Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

The Spring Valley Theaters were on Two Notch Road near I-20, where the Lowes now is. In order to build the place, they first tore down The Dreamland Motel, one of the stalwart US-1 motels, and where both my sister and I had swimming lessons once upon a time. I'm not sure why the place got the "Spring Valley" tag. Certainly it was closer to Spring Valley than, say, The Statehouse, was but "closer" isn't "close".

I know we saw a number of films at the theater, but one in particular stands out in my mind. It was 1977, and I was 16 years old. I finally had my unrestricted license, and I could drive by myself and at night. My pure unbridled freedom was marred only by my total lack of money, and my total lack of a car.

Earlier in the day, I had been listening to the radio. I'm not sure which station it was. I was still listening to WIS a good bit, but I had discovered rock & roll in 1976, so it could have been WNOK. Whichever it was, they were running a call-in contest. I used to try these quite often, and won several. (I won a ride on the first run of the Thunder Road roller coaster at Carowinds, a chance to meet Foreigner backstage, tickets to see The Beach Boys and a couple of free meals).

This particular contest was for tickets to a sneak-preview of a new science fiction movie, one I had never heard of. I had enjoyed written science fiction for years, and had seen my share of SF movies, both first run and on TV. I guess the "biggies" were 2001, which was visualy impressive, but ponderous and confusing, Silent Running, which was visually impressive but based on a silly concept and The Planet of the Apes movies which were less effect laden, but more fun. As it happened, I was caller number five, and I talked my parents into letting me drive myself to the show. So, I was out tooling around Two Notch in our 1972 Comet coupe and having a good time, actually getting to use the headlights as the sun went down.

I got over to the Spring Valley Theaters, showed my ID which was checked against a namelist (I think -- I'm a bit fuzzy on that), and went on in. I didn't have any money to buy popcorn or a drink, so I just went in and sat down. I also didn't have any great expectations and from what I could tell, the other winners didn't either, but I was quite prepared to have a good time, and to not be in any hurry driving home.

Of course the movie was Star Wars. I had never seen anything like it -- nobody there had. It's hard to remember what movies were like in the 70s, but "fun" was optional and present in a fairly small subset. Take a movie like The Great Waldo Pepper which should have been fun what with the chances for stunts and dogfights, but decided to go another way.

This film had the effects of 2001 -- heck it had better effects than 2001! -- and decided to be fun! I had never heard an audience applaud at the end of a film before, but they did, and I did too. Leaving the theater, I knew this film was going to be huge, and in fact after it opened, it was weeks before you could get a ticket. Not only was Star Wars a bright spot in the decade of stagflation, but it totally changed the way we see movies by paving the way for "the summer blockbuster". Now, that has had good effects and bad ones, but I sure wouldn't want to go back to "70s" films!

I forget exactly when the place was torn down. I believe it was the 80s, but it could have been the 90s, I suppose. At the time, Columbia was over-theatered, so it wasn't a painful loss, but I'll never forget that night!

In 1983, I bought my first car. In a fit of what I can only call insanity, I chose a Renault Alliance. The only thing I can say in my defense is that it was Motor Trend's 1983 Car of the Year, that I was naive enough to think that meant something, and that it was cheap.

The dealership was on Two Notch down near Beltline, where that children's dental clinic is now, though the old building and lot are completely gone -- I can't even remember what it was called anymore. The car was a complete piece of junk, and an unmitigated disaster. I can't even begin to remember everything that went wrong with it, but here are some of the highlights.

First the gearshift knob came off. Then something went wrong with the accellerator system somehow such that the engine was always running at top speed. It certainly was an adventure driving it back to the dealership in first gear -- hopefully I would be smart enough today to call a towtruck. Then the electrical system melted while I was driving back from the 1986 Worldcon in Atlanta, and I didn't know if it were going to fail completely before I got back to Columbia (let alone trying to get all the way to Fayetteville) or if the fumes were going to knock me out first. Then a window cracked from the Fayetteville heat. Then the speedometer melted. Finally a headlight burned out, so I sold it.

Anyway, that's somewhat discursive, but does sort of relate to my post: I should have known something was up when the dealership claimed they couldn't put a radio in the car, and recommended I take it to Roger's Car Stereo.

Roger's was on Two Notch Road between Pinestraw and Fontaine and was something of a hole-in-the-wall, but they seemed to have a general idea of what they were doing. I got the radio, and it was OK for what it was (a cheap am/fm/cassette). It never melted, had the knobs fall off, or suddenly started playing at top volume. I was happy enough in fact, that when the radio gave out in my father's 1980 Corolla, I took it to Rogers for a replacement, and later when the speakers gave out in my 1991 Corolla, I got them replaced there. They seemed to close rather suddenly (I can't recall any going-out-of-business sale), and the place is now some sort of custom shop. I doubt there's anything they could do for a Renault Alliance though..

Does the phone number 252-6341 mean anything to you?

If you were here when the whole state's area code was 803, it probably does. Certainly there were many times I dialed it to set my wind-up watch to the dulcet tones of Standard Federal Savings & Loan's time of day service. That was a time when you couldn't turn to CNN and get the time off the bottom-scroll, or get it to within a second over the Internet. Around here, it was pretty much wait for the NBC news-tone at the top of the hour on WIS or call Standard.

I don't know much about the early history of Standard. Apparently it was founded in the aftermath of the Panic of 1907 and weathered WW-I, The Great Depression, WW-II and the 70s. Up through the 50s and probably into the early 60s, it was known as Standard Building & Loan. You can see from my first passbook here that in October of 1962, they had just put a paste-on label reading Standard Savings and Loan Association over whatever had been printed there before. My guess is that they had just switched from Building & Loan given that the inside of the passbook and the coin-banks their kid members got still bore the B&L verbiage:

The passbook cover notes the association's two locations, Washington Street & Trenholm Plaza. The Trenholm location had to be pretty new at the time, given that the area was a golf course into the mid 50s, at least.

In that era, the way savings & loans worked was that you would bring your passbook with you to the bank (OK, technically it wasn't a bank..) whenever you made a transaction, and your passbook would be run into a printing machine (similar to the way checks are still sometimes handled at supermarkets) which would print the day's transactions on seperate lines. (I'm not sure how long it had been since the teller's actually wrote in the passbook, but there still seemed to be a lot of hand-inking involved.) If you didn't have any actual transaction, the bank could still compute your interest (dividends) and enter that for you.

On 12 October 1962, I had $396.36 in my passbook -- very likely the first money I had ever had in my own name, though as I was probably more concerned with learning to walk, I doubt I really thought on it much. I did enjoy later visits as the Trenholm branch had a magical coin machine into which the teller would dump all your coins and it would sort them out and give you a total after much pinging and whirring.

By the time 1973 rolled around and I got my second passbook, you could see that the intervening decade had been good to Standard:

With five locations in Columbia and new branches in Newberry, Orangeburg, Sumter, Mount Pleasant, Charleston and Myrtle Beach, they were obviously an institution on the move.

This was even reflected in the passbook itself, which had moved from being strictly utilitarian to a design with some panache, embossing and even gold-leaf for the text.

You could see the effects of inflation too in that the FSLIC guarantee had been raised from $10,000 per account to $20,000:

At some point in the 1980s, Standard started offering checking accounts as well as passbook accounts, and that's were I got my first checks. They were also fairly early into the ATM market, and though they never had many, the Trenholm location was convienient while I was living in town. (It was a walk-up, and I can distinctly remember thinking, I hope I'm never so lazy that I need to use the ATM without getting out of my car).

In 1985, I took my first real job and moved to Fayetteville NC. I kept my Standard accounts, but as there were no branches up there, mostly dealt with the (now defunct or subsumed) Southern National Bank. While I was living out of town, the S&L crisis of the 80s struck.

I know it's a complex issue, but I think it can be boiled down to the following: Gradually the state and federal governments took the position that George Bailey could go head to head with Mr. Potter -- and kindly, befuddled Uncle Billy was in charge of the new direction.

Standard was far from the only solid-seeming institution to dig its own grave at the time, but it was still a shock to me. I'm sure the taxpayers, en-masse, took it in the shorts as usual, but the government handled it pretty well from a member perspective. There was no panic, just an orderly takeover of the bank. It went so smoothly in fact, that my father decided he wasn't going to move his money and would just keep it in whatever institution ended up with the assets. At this remove, I can't remember what bank that was. It may have been NBSC. They certainly have the location at Trenholm Plaza which used to be occupied by the Standard Branch (which was a much smaller building, and was torn down when the current NBSC was built).

The downtown building is still there (it was obviously remodeled or replaced after 1908 if that was the original location), with its distinctive landmark clock beside it. My memory is that when Standard was at its peak, the building had one wall which was a waterfall -- that now seems to be gone. I have no idea what happened to the other branches either in or out of town.

The 2 August 1991 date for the closing comes from an online lawsuit which references the RTC takeover.

And that little coin-bank? It still has some change in it.

The Time At The Tone Will Be: Too Late

UPDATE 23 March 2010 -- Here are two pictures of the old Trenholm Plaza branch. They were taken inside another Trenholm Plaza store where Standard just happened to be in the background through the window, so the quality is not high:

UPDATE 21 June 2011 -- Here is an older picture of the Trenholm Plaza branch from a Chamber of Commerce promotional book:

I've written about Kroger Sav-On before. I believe the fate of this Kroger, near the Wal-Mart on Highway 1 near I-26 came about for similar reasons.

When Kroger first hit the Columbia market (and I believe this store, like Decker & Fort Jackson, was in the initial build-out), it was upscale, but by the time these stores closed, it had been leapfrogged by other chains' new generations. This store in particular has a nice new Bi-Lo across the street from it, and a Wal-Mart Supercenter just a block or two away. So (and this is all pure speculation), they weren't as nice as the Bi-Lo, and couldn't be as cheap as the Wal-Mart. Kroger's answer, in general, has been new stores like the one near Spring Valley High School, but that requires new construction.

Anyway, I noticed the other day that the building is no longer empty -- Kimbrell's furniture has set up there now. That's good to see, and I wish something would take the buildings on Fort Jackson & Decker!

UPDATE 11 March 2011: Changed closing date to 2000 based on commenter Andrew's research. Also added full street address.

Whatever exactly it is that they sell at The Crate, they'll not be selling it much longer. This place is on Two Notch more or less across from the Big Lots plaza, and is, I think, a pretty bad location for retail. Unless you're specifically going there, by the time you see any of the places in there, you're past the whole strip, and there's no easy way to get back. I'm vaguely aware of having seen their sign driving by that way before, but if it made any impression on me, I suppose I figured in the back of my mind that it was some sort of "organizer" store, one of those places that sells boxes, bins and other miracles of storage so that you can get all your stuff off of the couch in the "junk room" and actually put up. Or it could be WW-I bi-planes. Anyway, on actually stopping to take these pictures, it looked more like a clothes store, which I find rather less interesting than either of the alternatives..

I've written before about OfficeMax pulling out of the Columbia market. I had forgotten that they had the store on Two Notch as well as the one on Bush River Road until I drove by and saw that a new tenant was going in.

I don't have any problem with a Haloween store, per se. I don't know that it's happening as much around here, but in some places at least, Haloween is becoming quite the big adult party holiday. I remember spending one Haloween in DC, and taking the Metro to Dupont Circle for supper. Now, I won't say the escalator into the Dupont Circle station is long, but I will say that after you're on it for a while, you expect to see an Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here sign. Of course, what goes down also comes up, and being on that escalator behind 20-somethings costumed as naughty nurses and "wicked" witches is, um, inspiring.

So, anyway, I'm fine with a Haloween store, but I do have to cavil a bit about the timing. I mean, come on Haloween is the last day of October -- that's two and a half months from now! If you're in the mood to pick out a Haloween costume now, you're probably one of those annoying folks who already have all your Christmas cards written..

And oddly enough, this was the second Haloween store I saw today. There's one setting up on US-1 out near I-26 as well!

"I got a rock".

UPDATE 11 March 2011: Updated the closing date based on the comments. Also added full street address.

I'm not entirely sure of the details, but when I was growing up, my parents had two different banks. I suppose they had each had accounts before getting married, and decided to keep them, or perhaps there were different banks for checking and for savings (the family definitely had passbook accounts at Standard Savings & Loan). At any rate, First Citizens at Forest Lake seemed to be the one my mother stopped at most often to cash checks when in the car with us kids.

From time to time, she would go inside (and perforce drag us with her), but usually she would go through the drive-through, which we always looked forward to since the teller would usually pass out a sucker to each of us along with my mother's cash.

This particular branch of First Citizens was a bit unusual in that the drive-throughs were staffed seperately from the main building. As you can see, there was a little outbuilding by the drive-through lanes. I doubt very much that it was plumbed; I imagine the tellers had to make a trip back to the main building when nature called. Of course in those days bankers' hours were short enough that it probably wasn't a big issue.

I think the lane that was on the side of the building facing Trenholm was a drive-through as well and would have been staffed from the main building, but if I recall correctly, it was harder to get in and out of (and it may have been simply a night depository lane rather than a real teller window).

My memory on timings is always very suspect, but I think this branch closed before the main part of Forest Lake Shopping Center (with Campbell's Drugs etc) was torn down and a new First Citizens was built there, so that there was a period whn First Citizens didn't have a branch in the neighborhood.

I'm a little hazy on what happened after the bank left. I think there were a few tenants in the building before the current arrangements gelled, but I'm not sure. At any rate, I think the current clients have been there for at least the last ten years: A gallery and frame shop in the "main" building, and a garden shop in the outbuilding, teller lanes and the rest of the exterior.

I was a little surprised that the garden shop made it, as I would have guessed that that space was really to constricted to work with, but they have really prospered. I suppose the closure of Forest Lake Garden Center around where the Lazy Boy store now is opened up the area for a new store. I've been to the garden shop a few times (this spring for a pair of gloves, last year for some mint plants), but I've never been in the gallery. I like art galleries, but I always have the feeling that if one is small enough that I'll be the only person in there other than the proprietor, I'll feel like I need to buy something..

Oh, and that Flood Hazard Area sign?

They weren't kidding:

UPDATE 19 October 2013 -- Just found out the original name of this place was Commercial Bank & Trust so I have added that to the post title. Here's a picture of it in operation from 1964.

UPDATE 30 September 2016 -- The main bank building (except for the vault) was razed on 28-29 September 2016. See pictures here.

UPDATE 20 October 2022: Fixing street address, updating tags and adding map icon.

You'll Never Pay More at Parisian

Well, that's true, I suppose, though not in the way they hoped.

The decline of Richland Mall happened mostly while I was living out of town (though still spending quite a bit of time here). I think the first phase: The tearing down of most of the un-enclosed mall, and the renaming it to Richland Fashion Mall may have happened around the time I left for Fayetteville, though I'm a bit fuzzy on that. I do know that quite a bit of the brou-ha-ha justifying the Fashion part of the new name was inducing Parisian & Bonwit Teller to locate there.

As I think I have mentioned elsewhere, I felt pretty comfortable buying clothes at White's. I felt they were solidly middle-class, and that I could find clothes that wouldn't make me look funny from a staff that wouldn't try to make me feel like an idiot. I wasn't so sure about Parisian. I don't think I ever went in there, but I had the impression that it was something of a frou-frou upscale store, though perhaps less-so than Bonwit Teller. I don't know if that impression was accurate, but perhaps I wasn't the only one who had it because neither store lasted more than a few years. I see from Wikipedia that even if it had hung on, the whole chain was bought by Belk, so I imagine it would have closed anyway after Belk's got White's..

I think Parisian failed before Bonwit Teller and was the initial sign of the impending failure of the mall. I suppose it could have been the other way round -- it's a little hard to say since the BT building remained in use for Black Lion. I do know that nothing else ever used the Parisian space. I wondered a bit about that as I was taking these pictures. It's not good for buildings to remain empty, not only from the morale point of view, but also from the mold, fungus & vermin point of view. It seems to me it would have made sense for the mall owners to let some charity or other set up there rent-free rather than keep such a large space completely dark.

I'm pretty sure this place went under before the housing crash, so I guess there was something else going on there. A lot of places go out of business rather quietly, with just some sale signs, but High Point went all-out, with frentic sign-wavers up and down Forest Drive, a tactic that seems rather strange to me. After all, you either need furniture or you don't. It's not really an impulse buy in most cases. Of course I could be wrong since I'm a) not married and b) inherited most of my furniture in the first place.

At any rate, things seem to be happening on this stretch of Forest, so it will be interesting to see how long the place continues to stay vacant.

UPDATE 2 September 2009: It's now a Strobler Home Furnishings store.

UPDATE 8 January 2010: Added full street address to post title.

UPDATE 6 April 2011 -- It seems this store was a Heilig-Meyers before it was High Point. Helig-Meyers went under and closed all their stores in 2001. Here is their Bellsouth ad from the Feb 1997 phonebook:

I've written about Circuit City before. The gist of it was I never liked the store in its original concept because the salesmen were so predatory. This store dates from that era. Unlike the NorthEast store, this one (as far as I know) had only two locations rather than three. It started here, on Bush River right at the I-20 intersection and then picked up and moved out to Harbison when that area started to get hot.

Frankly that strikes me as a bad choice. This location is an easy-in/easy-out right from the Interstate, while nothing in the Harbison area is "easy". They may get more drive-by traffic there, but I'll bet they get less "destination" traffic.

Nothing else ever located in the Circuit City building after they left, but stores have come and gone from the surrounding strip mall. I believe there was an If It's Paper for a while and there has been a medical equipment tenant for many years now. I tried to shop there once for a hospital style "over-bed table" (they are *great* for using your laptop in bed!) but it turned out to be easier to order one on-line. Given the new traffic brought to Bush River Road by the new Wal-Mart Supercenter, it will be interesting to see what happens to this property.

UPDATE 11 March 2011: Changed closing date to 1999 based on commenter Andrew's research. Also added full street address.

UPDATE 4 June 2012 -- Not much visible has changed, but Hamrick's does have their building permit posted in the north doorway:

UPDATE 24 June 2012 -- The Hamrick's signs are now up:

UPDATE 20 August 2012 -- Hamrick's is now open in this location: