale clientele.

"Myrtle Beach has undergone a change in recent years," he said, echoing others who say the income level of visitors is rising, as property values soar and million-dollar condos sprout along the beach. "There was this reputation of being the 'Redneck Riviera.' That's not really true anymore."

He also said they want to replace the Pavilion, open only in the spring and summer months, with a year-round attraction. "It's kind of feast or famine now."

Changing beach

Once upon a time, the Pavilion was Myrtle Beach. Its mix of dance hall, games, rides, carousel, pipe organ, funnel cakes and benches where the less exuberant could still sit and savor it all was the undisputed second-best attraction here -- after the beach itself.

"The Pavilion really was everyone's focus," said J. Egerton Burroughs, B&C chairman of the board, at the press conference where the Pavilion closing was announced. "And now everyone's focus is everywhere else but the Pavilion. ... It's a tough day," said Burroughs, who grew teary-eyed at the announcement, according to the next day's account in The Myrtle Beach Sun News. "But we will have better days, and change is always good."

Myrtle Beach has already come a long way from the sleepy beach town of midcentury, where a working man could afford to take his family for a week of inexpensive sun and fun. The Grand Strand, which includes Myrtle Beach and towns to the north and south, has become a sprawling golfing, shopping and entertainment corridor. As if to underscore the change, a few weeks after the Pavilion closing was announced, plans were unveiled for a new $400 million-dollar, 140-acre rock 'n' roll theme park. The Hard Rock Park, to be built a few miles inland, could open in 2008 and is licensed by the trendy Hard Rock Cafe.

The Pavilion's roots go back nearly a century, to a one-story wood structure next to Myrtle Beach's first hotel, the Seaside Inn, in 1908. The building was intended as a gathering place for hotel guests, according to a brief B&C history of the Pavilion. In those days, beachfront property could be had for $25 a lot, said Nicole Aiello of the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce, while the city itself literally did not exist -- Myrtle Beach was not incorporated until 1938.

When the first Pavilion building burned in 1920, a new two-story Pavilion was erected to take its place. It was there that "shagging" became the hot dance step at Myrtle Beach, as it still is today.

In 1948, a traveling carnival was persuaded to drop anchor at the Pavilion. Burroughs & Chapin eventually bought the carnival and added more rides, turning the Pavilion into the multifaceted tourist draw of today.

'Had its day'

Visit any of the many Web sites running Myrtle Beach Pavilion memories this summer, and you quickly realize just how deeply the Pavilion is embedded in the regional consciousness and family life, especially in smaller towns and cities. The number of stories about people who met future spouses there, or proposed there, and then took their kids and even grandkids there, is striking.

David and Ginny Trout of Roanoke met in Myrtle Beach in 1961 and fell in love, said their daughter, Melinda Kantor. The following winter, they eloped. Last spring, Kantor's sister, Terryee Haley, took their parents to the Pavilion for one last visit, this time pushing her father in a wheelchair.

Kantor went to Myrtle Beach often growing up, but her visits have tapered off, she said. "We changed. The beach changed. It's a big resort town now."

Some Pavilion-goers on a recent evening were bitter about the closing.

"I think it's stupid," said Ariel Buie, 15, of Florence, S.C., who was sitting on a bench overlooking the amusement park with family and friends. "Most people only come here for the Pavilion."

"I don't like it," said Rose Shanklin, of Fayetteville, N.C., who has been coming to the Pavilion since she was a little girl in the 1950s. "It's sad to see something like this go, when there's no reason for it."

An online petition to save the Pavilion had gathered more than 14,300 signatures by the middle of last week. (Signature number 14,240 was Tracy Bandy of Catawba. "Too many memories to let this go without a fight!" she wrote.) Burroughs & Chapin officials have said plans to close the Pavilion are final.

Others were resigned, and hoping for the best.

Buddy Styers of Myrtle Beach met his wife-to-be, Penny, at the Pavilion's upstairs dance hall in 1961. She was 15. He was 19.

"The Pavilion for as far back as I can remember has been part of my life," said Styers, found dancing with Penny Styers at the Pavilion on a recent hot summer night, 45 years later. "It does sadden us to see it happen. I'm hoping Burroughs & Chapin is going to put something good here."

Hilda Spittle, now of Myrtle Beach, remembers coming here from her home outside of Charlotte as a kid, and being overwhelmed by the Pavilion.

"We grew up out in the country. It didn't take much to impress us," laughed Spittle, as she took a break from dancing with her husband, Richard. "It used to be so crowded down here, you really had to push your way through."

Now, Spittle said, "It's getting old and run-down."

Echoed her husband:

"It's had its day."