Pebble Hill held a ribbon cutting for Kennel Cottage on Thursday with members from Imagine Thomasville and the City present. 

Last Thursday, Pebble Hill Plantation held a special ribbon cutting and exhibit opening for the historic Kennel Cottage on the property. 

Whitney White, the executive director of Pebble Hill, said that this had been in the works for quite some time, ever since she had presented the idea to James “Jack” Hadley of the Jack Hadley Black History Museum.

“This has been a project we have wanted to do for a very long time,” she said. “Several years ago, I went to see Mr. Hadley, and told him that we wanted to do this.”

The Kennel Cottage, home of Mack McQueen, the kennel manager, from 1928 until his death in 1939, was being used as office space for decades, White said. 

“This house was called ‘Mack’s House,’ built for the dog manager, Mack McQueen, and it has been office space for decades, long before we opened to the public, so it was a heavily used space,” she said.

She said that due to delays, they hadn’t even managed to get inside the kennel until November, but she was happy to finally have gotten into Phase 1 of the things they have planned. 

 “I’m glad that today we’re finally getting there,” White said. “It’s been a long process and this is just the beginning of it.”

White said that 2023 marked the 40th Anniversary of Pebble Hill being open to the public, with this ribbon cutting kicking off a whole year of celebrations in honor of the special occasion. That made getting the cottage ready all that much more important. 

“2023 marks the 40th Anniversary of Pebble Hill being open to the public as a museum,” she said. “And we are doing a years worth of celebration and we really, really wanted the Kennel Cottage to be the kick off of that celebration. So, that meant that, even though we didn’t get in until November, we were gonna push and do a ribbon cutting on February 2.”

The Kennel Cottage, White said, will serve as an exhibit space, with photographs, furnishings and other artifacts that depict the historic lives of past Pebble Hill Plantation employees. 

“There are exhibits and photographs that you’ll see,” she said. “But this is really the beginning of many more months of research and expansion and working on all of this.”

White said that this couldn’t have happened without the hard work of Pebble Hill staff, including Stephen Richardson, facilities supervisor, Laura Strickland, landscape supervisor, and Lori Curtis, curator, amongst others. 

“We could not have done this without them,” she said.