Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I'm not sure where the movie theater was originally in Fernandina. I know there was one, at least since the 1920s. My father told me that one of his tasks as a child was to accompany the old lady who was the theater organist to the theater for special early showings so she could see the movie and work out what she was going to play. (I'm not sure what function he performed exactly, or why this would have been a task given to a ten year old). One of the movies he always remembered with disappointment was 1925's "The Phantom Of The Opera" with Lon Cheney in the title role. Disappointment because about 20 minutes into the showing, the organist stood up and said "I've seen enough", and he never got to see the ending, something he regretted for 70 years, although I finally was able to get him a VHS of it in the 1990s if I recall correctly.

For most of my life, or at least for as long as I can recall seeing movies in Fernandina, the movie theater in town was on 14th Street near the new hospital. I know I saw probably at least a dozen movies there over the years, but for some reason the only one that I can specifically recall was a re-release of A Christmas Story with Ralphie shooting his eye out..

On my recent Star Wars pilgrimage, I was surprised and saddened to see the 14th Street theater closed. I found out later that there as a new multiplex out on A1A, complete with BigD large format screen. It appears that both theaters are Carmike properties and that there was an orderly transition, including staff retention from the closing of the old theater and the opening of the new one.

Here's the new complex, in the A1A strip next to the Winn-Dixie:

UPDATE 2 March 2016: My sister has clarified my opening anecdote somewhat. She informs me that one of my father's older brothers worked for the theater and would run the advance screenings for the music lady. He let my father sit in on those screenings, so it was the older brother's job to help out the music lady, not my father's.

The Picture Place was for many years in the old Forest Lake TV storefront in Forest Lake Shopping Center. I know I had at least one photo framed there, and I think my mother had some art framed there as well.

As with everything else in that shopping center, the 4 October 2015 flood which roared through Nine Mile Branch and Gills Creek devastated their building as you can see in the first pictures above.

Fortunately, since since 19 November 2015 the store has been operating from their new home in Forest Park in the former Oreck / All Vacuums suite.

Commenter Sidney noted this Hardscrabble closing a while back, along with some macbre history.

(Hat tip to commenter Sidney)

I noticed this little dojo on Meeting Street back in October when I was checkout out Conumdrum. It looks like maybe the name changed to simply Columbia School of Karate for a while, but the last phonebook listing is in the 2013 book.

For many years this was Decker Billiard Club. It closed briefly and re-opened, probably unintentionally, as Decker Billaid.

I drove by recently and noticed the place is now a latin club called Serena Lounge.

I'm not sure when this garage on Alta Vista closed as I can't find it in any of my recent phonebooks under the name on the sign, but I think I would have noticed it before if it were too long ago, so I'm going to say 2015 until someone says different.

As a side note, I never knew the name of this little uphill street which connects Fontaine Road to Shakespeare Road. Alta Vista was the first really useful Internet search engine, put together by the now defunct Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) to showcase their 64 bit Alpha chip. It was very successful, but DEC got into trouble by never fully realizing that the mini-computer was dead and that the PC was a commodity item and went belly up. For some reason, nobody bought the Alta Vista technology (that I am aware of) and the crown passed to Google where it still remains..

UPDATE 6 April 2017 -- Now Royal Automotive:

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I noticed this vacant storefront in the Shamrock Corner section of Shakespeare Road the other day. This is not far from the former Shakespeare Fish Market.

Two Notch stalwart Westside Ice has now moved to 1001 Idlewild Boulevard off of Bluff Road.

This building has that classic "ice house" look, with the long open deck. Their web site says the business dates from the 1930s -- I wouldn't be surprised if horse drawn ice wagons once pulled up here..

(Hat tip to commenter Frank Mancuso)

UPDATE 23 August 2021 -- Commenter Frank Mancuso (who has apparently had an eye on the place) sends these pictures of the demolition of the building:

Also adding map icon.

UPDATE 2 September 2021 -- Some more pictures of the demolition a bit further along:

UPDATE 13 September 2021 -- Demolition is complete:

Printer cartridge re-furbisher Cartridge World on Forest Drive have closed their storefront operations. I used them for a LaserJet cartridge a while back, and it is still working fine in my printer.

(Hat tip to my sister)