Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Not really a closing, but I was at Bruegger's Sunday, and happened to notice that the building housing Be Beep and The Happy Cafe is being re-roofed.

The Be Beep area was roped off, but they aren't open on Sunday anyway so I doubt they'll have any downtime.

As usual, I got to the library about 5 minutes before closing time, and was trying to look up several things. One of them was old City Directory listings for Trenholm Plaza. In the event, I got two, one for 1964, when I would have been three years old, and perhaps dimly conscious that we were going to the same places a lot, and one from 1970 when I would have been nine years old, and looking forward to Western Auto visits to window shop at all the "hobby batteries" and bicycles.

I'm pretty sure Trenholm Plaza was a golf course not too many years before 1964, so that wave of stores is probably pretty close to the original list:

While many of those stores lasted for years, the USPO is the only original tenant left.

There are a lot of hold-overs in 1970, but a good bit of turnover as well:

Interestingly (to me), I can't for the life of me recall a Gene's Pig 'n Chick in Trenholm Plaza at all, and I would have thought it would have stuck in my mind. I don't recall those dentists either, and in fact am a little surprised by seeing non-retail there.

Of these TP stores, I've done closings for:

A&P (sort of)

Edisto Farms Dairy

Liggett Rexal

Standard (Federal)

Tapps Twig (sort of)

UPDATE 11 October 2013: Look at this great 1979 picture of Trenholm Plaza. Be sure to zoom all the way in, and pan around. Thanks to commenter Dennis for finding this!

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:

As promised below, this is commenter Dennis's map of the original Richland Mall. He also sends this note:

Hi ted

Well, finally, here's a first attempt at a Richland Mall layout, circa 1968.
Please feel free to correct!

Obviously it is just a sketch, and proportions etc. are extremely
approximate. Not to scale!

1. J.B. White's

2. a jewelry store -- King's?

3. no idea -- what was in this area?

4. Hickory Farms

5. The Shop for Pappagallo (women's shoes way too expensive for our family)

6. Baubles 'N Things (not sure about this one)

7. Mr. Popper's

8. Meri's Records

9. maybe this was Baubles 'N Things

10. ?

11. Pet-A-Rama

12. Ruff Hardware

13. Berry's on Main (actually at Richland Mall - always thought this was a
dumb name)

14. Winn Dixie

15. Redwood Cafeteria - not sure this was a plain rectangle; it may have
been an L shape. For a while the corner closest to White's had a separate
entrance and a little soda fountain area.

16. Hickory Farms' second location after the moved "across the aisle."

17. Woolworth's

18. Colonial Stores / Big Star

19. Eckerd's

20. What was here? A little travel agency, maybe? Remember travel agencies, before the internet?

21. Gerald's Shoe Repair

22. Merle Norman Cosmetics (or maybe they were 23)

23. Russell Stover (before they put their own building way out in the
parking lot)

24. coin laundromat; owned by the cleaners next door. The manager had a little walk-thru between the two.

25. dry cleaner's -- Ed Robinson's, maybe?

26. automated Post Office, like the one at old Woodhill Mall. An exercise in frustration every time.

27. Russell Stover's own building, far enough from the mall to make sure
they went out of business.

The white boat shapes in the center walkway were fountains when new, then, like every other property owner that gets completely fed up with the trouble and expense of fountains, the owners turned them into planters. Sometimes they covered them with carpeted plywood and used them as stages. I met Jolly Jim and J.P. Sidewinder there one Saturday. Was there a third one down closer to White's?

The white lines between Woolworth's and Colonial show the bike rack, used constantly by me.

The little gray inset into Colonial was their loading dock, which always
stunk. Speaking of stink, there was a really ugly dumpster in the parking
lot right out the back door of Redwood Cafeteria that reeked and bred vermin in ways that defy explanation.

28., 29., 30. The shady backside of the mall had a few offices that held no
interest for me. One was a State Farm agency, I think, and one was the
mall's business office.

Thanks, Dennis!

Have at it folks..

UPDATE 19 Sep 2010 -- Well, I went down to the library today and ended up looking in the old "City Directories". I hadn't really paid a lot of attention to those, since they tend not to have interesting ads like old phonebook yellow pages. HOWEVER what it turns out they *do* have is complete (or at least pretty complete) listings of shopping center tenants. Herewith the Richland Mall listings for 1962 (which I believe was the mall's first year of operation), 1975 and 1985:

1962:

1975:

1985:

UPDATE 21 June 2011: Added [at top] a view of the old Richland Mall including Whites, Russell Stover, Richland Mall Theater, and part of Redwood Cafeteria from an old Chamber of Commerce promotional book.

UPDATE 9 February 2012 -- Well Richland Mall is rezoning:

According to The State:

The new zoning allows the mall owners “all kinds of options,” including space for offices, residences, hotels, restaurants and schools, according to Mark Williams, Forest Acres’ city manager.

UPDATE 21 May 2020 -- Here's a nifty color shot of the old Richland Mall centrial corridor at the Colonial. Unfortunately I can't inline it due to copyright, but it's worth a click.

This one was a well planned closing. The "for lease" sign, and the "closing sale" signs had been up for a couple of months before this little store, on Forest Drive right next to Bruegger's Bagels, shut down. I'm assuming it closed at the end of August since month-boundries make sense when you have time to plan, though I didn't notice the vacant space until today.

I never went into Jewelry Mart as it didn't seem targetted at my gender or demographic but one of my aunts did stop in once, and mentioned that the staff was very pleasant and she struck up a conversation, actually leaving with the manager's mix-cd of store music after she complimented him on his taste in songs.

I believe that this is the first vacancy for this little strip. It was all built a few years ago, so up until now it has had the original tenants.

UPDATE 2 Feb 2011 -- It's to be Wristwatch Doc watch sales & repair:

UPDATE 14 Feb 2011 -- apparently Artisan Jewelers is the official name (but why not put that on the roadside sign?):

UPDATE 16 November 2017: Adjust address in post title, add tags.

I've written about this building before, both in a closing for Steak & Ale (the original tenant of the whole building) and in one for House Brand (a furniture store which used the east side of the building after it was divided).

I see now that since the House Brand signage has been off the east side of the building, the previous Buster's Bistro sign is again visible.

I don't know much about Buster's other than it was the first tenant in the newly subdivided building and that according to several commenters on the Steak & Ale closing, the chef, Sig Buster, started at Fresh Pastabilities in the Forest Park (Piggly WIggly) shopping center on the other side of Trenholm, and opened Buster's Bistro after closing that.

The place is not listed in the 2008 phonebook, and so would have closed during or before 2007.

UPDATE 16 June 2022: Adding tags and map icon.

As far as I can tell, Moolah's Hide-Away was a fairly short lived operation, as it appears only in the 1977 Bellsouth phonebook. The restaurant was in the space once occupied by Biddie Banquet and occupied for a good number of years now by Sakura. From the ad, it appears that they were pitching it as a base-gate type operation to draw off of Fort Jackson. Wikipedia claims that the restaurant was actually operated by Moolah's daughter.

Judjing by Wikipedia, The Fabulous Moolah (real name Mary Lillian Ellison) had quite an interesting life, becoming the first woman to wrestle in Madison Square Garden. The Columbia High School graduate went on to become the most famous female wrestler of the the thirty years from the 50s into the 80s and appeared in videos with Cyndi Lauper during her wrestling era. She passed away in Columbia in November 2007.

UPDATE 10 Feb 2011: Added a better picture of the current location

This building, across the street from Richland Mall and just south of Moe's has been a number of things over the years, with none of them seeming to last long. Right now, I can only find two other names (and a Doctor's practice) before H2, but I'm sure there were many others as loopnet says the building dates back to 1969. Part of my difficulty may be that the address is sometimes given as "2100 Beltline Boulevard" and sometimes as "2100 N Beltline Boulevard". One operation I sort of recall had an odd name as though it was a Christian Youth Fraternity or something like that.

I'm not sure what "joining" means in the case of H2 and Tonic. I suspect it just means "we transferred your membership". The H2 facebook page seems unchanged since last year, so it's possible the place was closed for a while before I noticed it.

UPDATE 21 May 2010 -- Here's an ad for European Health Spas (as mentioned in the comments) from the 19 Feb 1979 edition of The State. I can explain why the street address doesn't match. The ad lists 2204, which apparently doesn't exist today (at least as google-able retail), but clearly the ad namechecks "Richland Mall". Perhaps there was a street renumbering in the 1980s? Anyway I've added it to the post title and here's the ad:

UPDATE 29 July 2010 -- Apparently it's going to be Austral Salon next:

UPDATE 7 June 2016 -- Many thanks to commenter Mandy for sending these pictures of the Hi Hatt:

Original post:

Well, there have been a lot of people over the past few years urging me to do this post. I have always put it off up until now as I have no personal memories of The Hi Hatt Club, and though I must have seen it many times up until I was 12, I cannot even recall the building. I was always hoping that I would run across a picture of the club, or would find an old ad that I could use to hang a post on, but that seems destined not to happen, so I will go with what I have been able to establish, and by consolidating various mentions made of the place in the comments.

Here's what I found out by looking through old phone directories last week. The Hi Hatt Club first appears in the Columbia Southern Bell listings in the August 1957 directory. The last time it was listed was in the December 1972 directory. At the start of its run, the phone number was given as SU-7-9143. That number was retained in each directory though with the advent of direct dialing the prefix changed from Sunset to became 787-9143. The name the club used for its directory listing was always Hi Hatt Drive In, and it listed under Clubs in the Yellow Pages though it never bought a Yellow Pages ad.

Given that other sources state that the club started in the 1930s, I'm not sure why listings only started in 1957. I suppose that in those days not every road-house felt it needed a phone, or perhaps the listing was under another name.

Here's what the Town of Forest Acres says on their web site in what seems to be a semi-official history of the town:

Here's a bit of information on the appearance of the club from commenter FirstDennis:

Commenter BR suggests the place was informally known as Goldie's:

Speaking of Forest Acres places, when Forest Dr was just 2 lanes (yes, how many of us remember that!) there was a honky tonk in the pine thicket about where the gold-glass reflective building is now located. It was called GOLDIES. Anyone else remember that?

......
......

Again, maybe the Hi Hat club was owned by ‘Goldie’, so maybe they were the same. At the time, a frequent visitor to the place always called it the latter.

Commenter Michael Taylor passes along this information from his uncle:

Comments from anyone who actually visited the club are welcome (and you can be anonymous if it really was an establisment of ill-repute at some point :-)! Pictures would be great too..

UPDATE 14 Dec 2010: I got the Montgomery book for my birthday. You can get it here:

Anyway, there is a section on the Hi-Hatt Club. To answer some questions asked here:

1) Yes, 'Goldie' was the proprietress.

2) The 1968 movie with scenes at the Hi-Hatt Club was not Thunder Road, but The Road Hustlers. (It does not seem to be available on DVD or VHS).

3) The book doesn't definitively settle the question of whether the Club really was a house of ill repute, but states "Due to a renewal of complaints about the Hi-Hatt Club's liquor violations and rumors of prostitution, SLED (State Law Enforcement Division) raided it in 1973.

4) There are no exterior pictures of the club given.

UPDATE 20 March 2012 -- Well, The Road Hustlers has surfaced (subtitled in Norwegian, of course). I have not watched the movie as such, but simply fast forwarding through it leads me to believe there is only one scene set at The Hi Hatt Club, stills of which, and a youtube embed, are below.

The exterior shots at the beginning (Hi Hatt sign) and end (front porch of Hi Hatt) are definitely the club. Unfortunately they are so dark as to be almost invisible. I don't *know* the interior shots for the scene to be the actual Hi Hatt Club, but it seems unlikely that a shoestring drive-in quickie would build a sound set for such a thing. Perhaps some old Hi Hatt patrons can comment..