Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This Winn-Dixie was located in a hard-luck strip mall on the "troubled" Decker Boulevard corridor. Prior to the store's locating there, the physical plant of the building it went into had really been in bad shape since the long-ago departure of its predecessor (whose name I can't recall right now). Winn-Dixie put a lot of work into the building, and it looked like the mall would come to life again as it attracted a few new businesses, including Columbia stalwart, The Book Exchange.

What my family found really notable about the store's opening was the blast of publicity they paid for: They mailed everyone in the area a custom produced 10 minute VHS casette to promote the store and all its features. That must have cost them a pretty penny (now I suppose they would just mail a postcard with their web-site address, though I suppose since that would be less notable, people would be less likely to actually follow it up..).

Out of curiosity, my sister & I watched the tape which had been sent to my father. I know the impression I got from the tape was that the store was very upscale with an extensive deli department. I was surprised when I actually dropped by the store to find that it was very average. There was absolutely nothing wrong with it, and I wouldn't hesitate to stop if I were in the area and remembered I needed something, but it was definitely less upscale than other non-FoodLion stores in the general area (Publix for instance).

Still, I think it did well enough, and was a solid tenant for the struggling plaza. Unfortunately, the whole Winn-Dixie chain got in big trouble in 2004 and completely exited North & Suth Carolina, leading to the store's closure, and the plaza started going downhill again. The Book Exchange in fact moved back to almost the same spot on Two Notch that it had moved from to begin with. Lately things have stablized a bit with the Comedy House moving (after a hiatus) from its Saint Andrews Road location into half of the Winn-Dixie, and a bingo operation subsuming the other half as well as the Book Exchange spot and several other spots
on the other side. At this point only the huge sign behind the old store remains to say that Winn-Dixie was once there. (Though that itself is a bit unusual: Chains that are still operating usually take care to remove their branding from failed locations).

UPDATE 11 March 2011: Updated closing date to 24 August 2005 based on here.

UPDATE 28 August 2018 -- There is now a plasma center in the left part of the old store that was Bingo. (The Comedy House is still in the main portion):

For some reason, when I was in middle-school, I loved popcorn to a degree I never had before or have since. I mean, I still like it, but I probably don't have it more than half a dozen times a year now while back then I had it every day. As soon as I got home from school, I would get out the popcorn popper (no microwave then!), the butter-salt, a big glass of ice-tea and a book. I would sit at the kitchen table and eat popcorn with one hand, and turn pages with the other (I was careful not to get my books greasy!).

Popcorn was not a regular purchase item for my mother's shopping trips. She didn't keep a tab on the status of the bag of popping corn or the level of the butter-salt shaker, so unless I remembered to ask her to get some, I ended up having to make supply runs on my own. Fortunately, there was The Pig.

The Piggly Wiggly on Covenant Road near Trenholm Park had been there as long as I could recall, and unlike a trip to Trenholm Plaza, getting to it from our house required crossing no major roads so my parents had been OK for years with me riding my bike there. I would ride down Oakwood to Satchel Ford to Bethel Church to Covenant and park my bike on the left side of the store. (Back then I didn't lock it, now I probably would). The Pig was a small store, nothing special really, in fact my mother rarely shopped there because they packed their produce on trays under cling wrap so you really couldn't see how fresh it was, but aside from the popcorn it had another draw for me: a book "spinner" rack.

Stocking for racks like this was always hit-or-miss, but apparently the distributor/jobber who had responsibility for The Pig's rack in those days had a taste for science fiction (or maybe he got some kind of discount -- who knows?). At any rate, there were usually new DAW paperbacks in the rack -- those were the days of the white page borders and the Kelly Freas covers:

If I had the money (iffy..), I could always come home with a new book to read with my popcorn.

In later years, I moved out of town and lost close track with The Pig, but apparently it had some rather interesting times before it finally closed. If I recall the story my sister or father told me, at one point it was closed for a while and then got a new owner who refused to stock any beer or wine for religious reasons. (I recall thinking that was an odd amount of leeway for a chain to give to an individual store..). In the end, the market changed, and it was really too small and old a building to compete with the new wave of upscale grocers and probably too close to The Pig on Forest Drive to make sense for the chain (and that Pig is noticably upscale itself). Half of the building now houses a Dollar General (they have the best peppermints I've ever found, by the way, at least since altoids changed their recipie) while the other half is empty.

And darn it, it was fun to say "I'm going to hop to the pig".

UPDATE 28 July 2010: Added full street address to post tile, and the fact that this was store "No. 98" as well. Added graphic (and link to) The Lion Game.

UPDATE 4 May 2011: Changed closing date in the post title to February 2005 based on commenter Andrew's research.

UPDATE 17 October 2011 -- Well they have finally found a tenant for some of the vacant space. It appears we will get a new pizza parlor, Milano Pizza:

UPDATE 26 January 2012 -- The pizzeria is open:

Sometime in the late 1980s, The State newspaper ran a weekend feature article about the search for the best hamburger in Columbia. I cut the article out and put it in my glove compartment and over the next few years, tried most of the places mentioned. As it turned out, I wasn't that impressed in general by the writer's research and the burgers he identified struck me as "OK", but not spectacular. What's perhaps most interesting though is how many of those places are gone now.

I can't recall them all, but the list included Edna's on Forest Drive (I really wish I had some pictures of the interior of that -- it's not often you see someone merging preoccupation with both sex and Jesus in one setting), a small place in Woodhill Mall called, if I recall correctly, Johnathan's, Ed's Drive-Thru on Meeting Street in Cayce, The Seaboard Diner on Gervais (which recently came up here in a comment thread) and Cedar Terrace Pharmacy.

Unfortunately I can't even get a photo of a re-purposed building for CTP, it was all torn down to make way for a new Eckerds (now a Rite-Aid), but it was an old time drugstore with a lunch counter (and booths). In fact, it may have been the last drugstore with a lunch counter in Columbia. I certainly can't think of any still operating right now. When I went burger hunting there, I'm guessing it was about 1989, and while the counter wasn't swamped, there were a number of other diners. I think that if the base pharmacy operation had been able to hold its own against the chains, the counter would have stayed marginally profitable and might still be with us today. We'll never know, and as I said, it's not a tragedy for the Columbia burger market -- the burger was good, but not a classic.

What does depress me just a bit is that what I consider the best burgers in Columbia today: Five Guys, Fuddruckers & Red Robin are all chain operations and not local.

Actually, I'm not 100% sure this is the old Key Catalog Wholesalers building. My memory says that it was in Boozer Shooping Center first and then moved out here, but I could be wrong. (I'm sure someone will let me know :-)

At any rate, Key was an odd store that we visited infrequently. I think they were one of that vanished breed of stores where they had a catalog showroom with sample merchandise on the floor and when you picked something, they would go in the back and bring one out. (There were also catalog items which were not kept at the store).

I also think, and remember this as the only reason we went, that they had some sort of arrangement with Greenbax trading stamps (before Greenbax had their own store) such that your books of Greenbax were usable to get certain items for free or at a discount (depending on how many books you had). My memory is that when I started Boy Scouts, we went to Key to get sleeping bags and used trading stamps.

Contrary to appearances, there is a tenant in the building now. Apparently it is not a retail operation at all, and doesn't care if drivers-by see their name or not, but looking in the front door establishes that there is a nice looking reception area. Some of the parking signage suggests that they might be called Spherion, but that could also be left over from a previous operation, of which I think there have been several since Key.

UPDATE 10 June 2010: As I say in the comments, I think it's pretty clear by now that I was completely wrong about this being the place Key moved to after it was in The Boozer Shopping Center. At some point, I need to fix this entry by adding some Boozer pictures, and changing the text, but it will be hard to do without messing up all the comments about this building..

Woolco was Woolworth's discount department store. These were big buildings, much bigger than a standard Woolworth's "Five & Ten" and had a larger selection of merchandise.

In Columbia, we had two. The one shown here on Garners Ferry Road, now a "Save-A-Lot" (I think this is the right building -- it's been remodeled), and one at Dutch Square. The one at Dutch Square was kind of torn down, and the space was used by what is now the suit store and Office Depot. At the time, Woolco was an anchor store, and had an entrance to the mall interior. Even though the Garners Ferry location was probably a bit closer, we usually shopped at Dutch Square since it had more going for it than just Woolco.

As you might expect from a Woolworth's "discount department store", stuff at Woolco was not top-of-the-line or name-brand. I didn't particularly care -- it had two things I cared about.

The first was the book "department". I put it in quotes because it was mainly just a bunch of bins with "cut-out" stock. I had much more patience (and much less cash) then than I do now, and I was willing to go through evey book in every bin to find ones I wanted. For some reason, they got a lot of Grosset & Dunlap series overstock, and I was able to nearly complete my "Rick Brant" collection there up through Rocket Jumper as well as finding a number of "Tom Swift, Junior" & "Space Eagle" books.

The record department was a similarly mixed bag. I think they did have shelves with the current hit albums, but again, for me, the cut-out bins were the big draw. I can't remember many specifics of what I found there, but I do recall finding an 8-track Bette Midler live album which had her semi-risque first-radio-hit, "You're Moving Out Today" as a bonus track:

So pack your toys away
Your pretty boys away
Your 45's away
Your alibis away
Your Spanish flies away
Your old tye-dyes away
Your one more tries away
You're moving out today

Your nasty habits ain't confined to bed
The grocer told me what you do with bread
Why don't you take up with the baker's wife instead of me, fool!

For some reason, Woolco didn't become "Wal-Mart before Wal-Mart", and they were in big trouble by the end of the 70s. My memory is that the Columbia stores actually closed in the 70s though wikipedia says the chain struggled on until 1983. Interestingly, the smaller Woolworth's stores lasted a good bit longer, and the one at Richland Mall even survived the Richland Mall/Richland Fashion Mall transition.

Lately the thing to do rather than remodeling an aging store is to simply build a bigger one right next door and move shop.

That's what happened to this Piggly Wiggly on Garners Ferry Road. The trouble with that, although it gives me something to take pictures of, is that it leaves behind a dead or dying strip mall as seems to be the case with "Garners Ferry Plaza". On the other hand, I would in general rather shop in a store like the new one (seen across the street in the last photo) than in a run-down store, and building a new store avoids a lengthy period of remodeling which can drive away customers. A remodeling store, even one open for business is like a road with ongoing construction -- you know you could get through, but you'd rather plan another route and avoid the hassle.

UPDATE 3 March 2010 -- some sort of work is being done on the old Pig and plaza:

UPDATE 9 March 2011: Updated closing date based on the comments (and added full street address).

UPDATE 16 July 2013 -- Garners Ferry Plaza has ben renovated now, including the former Pig site:

Also, The Pig is closing at its new location.

I'm afraid I went to take this set of pictures about 15 years too late. I think if I had taken them in 1993, you would be able to look at them and say "yep, I can see that was a Putt-Putt course". It not having occurred to me to do that then, you're just going to have to take my word for it now.

In the 1970s, the corner of Percival Road & Forest Drive was, if not a thriving retail hub, at least a viable one. The lot had a strip mall of sorts with a number of businesses. I think the largest was some sort of mini-grocery which was a size up from the 7-11 model, but not quite big enough to be the "country store" type. There was also a barber shop (which survived the longest, I believe). I'm not sure if the Carraige House strip-club had started then, or if that building (now Liquids) was some other retail.

Across the parking lot from the grocery, a few feet further down Percival, was the Putt-Putt course. "Minature golf" is the generic name for the sport while "Putt-Putt" is a specific brand. At the time, it was a fairly famous name (always struggling to make sure it wasn't used generically like Xerox and Kleenex) and its orange bordered courses tried to put some seriousness into the sport. Putt-Putt branded courses tended to eschew most of the whimsy of minature golf. They concentrated on making holes tricky through banks, caroms, dips, plateaus and hills rather than shooting through windmills or around dinosaurs. In retrospect, that may have been a mistake. I think people like whimsy on a minature golf course, and since it costs nothing to come up with your own ideas for holes, it's unclear what benefit paying Putt-Putt for a franchise gets you and in recent years, Putt-Putt has seemed to struggle, with parks closing on Clemson Road and in Augusta.

I don't recall that this particular course was ever really popular, but it was close enough that I could ride my bike there, which I remember doing the only time I ever played the course. It was, I believe the longest bike ride I ever took in Columbia (not that it was far in absolute terms, but my parents were very against our riding on main streets, and this was the first time they had let me cross Trenholm). At any rate, I rode up with a school friend, and we played a few rounds, and I think had a coke at the store. No big story there, I'm afraid. This would have been around 1974, and the course folded a few years after that. At first, they left the greens pretty much alone, but at some point they came in and ripped up all the carpet and frames, just leaving the concrete beds. I'm not sure why, unless they thought the lot would be easier to sell that way. If so, it was unsuccessful. The strip mall was torn down several years after Putt Putt closed, and I'm sure the owners thought that with the Interstate coming through, they could get a good price for the lot, but nothing seems to have happened so far.

I think they would get more interest if it had had dinosaurs and windmills.

Here's standing in the mall parking lot looking over at the Putt-Putt parking lot:

Here's standing in the Putt-Putt parking lot looking at the back of Liquids (towards Forest Drive):

Looking from the Putt-Putt parking lot towards the old "greens":

Standing on one of the old greens (concrete base):

Another old green:

Standing on an old green, looking at what appears to be a wild pyracantha:

Standing on a green looking towards Percival Road:

Standing on the shoulder of Percival Road, looking back into the course:

Looking down into the course from just past Liquids:

UPDATE 15 Aug 2009: Added scans of Putt Putt matchbook provided by commenter Melanie.

Apparently the Holligan's wing is to be re-built. Holligan's and, if I heard correctly, the UPS store will be moving to the old Roger's Brothers space on the other side of the plaza, and the barber shop will be moving off-site to the former Wally & Crumb cookie store. I'm not sure when this is supposed to happen though.

The same day I was driving down Main Street and noticed Lourie's closing, I saw a For Sale sign on the Capitol Newsstand building. Running a google on The State, I saw that, sure enough, it was closed for good.

I'm actually a good bit sadder about Capitol's passing than Lourie's, since it played a much larger part in my life. There was a time when downtown was a good place for books. There was the Paperback Exchange at 1234 Assembly Street (an easy address to remember, though the building has been long torn down), a fairly large selection at Belk's, and above all Capitol Newsstand.

You have to remember that the Columbia market for books was radically different in the 60s and 70s. There was an independant bookshop (Chapter Five?) in Trenholm Plaza, Waldenbooks at Dutch Square, The Happy Bookseller at Richland Mall, and that was about it. There was no amazon.com, of course, and when a new book by a favorite author would be coming out was a total mystery. The Trenholm store had a very limited selection; Waldens and The Happy Bookseller were better, but each had its own idiosyncrasies about what they would stock. Capitol Newsstand seemed to be better about getting in new paperbacks each month on a regular basis, and displaying them prominently on a "just arrived" table.

In particular there was a science fiction series I was following called Perry Rhodan. The series is produced in Germany and is perhaps the longest ongoing series of any kind now -- the issue numbers are way into the thousands. In the 70s, Ace books got the US rights and would translate two issues a month, and they would hardly ever show up anywere in town except at Capitol Newsstand. (If they did show up elsewhere, they would be months old, and out of order). Every month, I would talk my father into stopping by Capitol "on your way home" (it wasn't really on the way) and he would invariably find the new ones -- I never missed an issue until Ace lost the rights. (Another company tried reintroducing the series to the US in the 90s, but the translators were a lot worse and it read like something translated from German).

Capitol also had the largest collection of magazines in Columbia, and newspapers from all over the country and the world. When you walked in, the comic books would be in the front right, the new paperbacks table would be in the middle just past the counter, the left back would have the shelved science fiction paperbacks and magazines (it was pretty much the only place in town you could find the magazines). The right wall midway back would have the magazines your mother didn't want you to look at, and the right rear would have all the foreign language magazines like "Paris Match"

Capitol once had a thriving set of outlets. There was the main store, another one downtown (somewhere near Kress, I think), one on St. Andrews Road, and one on O'Neil Court. I think the second downtown one closed first, I'm not sure whether the O'Neil or St. Andrews one was next, but they are both gone as well. The Main Street location actually was closed for a while a few years ago and there was some speculation about its future. When it came back, it felt like a shadow of its old self to me.

Why did it close? Well the owner cites health reasons in The State story, but I suspect that was just the final straw on the camel's back. The market has changed radically since the 70s. For one thing, the big box chains have come to town. A Barnes & Nobel or Books-A-Million store has many more books than Capitiol could ever stock, and they get the new books as regularly and display them as well as Capitol used to. Likewise, a big box store has so many magazines that Capitol didn't have an edge there either, and as for out-of-town papers -- well, if I, for some reason, want to see what The Cleveland Plain Dealer had to say about something, I'll check their web-site. Add to all those factors the location, which has metered parking, and not much of that and the mid-level possibility that you will be pan-handled on the way to the store or back to your car, and it's just a place that doesn't make economic sense anymore. I suspect that this didn't help either.

Still in its day, it was a Capitol idea.

UPDATE 4 May 2010: Added full street address to post title.

UPDATE 26 Jan 2011 -- It's now a botique-looking place called Uptown:

UPDATE 24 February 2013: I have added as the first picture on this post one taken by commenter Thomas in 1997. It shows the old-school Capitol Newsstand in operation. (And Capitol Restaurant too!). Note the missing building (at one time a theater, I believe) that was between those two spots, with longtime fixture Know So Servicemen's Center. Thanks!

You get a very inaccurate idea of what bus travel is when you take class trips. When I was in middle and high school, our long class trips (Washington DC and Disney World were the most notable) were done on chartered Trailways buses, and the administration always requested, and got, the same kid-friendly driver. When the bus is filled with your friends and classmates, the ride is almost part of the attraction.

I've never actually ridden a scheduled long-haul bus as a party of one, but from seeing the Trailways stations and the people in them on rest-breaks during those class trips and from talking with aunts and cousins, I think I have a pretty good idea that, unfortunately, the "scum of the earth" passengers make life very unpleasant for the "salt of the earth" ones, and that the novelty of having a bathroom in a land vehicle is rather eclipsed by the horror of having it overflow.

What that adds up to saying is that I never took a bus at the Greyhound station downtown, but we did wait there once to pick up my aunt from Florida (she never did it again), and once to see off a cousin. I was fascinated by the Art Deco look, and by all of those glass blocks. I don't suppose it was any nicer than the more newly built stations inside, but sometime after this was built, US architects forgot how to design good looking buildings.

Wikipedia has a great very high-res shot here and says the station was built in 1938 & 1939 with Grehound moving out in 1987. That's about what I remembered. Apparently the building is a doctor's office now.

If you look up above the station, in some of these shots you can see another Columbia icon as well.