The building that houses Sanford’s Mann Center for the Arts has a rich history and a new focus — to become the city’s hub for artists and musicians
By Gordon Anderson | Photos by Ben Brown
In 1961, Mitchell Roberts asked Thanta Isenhour out on a date while the two walked the hallway in what at the time was known as Sanford Junior High School. They were both in the ninth grade.
Isenhour accepted, and that date led to a six-year relationship. Roberts and Isenhour, like many young couples, eventually went their separate ways. Less commonly, they rekindled more than five decades later, and got married in April of this year — after a proposal from Roberts in the very same spot in the very same hallway.
It may have been the same spot in the same hallway, but most of the other details about the physical location have changed. The building is still on North Steele Street and laid out largely the same as it has for its 100-plus year existence. It’s no longer Sanford Junior High School — or Sanford High School, as it was originally built in 1925, or even a school at all.
In 2026, it’s The Mann Center for the Arts, a visual and performing arts venue which includes a 300-seat theater, art galleries, business offices, and more. And while there’s been plenty of focus on the location’s history — it was saved from demolition in the 1990s and placed on the National Register of Historic Places — the nonprofit group overseeing the building and its operations is more and more looking toward its future.
“We want to maintain the feeling that this is a historic building, but bring it up to spec so it can continue to be used as an arts-focused community space going forward,” said Heath Buckmaster, vice chair of the Mann Center’s board of directors.
To be clear, the Mann Center and its use of the historic school building at 507 N. Steele St. aren’t new. Sanford High School was completed in 1925 and served in that role until 1951 upon the opening of Sanford Central High School (now Lee County High School). That’s when it became Sanford Junior High, and it was renamed Sanford Middle School in 1967. In 1971, it became Sanford Elementary and stayed that way until 1977 — its final year as a school.
That closure was the start of a new chapter for the building — one that wasn’t entirely different in focus, if not scope, from the vision its current stewards have. In 1978 it became the Lee County Arts Center, serving as the home for multiple arts organizations as well as Lee County’s Parks and Recreation Department.
But by the 1990s, that vision had largely petered out. Displayed in the Mann Center’s hallway are several documents related to the building’s history, including a 1993 petition signed by a number of nearby homeowners and renters and addressed to the Lee County Board of Commissioners — who at the time still owned the building — asking for its restoration. It’s unclear exactly how much use the building got by that time, although the petition mentions “the 3,000 people who use the center.”
By 1995, it had been saved from demolition, placed on the National Register of Historic Places, and transferred to the Mann Center’s ownership. Without a whole lot of fanfare, much of the last three decades saw it used as office space for a number of local nonprofits, including the United Way, the Salvation Army, the Girl Scouts, the Helping Hands Clinic, the Red Cross, and more.
But those organizations, for the most part, “have outgrown” the Mann Center, according to former Sanford Mayor Chet Mann, now the chairman of the Mann Center board. Mann is the grandson of Tommy Mann Sr., himself a former mayor who was instrumental in the founding of the Mann Center nonprofit in the 1990s and the saving of the building.
Even during the years when the old school was known more as a hub for local nonprofits than a place for the arts, the Mann Center board retained an interest in promoting them, with the auditorium-slash-theater available for use by the community on a rental basis. But housing those nonprofit groups served a more fundamental purpose for the Mann Center — it kept the building in use, and therefore alive. With most of those nonprofit groups moving to dedicated locations of their own in recent years, the board decided there was an opportunity to shift focus and be a central part of the growing local arts community. The group adopted the “Mann Center for the Arts” name in 2025.
“Now we’re looking to be more arts-focused again,” Mann said during an alumni day held at the center in early October.
That event was meant to bring people who attended school there into the building to get up to speed on how it is used today, and what the organization hopes to do with it going forward. Visitors took guided tours and heard a presentation from the board’s leadership about the property’s past and its future.
On that weekend, and still today, the halls were decorated to play up the building’s historic significance — including a display telling the story of Roberts and Isenhour in the spot where it occurred, photographs of graduating classes and sports teams from nearly a century ago, and the petition urging local government to save the building.
“We had someone come in here not long ago asking about the Salvation Army,” Buckmaster said during a recent walk-through. “The Salvation Army hasn’t been here for years. That’s part of why we became the Mann Center for the Arts, but it’s about more than just a brand.”
A big part of that new direction, interestingly enough, involves a similar strategy to the one the organization has employed since the 90s. The Mann Center is still home to nonprofits and businesses, but as organizations like the Salvation Army and the Helping Hands Clinic moved out, groups like the Sanford Brush and Palette Club and the Lee County Arts Council have moved in.
An adult daycare remains in part of the building but is expected to relocate in the coming months, and the Lee County Partnership for Children and Families occupies the building’s third floor (if they ever decide to leave, Buckmaster said, that would give the Mann Center even more space to work with). More and more, what goes on in the building centers around the arts.
On a given day, you might find artists from the Sanford Brush and Palette Club working on their latest creations in one of the building’s former classrooms. And on certain evenings, the building’s old auditorium is once again filled with people, this time for live music. Earlier this year, the Mann Center launched a “Women in Country” concert series, bringing regional performers including Paige King Johnson and Julia Golden to Sanford for shows that also gave young audience members an opportunity to learn about songwriting.
The Brush and Palette Club currently has three artists in residence, and three dance companies also use the building. The hallways are adorned with locally made art, all of which is available for purchase. The center has also hosted fashion shows and other performances.
That’s the vision, and it’s not just for the future — it’s here now. In November alone, there’s a stand-up comedy show on Nov. 7 and a performance by the Heart of Carolina Jazz Orchestra on Nov. 21 (a fashion and talent show was held on Nov. 1, before this issue went to print).
“If you want to experience the visual arts in Sanford, it’s all in this building,” Buckmaster said. “You’re going to find concerts and music performances at the top of our agenda, and we also envision lectures and community events of all kinds happening in the theater.”
The Mann Center has even gotten in on the public art movement that has sprung up locally in recent years through murals and other art installations. There’s a large bee outside the building’s entrance near the intersection of Steele and Bracken streets, a work that was gifted to the center this year.
“We were asked if we wanted the public art bee, and we absolutely wanted the bee,” Buckmaster said. “We’re going to put in a pollinator garden around it and lean in to Sanford’s reputation as a place for public art, and our status as a Bee City USA.”
The center has already made significant upgrades to its lighting and sound systems, and further renovations could include new window coverings and interior paint to give the auditorium more of the feel of a modern performance space, while preserving historic details like the relief work etched into its upper walls.
But the vision is significantly more ambitious. Also adorning the walls during the alumni day were multiple renderings of what the facility could look like in the future. In addition to upgrades to the theater, there are multiple parts of the facility — including an old ground floor basketball court — which could be converted into event spaces available for rentals or performances put on by the Mann Center. There’s also space that could become a cafe.
Right now, some of those ideas aren’t so much plans as possibilities. The overhaul of any building that size would take lots of capital, much less the overhaul of a century-old landmark. So raising money was another one of the purposes for the alumni day event.
“Our vision is a multi-phase restoration that will be done over time,” Mann told The Rant. “And there are organizations that can help, but what they want to see is that we have a certain amount of skin in the game. That’s where the community can help. The more we can raise locally, the more we can get in grants and matches and other kinds of gifts.”
Buckmaster said that help from the community is essential, and it’s not just dollars that matter. The Mann Center hasn’t launched any official capital campaign at this time, instead choosing to increase their own visibility by inviting the community to be a part what they do.
“As a nonprofit, this is an organization that takes community support, whether that’s money, volunteering, participation. Whatever that looks like,” he said. “Arts organizations only survive if they exist in communities that support them.”
During the alumni day, Mann spoke to the crowd on hand — about 100 people — about the vision he had for the facility when he was mayor of Sanford, and how seeing the Mann Center brought to its full potential by “making Steele Street an arts district” was “the last thing I didn’t get done as mayor.” He said he spent a large part of his childhood at his grandparents’ house across the street from the Mann Center, and considered it his “personal playground.” Now, he said he wants it to be a playground for the rest of Lee County.
“I didn’t get this done when I was in office, but I’m gonna see this through. This is my project now,” he said. “You hear a lot of people talk about things that can’t be done in Sanford. How many things have happened in Sanford in the last 15 years that people said couldn’t be done?”