Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Cornell Arms is a venerable apartment building on the corner of Pendelton & Sumter Streets right across from The Horseshoe. In addition to the apartments in the "high rise" section of the building, there has always been retail space on the ground floor. In times past, the space which now houses Tio's Mexican Restaurant has hosted McDonald's and The Lizard's Thicket.

The corner space which is now apparently a cafe & catering operation has also had a number of tenants. The most durable was probably a drugstore which was there for most of my childhood if I am recalling correctly. However the one which most interested me was a bagel operation which started in the 90s when what my father called The Bagel Craze finally hit Columbia. (This was the era which also saw Manhatten Bagel start in Trenholm Plaza). Anyway, after the bagel place that is now Greek Boys closed, the Cornell Arms bagelery was my choice for my bi-annual after-dentist bagel. At the time I was still living in Aiken, so when I had a dentist appointment scheduled, I would spend the night in Columbia, have my checkup and then drive to work in Augusta. I've never had any dental problems, but having my gums poked with small sharp objects always makes me feel I deserve some sort of reward, and so a bagel it is. Going back to Trenholm Plaza was too far the wrong way, but this place was close enough. I'm not sure what happened to it. Perhaps bagels became so common that students can get passable ones on campus. Perhaps it was the lack of parking. Maybe somebody picked the lox...

UPDATE 8 Jan 09: Turns out this place is still the same operation and still has bagels, they just changed the name and focus. (check the comments). Glad to hear it!

UPDATE 12 April 2010: Added full street address to post title.

I don't know much about Gilligan's, which was beside the old Sears building and behind the old Punch Line on an odd little isolated segment of Senate Street. It keeps coming up in comments as a place fondly remembered though. I know they had sort of a big "sandbox" in front of the rather decrepit-looking building with a volleyball net set up, and "incentivies" to get folks there. Commenter Dennis notes:

Gilligan’s, A.K.A. Ribby’s, was a brilliant idea by Tim Peterson, but he could not get people there. He asked me once why the great BBQ joints never seem to sell beer (he did) and I’m still trying to figure that out. You’d think that alone would draw a crowd. Not to mention girls in bikinis playing volleyball on the sand, which he arranged to have happen from time to time.

When I took these pictures, I noticed a guy working on the roof (and who was giving me the evil-eye, so I didn't take many shots or get any closer), and commenter John says

I notice the outside has been painted garnet and black and there is a building permit on theoutside that has been issued to the Orion Corporation for the purpose of fixing flood damage.

Is my old hangout about to reopen?

Perhaps we'll see soon.

UPDATE 24 July 2010 -- It's now open as The Cock Lounge:

I believe this is the Zesto that was on Decker Boulevard. I don't have a lot to say about it other than it didn't last long after moving. I'm not entirely sure why as there should be lots of traffic back-and-forth past it as people drive out to the new retail areas of Two Notch. Spring Valley Commons, the strip mall of which it is part is not in great shape, but I wouldn't expect that to influence Zesto's traffic too much (after all, think of Rush's at Decker Mall). I find it a bit amusing that the space, now a matress store, still has a drive-up window with intact order board:

I'd like one Queen, extra firm, two Kings and a twin please!

UPDATE 6 Jan 2010: Added McDonald's to the post title, also the full street address.

UPDATE 3 June 2010 -- Hola Mexico Mexican restaurant is now in the process of relocating here. They finally have the name on the building:

UPDATE 4 June 2024: Update tags, add map icon.

The building has the look of a Mrs. Winner's which was, I think, a mainly chicken restaurant chain that got in trouble in the 80s. Constantine's was a Greek place, or at least that's the impression I always got driving by. I never ate there because I had Zorba's on Decker close by, and a sure thing "best bread in Columbia" at Grecian Gardens if I were on that side of town and in a Greek mood.

Looking at the odd hours posted here, I'm guessing that this place originally served dinner all week and gradually cut back. I also have a very vague notion that they may have moved for a time to a much smaller building on Meeting Street in a parking lot behind the West Columbia Eggroll Station.

This corner building, now the site of The Pour House was the long-time location of Frank's Hotdogs, yet another of the many Columbia restaurants I was going to "get around to" and never did before it was too late.

From what I could gather in years of walking and driving past, the place was open late-nights and had a diner-like setup with a serving counter and tables around the walls. It appeared that the owner took a certain pride in the "basic" nature of his setup, and for many years, a window slogan proclaimed "No Reservations Required". Curiously, given how uncommon non-Sandy's hotdog places are, Frank's was just down the street from Lum's Hotdogs. I don't know if their years of operation overlapped at all though.

Honestly, how could a restaurant with such a strong concept possibly fail?

I first became aware of this restaurant building on the US 17 Bypass just below the old Myrtle Beach Airforce Base back gate, when it was painted to resemble a Waffle House. It was not a Waffle House, mind you -- it had some non-actionable name like "Waffle Hut", but you have to pity a place that is a Waffle House wannabee. After that incarnation went south (probably about the time be base closed and the bowling alley behind the restaurant went under as well), it became, I believe The Bean Pot. To me that suggests a vegatarian restaurant, but I never looked any closer to see if that were true. The next owners were the ones who hit on the fool-proof plan of combining Mexican and Japanese and the rest is history. Re-fried, fried rice, yum!

I believe this restaurant, on Decker Boulevard in the plaza with Rite Aid and Food Lion, was originally a Burger King. As I mentioned in discussing the vanished USC Burger King, once upon a time, all Columbia area Burger Kings were closed in a franchisee/corporate dispute. I believe that this one closed then and never re-opened.

After Burger King imploded, a Zesto's set up shop. Zesto is a local, greek-influenced fast-food outfit that has a number of locations in town. I believe chicken is their big selling point, but for me it will always be the chocolate dipped soft-serve cones. During the ongoing general flight from the Decker Corridor, this Zesto joined many other Decker restaurants and moved out on Two Notch road. Evidently they did not move far enough out, and with their new fortunes tied to a dying strip-mall, they did not last too long (that building is now a matress store).

Anyway, a couple of years after Zesto left, the current occupant, a Vietnamese "Pho" restaurant set up shop in the building. I've eaten there once, and found the Pho very tasty (admittedly I have no standard of comparison there) though they do limit you to one refill on the ice tea. I could be wrong, but I believe this place may be the only solely Vietnamese restaurant in town.

UPDATE 1 June 2019: Add tags, map icon.

UPDATE 4 June 2024: Update tags.

The Top of Carolina opened in 1967 and was the first (and I think still the only) revolving restaurant in the Carolinas. The revolving platform was built from equipment donated after the 1964 New York World's Fair. I don't know if the Capstone domitory on which The Top of Carolina sits was originally planned with that end in mind or not.

I remember it was quite a big deal when the restaurant opened (I would have been 6), and although our "eating out" was generally reserved for Sunday lunch in fairly prosaic spots (The Russell House, McDonalds, Ponderosa Steak Barn, Frank 'n Stein), my parents made it a point to take us kids.

We were fascinated by the whole "revolve" thing, and at seeing Columbia in a panarama below us. The food however, at least from a child's point of view, left a lot to be desired. As I recall, the only choice available was a buffet, and it didn't have sandwiches or hamburgers or spaghetti or indeed anything I liked. I believe my parents were less than impressed with it as well, though I may be projecting my feelings onto them. At any rate, we never went back after that one time while the place was in its initial mode of operation.

At some point -- it couldn't have been long after The Tricentennial, if indeed the place lasted that long -- the Top of Carolina folded as a retail operation. I'm not sure of all the reasons. I believe USC had always owned and run the place, and I'm sure the college "industrial food" mindset didn't help. Also, as far as I can recall, there was never a parking lot dedicated to the restaurant which can't have helped matters either.

After that, the University would still (and do still, I think) rent the place out for banquets, and I believe I attended one such function in the 80s. I can still recall noticing, and being pleased by how many trees downtown Columbia still had as I looked down on them.

Often we used the word Capstone to invoke The Top of Carolina, but actually Capstone is the name of the building on which TTOC sits. During my tenure at USC, Capstone was a girls' dorm (one of my cousins lived there a few years) with one of the University cafeterias as the ground floor. I often ate there, and vividly remeber a particular meal when ARA acted out a bad punchline come to life. I had gotten a burger and fries, and the food lady told me:

I burned the fries, so I gave you some extra.

As the comic said, if there's one thing I like more than bad food, it's more of it!.

The Capstone cafeteria was also the site of an incident which put me off of my habit of drinking tea and reading a book after eating and before my next class, something I enjoyed quite a bit. The tables were not exclusive, but generally if there was space, nobody would crowd. I was a bit miffed then when someone sat down by me and started a conversation, especially as looking up I saw that there were plenty of empty tables, but he leveraged the title of the book I was reading, got me to tell him a bit about it and started making general chit-chat. I was annoyed, but figured he was a new guy trying to make friends and didn't want to be rude, so I made an effort to be courteous and talked for 10 or 15 minutes, at which time of course he dropped the "would you like to come to our prayer group" bomb. I'm afraid that for the rest of my time at USC I was pretty uncommunicative verging on rude to anyone I didn't know taking a seat at "my" table, and didn't take up lunch reading again until I started working.

I think Capstone is still a dorm, but I believe the cafeteria is now gone. I believe you can still have a banquet at The Top of Carolina though I would still expect the view to be better than the food.

UPDATE 3 Dec 08

Commenter Dennis sends the following notes and picture:

I was always very interested in this place because of my great interest in the 1964 World's Fair, but have only managed to get in and eat once. It is impossible to get information about the rare times it is open to the public. On USC websites it is referred to as the Top of Carolina Conference Center and it seems you can only rent the place for events, but they sure don't advertise or make it easy to get info.

Anyway, I found this dated April 2007. Don't know if they ever did this renovation:

In addition to receiving that report, the University's Buildings and Grounds Committee approved a plan to use about $700,000 in Sodexho dining services funds to renovate the Top of Carolina facility at Capstone in summer 2008. The revolving restaurant atop the 18-story residence hall has been an icon in Columbia since it was built in 1967. The facility was used for 32 Sunday brunches and 44 catered University events in the past fiscal year.

"We're planning to replace carpet, window treatments, and the heating/cooling system along with making the facility ADA accessible," said Rick Kelly, vice president for business and finance.

After renovations are completed, Top of Carolina will be the venue for catered events throughout the academic year, said Michael Scheffres, general manager of University dining services. Sunday brunch at the facility is open to the public during the fall and spring semesters.

The picture conveys what I didn't really note in my initial post. The "revolve" part of the restaurant is a circular band which orbits a non-moving core. Essentially, only the guest seating rotates.

UPDATE 1 November 2009: Open again!

I've mentioned in one of my other posts, my gradual disenchantment with Pizza Hut which over the years has, due to bad corporate choices, turned from a place I looked forward to going to into a place which provides a mediocre experience at best.

I believe this former Pizza Hut on Knox Abbot Drive in Cayce is, to date, the last Pizza Hut I have eaten at in Columbia. There was nothing particularly bad about it that put me off Columbia Pizza Huts, in fact the staff was quite friendly and attentive -- it's just that in my own stomping grounds, I generally have better options for pizza. This was, however, about 10pm on Christmas Eve 2002, a date and time when anything higher up the food chain than The Waffle House that's still open is pretty hard to find. I was en route from Augusta to Pawleys Island. I can't quite picture now how I ended up on Knox Abbot unless I was cutting down I-26 to get to I-77 and the Sumter Highway, still it was a welcome break.

I don't know when this store went under, and it seems a bit odd, since I can't think of another Pizza Hut on that side of town. At any rate, the tax place has now been there several years. Perhaps they can get you a deep-dish refund.

UPDATE 25 January 2017: Added the full street address and some tags

UPDATE 23 February 2022: Adding map icon.

UPDATE 26 June 2023: Update tags.

This is one I've gotten several requests for, but about which I can really say very little -- hopefully some good comments will take up the slack here..

Gene's Pig & Chick was a Five Points landmark for a good part of my life. I'm not sure when the place was established, but it seemed to me that from the very earliest days that I can remember going to Sears on Harden Street, Gene's was there.

Unfortunately, from a point of view of actually having real memories of the place, I was a very picky eater when I was a kid, and I had decided very early in life that I didn't like chicken (I made a partial exception for Campbell's Chicken & Stars soup, though I still tended to pick the chicken pieces out of it) and that I didn't like barbecue. I'm not sure exactly when I made the barbecue "decision", since that wasn't something my mother (or anyone else in the family) made, but the chicken aversion survived a decade -plus campaign by my mother to force me to eat it. Ultimately, she gave up, and even when I was a kid, she knew better than to make one of our infrequent "eating out" trips into an unpleasant experience for both of us.

So the upshot of that is, that whether she would have wanted to stop at Gene's on a Five Points shopping trip or not, we never did.

Still the place was a constance presence, and while I don't remember quite when I found out that it was gone, I do remember being shocked and sad. The original building has long since been torn down, and the lot is now the site of a self-service Shell station, which I have also never been to.

UPDATE 14 March 2009: Added 1963 Yellow Pages Ad

UPDATE 17 June 1020 -- Becky Bailey sends in this photo of the old North Main location:

and writes:

I'm also sending a funky shot of the former Gene's Pig and Chick on N. Main Street. Probably could have defined its orientation a little better. It's near the intersection of Confederate Avenue and N. Main Street, up the street from the former Doug Broom's, and directly across the street from the present It It's Paper. Looks kinda sad, now, but in its day, there was a rooftop studio and lots of action! Doug Broom's, of course was demolished 20 years ago, I'm guessing.

UPDATE 2 Sept 2010: Added the 1970 Yellow Pages ad.