Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Interesting item in The State yesterday. There will be a series of Forest Acres history lectures in Town Hall over the next month, given by local historian Warner Montgomery, who has written the forthcoming book Forest Acres:

What it is ain't exactly clear..

I'm kind of bummed over the Chung King remodel. I took lots of pictures of that figurine, and half promised myself I'd pry it off some night.

The whole Intersection Center complex has been for sale for years. I didn't see those signs on 4 Sept 2010 when I took the "new" pictures here, so perhaps it finally did sell. I would have expected in that case however that the new owner would have bulldozed the whole place, not started renovations on 40 year old buildings that were in poor repair to begin with. I wonder what will happen to the stalwarts like Hook 'n Needle that have remained open on Diamond Lane against all odds?

UPDATE 30 Sep 2010 -- Well, they're also (possibly without meaning to) got the Service Merchandise sign turned on for the first time in 8 years!

More changes:

UPDATE 21 Jan 2011: Intersection Center is to be the new campus for Word of God Church Ministries, and the old Sam Solomon/Service Merchandise building will be a 3000 seat Sanctuary. I'm glad to see this place rehabilitated!

UPDATE 28 June 2011: Added complete 4 September 2010 photoset.

UPDATE 22 September 2012: Added pictures above of the conversion of the Service Merchandise store into the chapel, and the two Intersection Center signs being converted into church signs. Added 23 October 2011 photoset.

UPDATE 24 September 2012: Added third picture of (finished) Broad River Road sign. Added 30 August 2008 photoset.

UPDATE 26 September 2012: Added 27 June 2009 photoset.

Photoset 30 August 2008

Photoset 27 June 2009

Photoset 4 September 2010

Photoset 23 October 2011

Now that I'm back, I'm finally getting around to putting up this note and interesting photos from longtime commenter Michael Taylor:

Ted,

I just discovered Classmates.com has a new feature that allows folks to upload yearbooks IN TOTAL! They can be viewed with a special "player" that lets you expand and magnify each page-pair giving the viewer an incredible close-up of life from years ago. So far, Columbia only has a few yearbooks: A.C. Flora has two (1964 &1965), Dreher has one (1975, done as a take-off on MAD magazine), and Columbia High has four (two from the early '60s when it was downtown, one from 1976 and one from 1980, both from when it moved to the Dutch Square area). I had looked at all except for the 1964 Flora yearbook when I came across the following two pages, which was a double-page spread of all the "best of" kids from that year and happened to take place at the old Richland Mall.

The scenes in the top page (left page in the pair) are pretty easy to place for the most part: the top-left is looking toward Beltline Blvd. through that dark entrance hall that went between the Colonial Store and Woolworths. I had forgotten all about that fountain. Below that image is the one where the boy & girl are sitting with a monkey (insert joke here), which was no doubt from the pet store that had the monkeys, but where that was posed is not so clear. It could be the Forest Drive end of the mall looking toward the back of the strip mall where the Sportsmans Barbershop was (more on that later)? Directly below the monkey, two kids are posing at the bookstand in either Eckerds or Woolworths because I remember the horse rides at the bookstand in one of those stores; I want to say it was probably Eckerds, but I wouldn't bet on it. I don't think the Happy Bookseller was there at this time, but it could have been from another bookstore I suppose. The image on the bottom-right is the easiest to recognize from the whole photo spread, and that would be the kids sitting at one of those never-forgotten cement picnic benches with the Colonial Store clearly in the background. Even the pebbled flooring with the drain looks familiar in this photograph. This photograph, out of all the images, is the one that really brings back the memories for me. I sat at this very table most every time I visited Richland Mall.

The images on the second page are pretty vague for the most part. I'm assuming the two top photographs are from one of the clothing stores in the mall. The bottom-right photograph must be from some sporting goods store that was at the mall (don't remember one), or it could just be from the sporting goods section of Whites (don't remember a sporting goods section there either). There is a possibility that Woolworths at one time had a sports equipment section, but I don't remember one. The middle picture must be from either the office of the mall manager or perhaps the manager of Whites. There could have been an insurance office at the mall ( or something like that, seem to remember some sort of office), but I don't remember that for sure. The bottom-left picture would be pretty hard to pin-point if it wasn't for the reflection in the window over the girl. You can clearly see the backwards 'ND' of the large Richland Mall sign that was at the main Forest Drive entrance, so I'm thinking this photograph must have been taken in front of the bank that used to be immediately next to that entrance (don't remember the bank's name however). The windows in this photograph also look like a much larger version of the vague background in the page-one photograph with the monkey.

After I found the Richland Mall photo spread, it occurred to me that the ad section of a yearbook quite often has ads with pictures of the business as part of the ad. As a matter of fact, I was a yearbook photographer at A.C. Flora for the 1973 yearbook, and I personally took photographs at Belks on Main Street (don't ask me where those photographs are because they only used one, and it didn't have anything recognizable in it). I looked through all of the yearbooks for Columbia and all I could find with pictures were the two ads for the Sportsman Barber Shop in the A.C. Flora yearbooks. The top page is from the 1965 yearbook and the bottom page is from the 1964 yearbook. The top photograph doesn't show the outside, but anyone who got their hair cut here would instantly recognize the pine wall paneling. I got my hair cut at just about every barbershop in Forest Acres at one time or another, but the last old-style barbershop that I personally remember using was the Sportsman. As a matter of fact, the first barber on the left was my barber for most of those later-day haircuts. I think that's Frenchie third from left, and I'm guessing that the barber on the right in the background is Temple.

The bottom page doesn't really have much in the way of memories, but it does have a picture of Frenchie and Temple standing on the roof in front of the sign. Actually, that's Frenchie standing and getting ready to cut Temple's hair in the barber chair, which was a fixture on top of the barbershop for years. Of course, Frenchie was a Forest Acres barbershop legend in his own right, I think I've read you reference him in one post or another. My very first job, other than cutting grass around the neighborhood, was shining shoes at the Ravenwood Barbershop when I was either 13 or 14. If I'm not mistaken, the last place Frenchie worked before he either retired or died was the Ravenwood Barbershop. Yeap, I can actually say that I worked for Frenchie the Barber.

I guess this proves that those "missing photographs" can be found just about anywhere. Not sure if you want to use these or not, but I had to share them with you because I knew you would appreciate at least a few glimpses of the old Richland Mall; I suppose we would take any glimpses of the old mall that we could get, eh? Technically, since these yearbooks don't have a copyright notice anywhere, they can be considered public domain, making them free to use for Columbia Closings. However, I'm guessing that though they are great for a blast-from-the-past reflection, they are probably not too practical for your blog. They really don't show much of the overall mall or barbershop, and only someone who already knew what they were missing would know what they were looking at. At any rate, thought you would enjoy them.

Thanks Michael!

The climate of Columbia is such that its inhabitants have to live elsewhere

Time for Summer Vacation Phase-II, folks. I'll try to keep the spam in check and may respond to comments, but don't expect any new posts for the next three weeks or so.

I went to Sears at Columbia Mall on Wednesday to look for something and decided to take the closing-cam and walk the mall afterwards. There are so many vacant storefronts that the place almost feels like Inlet Square Mall now. I thought about taking pictures, but then decided there was no point because I didn't even know what these places had been. In high school, I probably went several times a week, but now it's once every six months or so. Is the mall in trouble? Let me put it to you this way -- the Dollar Store is gone, and there are kiosks selling flea-market type merchandise...

I did take a few pictures, and I really like the first one. It is almost an Edward Hopper-esque scene of isolation.

Here's an interesting article in The State from yesterday, Views on District 2, then and now. Be sure to expand the picture of the Vista from 1983. I feel as though I should remember a lot more of that picture than I do. I can't plead youth -- I was 22 years old then.

Get out there and hold some truths to be self evident!

And grill some hot dogs.

This is vacation phase 1, probably no posting for several days.