NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Mike Wolfe has made a career out of rescuing old and dilapidated things. The creator of the American Pickers TV show often sees the charm that others overlook.
But in all his pickings, he's never taken on a project like the one consuming him now in Nashville.
Wolfe bought a crumbling 1898 brick building on Jo Johnston Avenue, a block from his Antique Archaeology store, after several years of driving past it. He wondered about it. And he worried about missed chances he was hearing about, across Nashville, to preserve historic buildings.
As happens in his line of work, Wolfe got more than he bargained for.
"This is the worst building I've ever bought," he said while showing off the partially gutted interior.
After owning and rehabbing nine old buildings in Iowa, Wolfe bought the former Nashville grocery store for $235,000 without ever setting foot inside.
When he finally did, the beam of his flashlight was aided by light slipping in through holes in the roof above.
"It's been raining in this building for over 30 years," Wolfe said. "Nature has done a lot of the deconstruction for us."
But true to his way of seeing the world, Wolfe found something worth saving. Namely: the kind of sturdy brick walls, rough and inconsistent and bearing the marks of more than a century of inhabitants, that just don't get made the same way anymore.
"That's what I bought the whole building for: this wall," Wolfe said, climbing up on a foundation outcropping to smack it. "It's the texture. People try to recreate this."
Wolfe envisions two retail spaces with big storefront windows facing Jo Johnston, and offices on the second floor - all with views of the state capitol about a mile to the east.
The future shops will be remarkably close to downtown, but located in a neighborhood with a reputation still slowly changing away from crime and blight. The new vibe is due mostly to the renaissance of the bustling Marathon Village, home to artisans, a radio station, distilleries and a concert venue.
"This is a big city and a very tiny building. But it has purpose," Wolfe said. "This is a small piece in the puzzle."
Last fall, Wolfe spoke out about the demolition of historic buildings while helping Historic Nashville Inc. announce its annual list of endangered properties.
With this project, he said, he's doing more than advocacy. He's putting money behind a mindset, upward of $700,000, in fact, to completely clear out and renovate the interior - other than those brick walls - and to bring business back to a corner with a history in the neighborhood.
Local preservationists have already celebrated the plan, often flocking to Wolfe's Instagram posts about the building.
"Everybody else would have seen it as too far gone," said Robbie D. Jones, a board member with Historic Nashville Inc. "He's showing an example for the city of what can be done. We're going to point to this building and say: 'Look what Mike Wolfe did.' "
Of course, he's nowhere near being done. When Wolfe suggested completing the overhaul by spring, he drew a disbelieving laugh from lead contractor Jeff Rogers, of Dowdle Construction.
"This," he said, "is my challenge."
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Looking back, moving forward
While Wolfe's massive online following buzzes about the project, Rogers and his work crew are enjoying a more old-fashioned form of hype from gawkers and passersby. Some have stopped to share memories of a building that has been slow to reveal itself.
A dentist used to work upstairs, one man told Rogers, recalling getting a tooth pulled there. Several risque paintings on the walls suggest a former dance club. And, true to form, the crew has picked a few antiques, including a 1930s Coca-Cola sign hidden in one wall, and a grungy old Dixie cup dispenser.
Meanwhile, Jones, from the preservation group, dove into the historic record to trace the building's origins. What he found was a single place packed with Nashville history, including an immigrant's tale, and a building that played witness to neighborhood change.
A Hungarian Jew built his grocery store at what was then 1314 Line Street in 1898 and lived upstairs. From 1912 to 1944, another immigrant family - the Saigh family of Syria - did the same.
"A lot of people have the impression, and I did too, that Nashville's immigration history is new," Jones said.
Over time, the mixed-race enclave for working-class Europeans shifted into a mostly black community.
After the 1950s, the paper trail became spotty, Jones said. In the 1990s, a carry-out restaurant, a game room, a tavern and a laundromat took turns there before a long period of vacancy.
Mike Wolfe of "American Pickers" says, "People are playing Monopoly with our community's historic sites."
Now Wolfe and the work crew carry on the investigation on site, puzzling over clues.
Almost giddy, he knocked loose some green glass shards to look closer at some spiraling wrought iron over one window. Then he pried apart some drywall to marvel at the olive green paint on an old door.
Now that he's not just driving by the building, he still wonders about it. There's a burned ceiling beam above, remnants of windows long since bricked over, and those peeling wall paintings - mostly of women, but also the silhouette of one man with a pompadour, someone who looks a little bit like Elvis.
Wolfe can't likely get to the bottom of all that he finds. But in saving the building, he'll preserve a piece of history.
And a little bit of its mystery.