Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This corner space at Trenholm Plaza was most recently occupied by The UPS Store, but when I was growing up, it was Ed Robinson's, though I probably never knew it by name.

My mother did not believe in clothes dryers, opting for a clothes-line in the back yard. This was fine most of the time, but since rain is not unknown in the Columbia area, every now and then we would be faced with a need for clothes that were not yet dry. In addition to that, in the 1960s I had the impression that our washer was something of a lemon. There were fairly frequent calls to the service man, and more than once I recall the floor covered in sudsy water.

When we needed clothes washed or dryed, there were two choices: either the laundomat by what is now city hall on Trenholm Road, or the one in Trenholm Plaza. I think that when my mother had to deal with us children, we tended to end up at Ed Robinson since she could let us "free-range" around the plaza while the clothes were cycling.

As I recall, the staffed laundry was in the east end of the building with the laundromat area being in the west end. The laundromat area was filled with tables and wheeled hampers, and smelled of soap and hot lint. As I recall, the tables were some sort of plastic, or covered with plastic and hued aqua-marine. I would sit on them, and swing my legs back and forth (this must have been before I could read, or I would have had a book). As a boy I was fascinated by mechanical devices of all sorts, and I was particularly fixated on the gas dryers which lined the west wall. Not only did they have sort of retro-spaceship-control sliders for varying the temp from "warm" to "way too hot", but they were large enough (floor to ceiling) that I could imagine actually riding in one (this was during Gemini & Apollo) with more room to spare than the astronauts had. The start (or "blast off") process was particularly satisfying as you put your quarter in a slot way at the top of the machine (I had to use a chair), turned a knob which had a very satisfying action, heard your coin drop with a cheery plink, and then got to push the starter button which wound the whole thing up.

The washers were not quite as interesting, but did have a variety of little plastic tops you could put on the agitator for reasons which escape me now, and of course you could always play "open the lid -- washer stops" / "close the lid -- washer starts" until my mother would make me stop so she would get a full wash from her quarter.

I'm not sure when the cleaner closed. I know it was still there in 1970, but think it was gone by the time I left town in 1985. As for myself, while I agree with my mother that line dried clothes are nicer than tumble-dried ones, I don't have her patience. The line is still in the back yard, but the clothes go in the Kenmore. (And for all that I tend to be a "they don't make them like that anymore" guy, I don't think I've ever had to call service on a modern washer or drier..)

The original plan for Trenholm Plaza was to tear down the whole wing, and The UPS Store moved across the way in anticipation of that, but in the event the economy collapsed and management scaled their plans back to doing a remodel instead. Most of the spaces have been re-filled, but the old Ed Robinson space is currently still empty.

UPDATE 29 November 2011 -- It's to be a Cafe Caturra:

UPDATE 7 February 2012 -- The Cafe Caturra looks about ready to open:

Here's a non-descript little warehouse on Gervais Street between Millwood and Harden that I couldn't ever recall seeing before when I noticed the big for-sale sign out front.

Apparently it was a flower staging area for local florists. The 2009-2010 county property assessments list the owner as "METRO COLUMBIA FLORIST / DELIVERY COOPERATIVE INC" while the "Delivery Pool" language comes from this listing of local florists. LoopNet says the building dates from 1970 while the county link says 1987. To me it looks a bit more 70s-ish than 80s-ish.

It's rather interesting how every-other letter has fallen off of the start of "FLORIST", rendering is as "F O I". I take the "L" as having been part of "POOL" though the spacing looks pretty tight for that.

UPDATE 8 March 2011 -- Hmm. It's been painted, the old logo letters have been taken down, the for-sale sign is off in the corner and the door is open:

UPDATE 13 April 2011 -- It's to be "Detail & Body Works By Frank". Picture a little blurry..

UPDATE 23 December 2011 -- Now open:

I've always thought of Huddle House as a downmarket Waffle House, which is saying something, but it almost seems like the way Hardee's and Bantam Chef used to be related -- you saw the second in places that couldn't support the first. I'm pretty sure I've been in a Huddle at one time or another, but I have absolutely no reliable memory of such an occasion right now. I am sure I was never in this one which sits at the intersection of Rosewood Drive and Kilbourne Road.

The LoopNet listing suggests that the follow-on operation, one of Columbia's ubiquitous (but not apparently very lucrative) title pawn operations, has been closed at least since mid October 2010.

UPDATE 12 April 2012 -- It's now a Marco's Pizza:

UPDATE 17 August 2023 -- Update tags, add map icon.

First let me note that although no description of Myrtle Square Mall would be complete without the famous clock, I did not take that picture. It appears in the Wikipedia entry for the mall, and has been explicitly released into the public domain.

What can I say about Myrtle Square Mall? For many years, it was the mall on the Grand Strand and the "general" shopping destination on any beach trip. To be sure, there were outlet and specialty malls like Waccamaw Pottery, but MSM was the "it" place.

As kids, of course, The Pavilion was first in our hearts and minds, but over the years we took many trips to the mall as well.

It had a different mix of retail than anything in Columbia, with anchor stores I never saw elsewhere like Peebles as well as standard stores like Sears and Eckerds. For me, the main attraction was the book store just off the clock court. I cannot now recall the name, but it was either completely independant, or part of a small chain that never opened in Columbia, and I found that it had an interesting selection of science fiction books that I didn't see elsewhere. Recall that in those days the only books you knew about were the ones you saw on the shelves -- there was no Amazon where you could search for any book in the world, or that would recommend books to you based on your previous purchases. I can particularly recall finding there a a Virgil Finlay collection I had never heard of, and had no clue existed. Finlay was an old-school SF pulp illustrator who had an amazing black & white line and stipple style that was unsurpassed (in my opinion) until Stephen Fabian came on the scene, and in retrospect I think Finlay's work has aged better than Fabian's. Anyway -- I bought the book :-)

The record store (whose name I have also forgotten) seemed to have slightly different selections than the Columbia stores as well.

Apart from the stores, obviously I have to say something about the clock. It sat above the central court, and was a marvel of conceptual design. The version pictured above is in fact one of the later versions -- the first version had 60 colored balls suspended from the ceiling in a circle with suspened numbers (similar to those pictured) at every five minute mark. The bulk of the balls were one color, with the ones at the five second intervals being another. As ever second passed, another ball would illuminate until all 60 were lit at which point they would all go dark and the next numeral would be illuminated for the current minute. Hmm, or maybe the numerals were for the hours and there were seperate balls for the minutes. At any rate, you could sit there and watch the time pass before your eyes so to speak. It was not a particularly easy clock to read -- it always seemed to take a minute to figure out just what was lit, but it was a fun clock to read.

I remember a number of interesting solo trips to the mall. The first was when I had just started to drive. My mother and I had gone to the beach to winterize the beach house, and having done that, she agreed to let me drive while she walked on the beach. Well, that's an always risky permission to give to a teenager, and I headed straight to the mall, despite it being a 25 mile drive one way. I had no particular goal other than I was, by gosh, going to drive, but I did end up getting some Trixie Belden books for my sister's birthday from Sears of all places. Needless to say my mother was not pleased at being ditched for three hours longer than she had planned to be...

Another trip to Sears years later (and near the end of the store's life) for dryer parts also yielded a trove of retro flashlights of the kind I grew up with, and which I thought were no longer being made -- I still have four or five.

I'm unsure why Burroughs & Chapin decided to deep six the mall. Certainly it was somewhat dated, but that could have been fixed by a remodel. I suppose access was an issue, but it's not like there's an Interstate in Myrtle Beach, -- the replacement mall at Coastal Grand may have slightly better traffic at US-17 bypass and US-501, but it's not a slam dunk.

At any rate, by 2005 most of the stores had made the transition, and in 2006 they started knocking Myrtle Square Mall down. The fact that B&C owned the replacement mall meant that Myrtle Square never went through the "death of the old mall as the new mall draws stores and traffic" phase. It was not in B&C's interest to eake rents out of Myrtle Square while firing up Coastal Grand.

On the other hand, they seem not to have had any Plan B for the Myrtle Square Mall site. Currently the huge tract bounded by 23rd & 27th Avenues North on the north and south sides and Kings Highway and Oak Street on the east and west sides stands vacant (as does the other large B&C tract at the old Pavilion site). It's hard to believe that two such prime tracts in the heart of Myrtle Beach have sat vacant for so long. (Well, not completely vacant -- there's still an Office Depot which must have had a long term lease, and I saw signs of homeless presence in the bushes).

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This little strip-mall, The Shoppes at Meeting Place used to be home of Ye Olde Comic Shoppe, and a number of other operations over the years. It's kind of interesting in that it seems that each storefront has a first-level street number, ie: the first storefront is 501 Meeting Street, the next one is 503 Meeting Street, etc instead of "501-A, 501-B etc.

I don't know anything about Alternative Health Center other than it was apparently already gone by August of 2008, judging by the pictures from the Ye Olde closing. It still gets google hits though.

Title Cash of South Carolina is still listed on the strip-mall marquee, and so departed more recently. It sounds like a standard cash-for-car-title loan place. Curiously a number of these seem to have gone under recently, even though it's the kind of thing you would expect to do better in hard times.

I notice that while the 501 Meeting Street storefront seems to have only one door, it has two papered-over business signs, so it's entirely possible that it's a suite with two halves. I've tried enlarging and different enhancements, but I can't read what's behind the sign covers..

UPDATE 9 Jan 2011 -- That certainly is a conveniently specific insurance regulation, isn't it?

Monkey Business was an indoor arcade/amusement park off of US-1 in Lexington. I know it was open at the start of 2009, but am not totally sure that it made it into 2010.

The place was inside the largest part of a warehouse-like building (a Cheerleading school is in the smaller part), and had a number of different attractions. There were bouncy castles, jumbo slides, video games, skee-ball, a small carrousel, a snack bar and private rooms for birthday parties. I only went once, but my impression was that all the kids there were having a good time, and it appeared to be doing a good business.

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OK, I need some help with this one. The only things I know about this building are that it seems (there is no address on it) to be at 2250 Gervais Street, it was built in 1945 and is 280 square feet...

Just from the looks of it, I would say that it started life as a walk-up, window-service, restaurant. I know that over the years, I've seen a number of different operations there, but at this point, I can't bring any of them to mind.

In particular, I can't figure out why it seems to have a cairn out front:

F-Stop Camera Shop positions themselves as one of the last local photo stores. I'm afraid I haven't managed to visit yet, but from their site, it appears that they are following in the legacy of Jackson Camera with developing and printing supplies for the film photographer, and in fact go beyond that with rentable darkroom space.

They moved to 1224 B Huger Street (at Geddes Street) back in August. That leaves this stretch of Harden Street pretty well vacant, which is a shame, but the way it goes sometime..

(Hat tip to commenter ChiefDanGeorge)

UPDATE 8 February 2022 -- The State reports that 936 Harden is to become The Flying Biscuit Cafe.

Also adding map icon.

Well, thankfully, according to WLTX nobody was injured though $2,000,000 damage was done to the building by the fire which started in an oil heater.

This AAA Car Care Center opened rather recently, being built after a number of pre-existing buildings were taken down in May of 2008.

UPDATE 25 Dec 2010 -- More pictures from 21 Dec and 22 Dec:

UPDATE 30 Dec 2010 -- Here are some more pix from 26 Dec:

UPDATE 25 Feb 2011 -- Well, they've completely knocked down the building now (and the burned out SUV is gone..):

UPDATE 25 May 2011 -- rebuilding has started, here are some pix from 13 May 2011:

UPDATE 1 June 2011 -- Work continues in these pictures from 29 May:

UPDATE 30 August 2011 -- Nearly done:

UPDATE 20 October 2011 -- Open again:

I just noticed that the South Carolina Federal Credit Union on Millwood is gone, or mostly gone as their ATM is still there. The nice little building is at the corner(s) of Millwood, Washington & Heidt, not too far from the former NAPA auto parts building. If the lot does sell, I don't see much future for this building -- it's hard to visualize it as anything other than a bank.