Local treasure returns to Homewood

Mary Charles Robbins moved her business back to Homewood this summer.

She had an antique store that opened in the1970s on Courtney Drive across from CVS Pharmacy. A lot has changed since then — for starters, her rent was only $50 a month back then.

Over the years, she noticed that many people who came in her antique shop asked her if she had any dolls for sale. Thus Mary Charles’ Doll House was born.

She has spent the past 35 years operating her business in Mountain Brook Village. Then right as the COVID-19 pandemic hit, she made the decision to move her business back to Homewood, this time in the former Carriage House Weddings space at 1901 Oxmoor Road.

“I live in Homewood, and this is just a couple of blocks from my house,” she said. “I can walk to work. And I just love Homewood. It’s where I started and where I grew up. It’s like coming home.”

Mary Charles’ Doll House sells new and antique collectible dolls, doll accessories and doll houses. Robbins also offers doll repair and restoration services.

Robbins loved playing with dolls when she was growing up, she said, especially a 1930s Shirley Temple doll she had.

“Back then we didn’t have TVs, and we didn’t even have a radio at my house,” she said, laughing. “That’s all we had to do, was play with dolls.”

Most dolls today aren’t made very well, and are made of plastic, she said. When Robbins was growing up, she played with composition dolls, which are made up of materials such as sawdust, glue and wood flour.

“The dolls today are made to be thrown away; they’re not made to be fixed,” she said.

That’s not how Robbins operates, though. A large part of her business is restoring antique dolls. Mary Charles’ Doll House is listed as one of 10 featured doll repair locations on Madame Alexander Doll Co.’s website, so Robbins receives dolls from all over the country.

“I’ve met so many interesting people,” she said. “I’ve met people from foreign countries and people who are visiting for a wedding or a graduation. Everybody’s got a story, and that’s what’s so interesting. I feel like I’ve made so many friends over the years.”

When people come into the shop, they tell her they’re amazed by what they see. They tell her they haven’t seen anything like it.

“They say it’s so different from everything else,” she said. “It’s not a modern store.”

Some of the dolls there are difficult to find anywhere else. It’s not what you would find in a department store. For example, Madame Alexander only produced 250 units of a particular doll, and Robbins bought four of them when they came out. Three are still for sale in her store.

One thing Robbins said she enjoys is seeing the transformation of a doll from when it first comes in and after she repairs it.

“It looks terrible and awful, and I get it fixed, and it looks so beautiful,” she said. “It comes back to life. It’s just very gratifying.”

Robbins sees doll enthusiasts of all ages, and some don’t begin having an interest in dolls until later in life. That’s what happened to Judy Cullinan, who helps out at the store. She moved to Mountain Brook from New York in 2001, when her daughter was in kindergarten. She had a dollhouse as a child, but it wasn’t until both her children began school that she had time to really start working on her dollhouse.

She was excited that there was a doll shop in town and became a regular customer, but she fell into her role helping out Robbins by accident.

“I would need something like windows for a dollhouse, and they would have all these windows, but I needed eight matching windows,” she said. “But they wouldn’t be in a line of eight matching windows. They’d be all over the place. So I organized all the windows so I could take the eight. Every time I needed something, I would organize it.”

Then two years ago, Robbins told Cullinan she was thinking about selling the store. Cullinan told her she would help clean it up instead.

“I said, ‘Come on, we’re going to make this the best store ever,’” she said. “And then we moved to Homewood, so now we’re very organized, and it’s very pretty.”

Because they moved the store to Homewoodin March as the pandemic hit, they were able to spend time setting everything up and organizing things into rooms. Cullinan said the Madame Alexander room is like walking into a museum. They are almost completely moved in now.

“It’s a really pretty building, and everything looks fantastic in here,” Cullinan said.

When she was living in New York, Cullinan frequented famous toy stores like FAO Schwarz to buy toys for her children. She said Mary Charles’ Doll House competes with what she saw in New York.

“People come in from out of town to shop here,” she said. “We have a gentleman who comes in every Christmas and buys four Madame Alexander dolls for his children, and he can’t find them in New York. We’re one of the few stores like this in the country.”

In addition to having an encyclopedia-like knowledge about dolls, Robbins has children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren with whom she enjoys spending time. Her dog, Bandit, is always with her in the store. She also has met a plethora of celebrities along the way.

“When I grew up, my brother was a pilot, and we used to have celebrities come to our house all the time,” she said. “Roy Rogers came and ate dinner with us.”

Robbins has a photo of Amelia Earhart sitting on the sofa of her living room.

“I’ve had a very interesting life,” she said. “I’ve been very lucky.”

For more information about Mary Charles’ Doll House, visit marycharlesdollhouseal.com.