Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I first wrote about this building, near the corner of College & Harden in Five Points, when I did a closing on Rising High. Rising High was killed (mostly) by the Harden Street roadwork of a few years ago which also claimed The Parthenon, and The Congaree Grill was the next operation in the building.

I never actually got around to eating there, and people have offered varying opinions in comments to other posts as to how good it was. My impression gleaned by osmosis was that it was supposed to be a somewhat upscale interpretation of Southern Food.

The new restaurant in the building is Pawleys Front Porch. The name invokes a certain casualness, and when I went in last week after having my taxes done across the street, it did seem rather laid back. I got the impression from the layout that its central identity is as a bar, but the Bacon, Lettuce & Pimento Cheese sandwich I got was excellent as were the onion rings.

The North 1 Drive-In was on Two Notch road, though not as far out as I had remembered. However the area, between Alpine Road and Spring Valley was pretty much the boonies when I was growing up -- in fact the "1" in "North 1" is for US Highway #1. Two Notch did technically extend that far out, but people thought of that area by "highway" not a named road. The same still applies, I think, to Elgin though that may change as Columbia continues to sprawl.

As I think I said somewhere else, I only went to one drive-in as a kid, and I'm pretty sure it was on the coast somewhere. At any rate, by the time I was in high school, North had gone porno. That made it impossible to go to officially of course, though there were rumors among the kids that if you went to the right spot in the woods, you could see in.

I'm not sure when the place finally closed, though Dennis, who pointed out the location to me in a comment thinks it was about 20 years ago, which would be 1989-ish.

The pictures (aside from the Sunday 15 April 1973 ad from The State) are taken from Two Notch going down the old theater drive to the health club now built on the old North lot. It was one of those miserable rainy days we've had lately, so they're pretty subdued.

Today's picture comes from reader Thomas who says:

Here is a pic of the old S&S on Gervais. I took it in 97 when I was USC and they announced it was closing and would be torn down.

I can only recall eating at this S & S once. If I remember correctly, we took my aunt from Florida there for some reason -- perhaps after shopping downtown. What always impressed me about cafeterias as a kid was how different the rice was from what we got at home or family gatherings. Family rice was very sticky and fluffy. Cafeteria rice, on the other hand, was a dish of discrete rice grains which did not stick together at all. I suspect now that cafeteria rice is parboiled or converted as Uncle Ben might say. Why anyone would prefer it that way I can't say, but it would make it easier to clean the dishes at a commercial establishment, I suppose.

S & S still has an operation at Richland Mall, where it replaced the old Morrison's cafeteria, which in turn replaced the older Redwood cafeteria (which was the cafeteria we mostly went to when I was a kid). For some reason, there is a Japanese facebook page devoted to the Richland Mall operation, though I can only make it come up in English if I use the google cached version.

Thanks Thomas!

I noticed a few months ago that this little building on Two Notch Road, at the bottom of the hill between Pinestraw Road and Pine Belt Road, was now a Nationwide Insurance office. I see this month that they are moving to another location on Two Notch, leaving the building vacant again.

Insurance is usually a pretty staid business (unless you are AIG..), but this location has a somewhat racier past. In particular, back in 1987, you might have found the address listed under Escort Services:

The next iteration was a perfectly normal used car lot, except I always found the name, still on the shed out behind the main building, just a bit ironic:

UPDATE 20 December 2011 -- The Tonya D. Parks Nationwide has now moved into this place, following the other Nationwide office:

I've been doing some research this weekend, and by research, I mean Xeroxing old phonebooks.

I've had some old USC phonebooks in the house and have used them here from time to time, but old Columbia phonebooks are surprisingly hard to come by. I believe I've hit all the antique malls in town at one time or another without any result, and even went so far as to put an ad on Craigslist. Even that one though only netted me a 2000 book (though it is much appreciated!), not anything from the 50s through 90s.

Then I had one of those D'oh! moments and went down to the RCPL on Assembly street and it turns out they have AT&T/Bellsouth/Southern Bell books back into the 1930s! (They also have "city directories" and some of the off-brand phonebooks as well). These are all on the third floor in the local history room. The only fly in the ointment is that they don't circulate, so you have to look at them there, and Xeroxes are $0.20 per sheet. (Perhaps I'll try taking some copies with the closing-cam, like I'm starring in my own spy movie..).

Anyway, I've got a number of old Yellow Pages ads that will be turning up here as new posts and updates to old posts.

I'm not entirely sure I have the title for this post right. Googling "201 Harbison" Columbia brings up Popeye's as the most common hit, but also suggests the place may have been Harbison Exxon, or Taco Bell. In fact the place does look like it had gas islands. Was it an Exxon convenience store with an attached restaurant which flipped from Taco Bell to Popeye's perhaps?

I suppose if I paid more attention, I would remember, but I don't eat at either restaurant, and I would never stop for gas at that point on Harbison -- it was after 6 when I took these shots, and Harbison was still a real mess. I had gone out to take some pictures of Circuit City, and it was still really difficult to get where I wanted to go in the area across all the traffic.

UPDATE 17 March 2012: Updated the closing date to "March 2008" based on research in the comments. Also added a note that the attached gas station was a BP in the post title.

UPDATE 26 January 2022: Updating tags and adding map icon.

This building, on Pinestraw Road just below Satchelford Road, was a convenience store in the 1970s. I can't now recall if it were a "national" brand or a one-off, but I don't think it lasted very long. I'm not sure why -- the area is mainly residential, and I would have expected a good bit of foot traffic, especially since kids were still allowed to roam a little at the time.

At any rate, after the store closed, the (somewhat remodeled) building was still apparently in use, but never for anything "public". I think I saw service type trucks pulling in and out a few times, but it was always a bit mysterious. I guess that has ended, as the building is now up for lease.

UPDATE 22 September 2016: add Young's to the post title and update the closing date from 1970s to early 1980s based on the comments.

Lionel Playworld was, I believe, the first anchor tenant for the ill-fated strip-mall at the corner of Decker and Trenholm Extension (though I am not sure the extension was finished at the time it opened). The place keeps coming up in the comments to the Columbia Mall Toys-R-Us post, so I thought I would give it its own post.

My understanding is that the chain was owned by the same company that made the iconic 3-rail 0-27 guage model trains, and was a "big box" toy store, one of the first in the Columbia market. The place operated fairly quietly until the end when it earned a lot of bad will from the shopping public. I believe the way it unfolded was that the decision to close the store was made in the fall, but not announced. They operated through Christmas Eve, and then closed without warning, leaving anyone with a Christmas gift to return or exchange high and dry -- it got quite a bit of local media attention at the time.

After Lionel the strip went into heavy decline, and the building sat empty for a number of years until Winn-Dixie opened there (in the left part of the building) with great fanfare. After Winn-Dixie pulled out of South Carolina, the building sat idle for several years again, until The Comedy House relocated there from the Saint Andrews Road area (after a gap). From the signage, a bingo operation also now uses the location.

Continuing my recent theme of defunct Eckerd stores, this one on Broad River Road at the intersection with Saint Andrews Road (and across from the old Steve's #1 Sub Contractor sub shop) was, if I recall correctly, one of the newer stores. It has the "modern" corner-lot siting with a drive-through. It sits, in fact, catty-cornered across the street from a new-ish CVS of the same vintage, proving the site is viable for drugstores -- I suspect that if Eckerd's in general hadn't had problems and had held on to this store a few years more, Rite Aid could have done a viable business there.

UPDATE 8 March 2011 -- It's now a Dollar Tree:

UPDATE 10 August 2020: Add map icon, update tags.

I don't have any feelings for or against Circle K. I'm glad to stop at one if I need gas or an Interstate "comfort" break, but I don't seek them out. I'd always imagined they were pretty stable businesses though -- people are always going to need gas, restrooms and snacks, so I was a bit surprised to see that this one, on Broad River Road next to Rush's and across the street from the defunct AMF Bowling Center had gone under.

On the other hand, Broad River Road near I-20 isn't doing great in general what with the bowling center gone, Intersection Center (virtually) gone, Dutch Square a shadow of its former self, Pizza Hut gone, Hooters gone etc.

UPDATE 21 December 2011 -- Here are some pictures from 23 October 2011 as work on getting the tanks out and stripping the canopy begins:

UPDATE 4 April 2012 -- The new canopy is complete, and as commenter Andrew mentions, "El Cheapo" gas pumps have been installed. There is obviously a good bit of work left to do, but apparently it it will be an El Cheapo:

UPDATE 24 August 2012 -- El Cheapo is open (and has been for a while):

UPDATE 23 March 2023: Updating tags, adding map icon.