Bank of America, 6614 Garners Ferry Road: late 2000s 15 comments
I've been with Bank of America since it was North Carolina National Bank though it seems to change names often enough that sometimes I just think of it as North Carolina Nations Bank of America (actually there are even more other names it has absorbed as well). I'm afraid they haven't had a very good last few years, and I suspect it will be a while before they start absorbing anyone else (and indeed, it could go the other way..).
None of which is appropos as to why I have no memory at all of ever having seen this branch at Landmark Square before I noticed it closed driving down Garners Ferry Road the other day.
UPDATE 1 Oct 2010: According to The State, this building is to become a Krispy Kreme. (The story is a bit vague on whether it will be a full Hot Dougnuts Now! location, or will get doughnuts bussed in from Cayce).
UPDATE 9 March 2011 -- Work has started, presumably on the Krispy Kreme conversion:
UPDATE 28 March 2011 -- Work proceeds, and the official Krispy Kreme "coming soon" sign is up:
UPDATE 20 May 2011 -- The Krispy Kreme is open!
Raco Gas Station, 619 Gervais Street: 2008 6 comments
I'm not really sure this Raco station closed in 2008, but it looks decrepit enough to have been gone longer than a few months, and the listed gas price is too high to have been any earlier than that.
I'm not sure what the deal with "Raco" is. Googling turns up a few other Raco stations, but there doesn't seem to be any Raco company or company web site. There are certainly not common at any rate, and had you asked me "what's that station on Gervais called?" I would have drawn a total blank.
I was a bit surprised walking up and down The Vista Sunday that there are a number of properties for sale. I wonder if when they closed this station down, they figured they would be able to unload the lot quickly and at a good profit..
Waller's Grocery, Leesburg Road: 1973 14 comments
I really don't know anything about this building on Leesburg Road near James Browder Road. It does have that classic "country general store" look though. From the construction, I would guess that it was built pre-war. Even the electrical connection with the obvious insulators has kind of a 1930s look. The closing date I assigned, 1960s, is a total guess. The place has obviously not seen any maintenance in quite a while, but it could have easily lasted into the 1970s or even longer. Even today, the area is very rural, and some odd retail establishements (like Mr. Bunky's on the Sumter Highway) still survive.
The Great Train Store / All Wound Up, Columbiana Centre: July 2000 7 comments
Except for the last one, which I took today, these pictures come from commenter Thomas who writes:
Was going through my photos and I had a few more I wanted to send you.
The Great Train Store: open 11/1996-7/2000.
I worked there from the opening to the closing of the store. It was a great place to work. Ten years later many of the employees still keep in regular touch with each other.
As a store the Columbia store (Store 30) was very successful. The store closed as a result of the failure of the company as a whole. At its largest the Great Train Store had more than 56 stores including SC stores in Columbia, Myrtle Beach, and Greenville. The store was located in Columbania Center where Build a Bear is now.
The Columbia store was the second to last store in the chain to close. The Myrtle Beach store (at Broadway at the Beach) closed a week later.
China City / Little China Buffet, 2500 Decker Boulevard: January 2010 (closed again) 9 comments
I believe this Chinese restaurant on a Decker Mall outparcel has been there in one form or another ever since Decker Mall opened, making it much more durable than any of the stores inside the mall.
I'm not really sure when it closed. I was driving by today around noon and noticed that there were no cars in the lot, which I thought was odd, so I stopped to take a look. There is absolutely no indication that it is closed, other than the fact that it was not open. There was no "Sorry, Thanks for X Wonderful Years!" sign or anything like that, and all the fixtures still seem to be in place as well as third party items such as the gumball machines.
I'm saying "Jan 2010" then since that is recently enough to look fresh but far enough in the past that the phone being disconnected (which it is) makes sense.
This place is almost across the street from the old Jumbo Asian Buffet which is also defunct, but there is another Chinese restaurant just up the hill on Decker a bit, so the neighboorhood is not totally bereft.
UPDATE 19 Feb 2010: Added "China City" to the post title based on the comments.
UPDATE 5 June 2012 -- Somebody has been working inside this building recently after years of no activity at all:
UPDATE 12 July 2012 -- Open again!
UPDATE 14 November 2019: Updating the post status to "closed again". As I mention in the comments, I had taken new pictures and actually updated this post at one point to reflect the second closing, but lost it in a database crash. The pictures at least I should be able to dig up again if I remember to make an effort. Also updated the tags and added a map icon.
UPDATE 28 February 2020 -- Here are some pictures I found from 12 April 2015:
UPDATE 17 May 2024 -- It looks like this building may finally be about to meet the wrecking ball:
UPDATE 18 June 2024 -- Still no sign of demolition, I think they are just tearing the parking lot up for infrastructure work:
Lorick & Lowrance Mercantile / The Bank of Columbia / The Argyle Social Club, 1537 Main Street: late 2000s 3 comments
OK, I'm not entirely sure what to make of this one. The Lorick & Lowrance Mercantile Building is another of those great old Main Street buildings, with all the fancy work on top, and is on the City of Columbia landmark list.
I don't know what Lorick & Lowrance Mercantile originally sold, but the name suggests general retail merchandise. Anyway, it seems prosaic enough.
Where it gets a little odd is with the introduction of the Columbia Atheneum and Argyle Social Club. If you go to the "history" tab on this site, you'll find the story of a 150 year old Columbia high-rollers club "[whose] location has been kept hidden from the general public" -- It almost sounds like a put-on, your 2nd grade secret-clubhouse on steroids..
At any rate, the plan apparently was to come out of hiding, sell shares and buy the Lorick building. (There's a litle more information here). Since this was all supposed to happen in 2007 and the building is for lease today, I would say that something went wrong.
Interestingly, the building now has its own web site..
Pulliam-Morris Interiors, 2909 Devine Street: 2009 (moved) no comments
I was checking out Cantina 76 in the old Birds On A Wire location on Devine Street (it turned out to be closed on Sundays) when I noticed the building next door was vacant. It's a rather striking one -- a nice two story brick structure with multiple chimneys.
Since I'm not really an "interior design" person, it had never really struck my eye when it housed Pulliam-Morris (now located at 906 Harden Street), but it seems as though it would be a really classy location for a small law firm or accountancy.
Hi Hatt Drive In aka The Hi Hatt Club, 3830 Forest Drive: 1973 75 comments
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:
The town limits formed an irregular rectangle that paralleled Forest Drive. The original area of incorporation was two square miles with the northern and southern boundaries lying one half mile on each side of the road. The eastern boundary ran north to south a thousand feet to the east of Gill Creek. The western boundary lay two miles to the west paralleling the eastern boundary. The boundaries did not change right away, but over the years the city grew to the east and primarily to the north. Forest Acres was planned to be a residential area. Existing businesses were grandfathered in, but new businesses were not to be opened. Because of loopholes in the laws, this was not enforceable. To the chagrin of the local residents, the old Bethel School at the comer of Forest Drive and Landmark Drive (3830 Forest Drive) had closed, and the Hi Hatt (pronounced High Hat) Club had opened in the building. The Hi Hatt Club, an early form of nightclub, was in the area in 1935. The city founders would have liked to have seen it close, but it managed to stay open. Over the years, especially in the 1960's, the Hi Hatt Club was rumored to be a place of prostitution, or a "whore house," as such operations were called. Mothers shielded their children from it, but the Hi Hatt Club's reputation made it a big source of interest and a hot topic of conversation for teenage boys. Frowns and concern could never close it, but a good financial offer to purchase the land to construct office buildings finally brought it to an end. The city officials, from the beginning on, wanted only wholesome businesses in the area with protection and privacy for the nearby residential properties.
Here's a bit of information on the appearance of the club from commenter FirstDennis:
Does ANYbody remember the Hi Hat Club on Forest Drive, not too far from Beltline? I asked William Price Fox about it, because he is a wealth of info on stuff like this, but he cannot recall it. I swear I’m not making it up, though. It was a white wooden building. Had a neon sign shaped like a top hat.
Commenter BR suggests the place was informally known as Goldie's:
......
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Commenter Michael Taylor passes along this information from his uncle:
Hi-Hat Club update: My 91 year old uncle is the last remaining person of that generation alive for me personally, and I’ve been hitting him up for city history a little at a time so as not to wear him out. The latest nugget should tickle all the “Hi-Hatters” out there. Dig this, before it was a honky tonk the building was a 2-room schoolhouse and my uncle went there for a bit. Unfortunately he is not a photographer and doesn’t even have a photograph of his old garden center. Oy vey!
Something a little less certain that I remember from my father talking about the Hi Hat Club back when it was still a working honky tonk in the 1960s is his insistence that a couple of scenes for the cult Robert Mitchum movie “Thunder Road” were filmed there in 1958 or so. According to this wikipedia entry for the movie, most of the principle filming was done in Asheville, NC, so this at least puts the production crew to within a few hours drive. It’s not uncommon to film several locations for one final composited location. In other words, if you were filming a honky tonk scene, you may film the interior of some place on the outskirts of Asheville and the exterior of some distinctive juke joint in the suburbs of Columbia SC and then edit them to look seamless. It seems excessive, but often one place looks better on the outside and the other place looks better on the inside and because they can, film crews do this stitching all the time and you’d never know it.
Going against my father’s story is that the South Carolina film database doesn’t have “Thunder Road” listed, however it mostly lists the films that have been primarily filmed here. It does list a “Thunder In Carolina” stock car movie (with Rory Calhoun and Alan Hale, Jr., the skipper from “Gilligan’s Island) filmed in Darlington in 1960, which my father could have been confusing with “Thunder Road”. But on the side of a film crew having filmed a few scenes at the Hi-Hat Club for “Thunder Road,” here is an interview with Mitchum’s son James on the 50th anniversary of the film where he mentions that some of the inspiration came from their South Carolina cousins’ moonshining and fast driving. I could see Mitchum coming down the short drive from Asheville for some scenes at the Hi-Hat Club, it was such a wild looking little honky tonk. I suppose one way to solve this would be to rent both movies and watch them with hawk eyes and keep an eye out for that crazy neon sign on top of the club. And speaking of signs, wonder what ever happened to that sign, bet it’s at the bottom of a trash heap somewhere.
I can see that place in my mind’s eye just as clearly as this computer screen, but sadly, 41 years or more later it’s not enough, especially with websites like this. Right this very moment there is a box of photographs with photos of places like the Hi-Hat Club and YOU may know the person who has them.
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..
Thanks A Lot, Punxsutawney Phil.. no comments
Mary Ella's, 2911 Millwood Avenue, early 2010 1 comment
This picture comes from commenter Dennis, who says:
I was very excited when Mary Ella's opened about a year ago because I'm in this neighborhood a lot and there's nowhere to eat lunch. (2911 Millwood is across the street from Epworth Children's Home property.)
I went exactly once and the food was good, and hot, and not overly expensive, but... you know how sometimes a place just isn't for you even though you couldn't say why? Maybe it's because the place is so tiny -- about 10 tables -- and soo quiet. Great place to read I guess. They advertised a southern homemade style buffet, but the building is so small the buffet stayed on the stove in the kitchen and the one waitress brought you what you asked for from a chalkboard menu. Made me self-conscious about seconds and thirds, which to me is the point of a buffet.
So Mary Ella's is done and the banner promises the grand opening of Cafe Millwood. Could not tell if they're open yet or not. I peeked through the windows and did not see any change at all from Mary Ella's. The sign says breakfast which will be great if true.
I do know that feeling. In a small place especially, you can get too much attention.