Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Home Furniture in Irmo closed in late September. To the best of my recollection, I had never been on the segment of Lake Murray Boulevard below Columbiana Drive before, and there was a lot more development there than my memories of visiting the Lake Murray area 30 years ago would have led me to expect.

According to this PDF though, Home Furniture had been around a lot longer than 30 years ( and a lot longer than I have for that matter!) -- 63 years. Also, from the PDF, it appears that they had a temporary closing back in January 2010 so the original owner could retire. Assuming those plans went through, I'm guessing the continuing housing slump kept the store from coming back full strength after the transition. At any rate, this closing seems to be final, unfortunately -- the electronic sign was cycling through an offer to lease the building along with the closure notice.

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

UPDATE 14 July 2013: Commenter Andrew points to this story in The State saying that Home Furniture is open again. I have updated the post title to reflect that.

UPDATE 14 April 2014: Fixed above update date to say July 2013 instead of July 2014..

Main Street, Columbia S.C. Showing location of ECKERD'S Modern Drug Store, Located at 1530 Main Street, Columbia, South Carolina

ECKERD'S Modern Prescription Department Employs Six Registered Druggists. 1530 Main Street, Columbia S. C. "Creators of Reasonable Drug Prices"

ECKERD'S Modern 42½ Ft. Soda Fountain. Seating Capacity of Luncheonette Dept.: 176. "Creators of Reasonable Drug Prices". 1530 Main Street, Columbia S. C.

ECKERD'S Modern Drug Store, Employs a Personnel of 42 Sales People. "Creators of Reasonable Drug Prices" 1530 Main Street Columbia, S. C.

There is no date on these postcards, but from the cars in the first shot, I'm guessing post-war, but not by much -- I'm sure a car expert (hint) could pin it down much more closely.

To the best of my memory, I never visited the downtown Eckerd's, and in fact don't recall it in operation at all. Given that, tempered with the fact that some people have mentioned from time to time in the comments that they do remember it, I'm putting the closing as probably the early or mid 1960s.

The building is certainly an imposing one, and one which does not say "drugstore" at all, with the stone facade and dramatic arches on the second and third floors. You might almost expect to see someone clutch his chest dramatically and fall over the third-floor railing as a gunshot echoes up and down the street..

And, in fact, the name plaque styles the building as the "Historic Canal Dime Savings Bank", so presumably it was built for that long vanished operation. The last postcard suggests that Eckerd's was a deep, narrow, one story operation. Does anyone know if there was another business upstairs?

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The Little Red Barn was a touristy gift shop that operated on US-17 just north of the draw-bridge in Georgetown during the late 1960s. At least that's when I'm guessing it closed -- I would have been around 9 or so years old, so the memories are pretty vague at that remove.

The place was (and is) on the route between Columbia and Pawleys Island, and was a stop we kids always wanted our parents to make, though they did so very infrequently.

Inside, the place was kind of Hammock Shop-lite, and skewed a bit more to the tacky side of roadside tourism, or at least those were the items most interesting to me. I remember bein particularly scandalized by a "belly button lint picker" joke device, and I'm sure there were some "Please Don't Pick The Daisies" type postcards.

Outside, though was the reason the place was really special to us kids: peacocks!

There was a little open shed to the left and behind the actual "red barn" building, which had a number of peacocks behind screen wire (I think that sometimes they would walk around "loose" as well). The thing about peacocks is that they don't feel like showing off very often, but when they do, it's spectacular and given that these were the only peacocks we had ever seen besides NBC, we always wanted to stop on the off chance that they felt pretty that day.

After the Red Barn closed as a gift shop, my memory is that it was vacant for a while, and then in the 1970s, it became the office building for a plant nursery which was run on the land surrounding the building. I think that lasted until quite recently, but is now closed, and the building is again unused (and starting to need a few repairs).

As for the peacocks? Well, I suspect they tasted like chicken.

UPDATE 16 June 2011: Added 14 August 2010 Photoset.

UPDATE 23 May 2012: Updated the closing date in the post title from "1960s" to "1970s" based on commenter Ali's information.

Photoset 14 August 2010.

Joyner's (as we called it) was a place my mother liked to visit every now and then. That's because you never had any idea what they might have in stock (and probably they didn't either!). They listed under Surplus & Salvage, and that pretty much describes the place.

It wasn't quite the same concept as Big Lots because while everything at Big Lots may be overstocked or something that no sane person would want, Joyner's specialized in beat up stuff that may have been fine items in themselves but couldn't be sold as new. Or that was a lot of it anyway, though I do specifically recall buying some bottles of Rodenberry's Cane Patch syrup there (a memory from growing up, which it was a favorite of my grandfather, who put it on biscuits) that didn't seem damaged.

Commenter Dennis described the store this way:

The place closed not too long after I left town in 1985, last listing in the Feb 87-88 phonebook. The space now seems to be some sort of transmission and towing operation.

Unique Lighting Center has been on O'Neil Court, just down from Parklane and beside the former NAPA store for a number of years. I actually had occasion to go in there about a year ago. I was looking for a replacement bulb-clasp shade. I had looked unsuccessfuly in a number of non-specialty locations with no luck, but they actually had one here. I figured that eventually I would go back to see if they could replace the globe in an old mogul-base floor-lamp I have, but that's yet another task I didn't get around to soon enough.

UPDATE 16 Oct 2010 -- They are definitely closed now. The banners are still up, but the door signs say "Store Closed" & "Out of Business":

I'm not sure exactly when this store, in Dentsville across from Columbia mall, and near the Two Notch / Decker intersection closed, but it is still listed in this years phonebook.

The motto, "Furniture, flooring and more" seems rather ambitious for what is a pretty small storefront. They must have had a warehouse somewhere to support everything shown here in this archived version of their website from 2008. This area of Two Notch is still struggling. I'd like to see something go in there, but I have to say that since there's no light, it's not well situated for traffic heading towards town.

UPDATE 28 Sep 2010: Added "Color Tile" to the post title based on the comments.

UPDATE 22 March 2011 -- It's now a "Cheapo" grocery:

I'm not sure when this NAPA Auto Parts on Garners Ferry Road, just across the street from Aldi closed. However, it's in this year's phonebook (which would have come out around Feb 2010), so it can't have been too long ago.

The photos are shot against the sun and so aren't too good, but you can see it's quite a sizeable building. It seems to have been a machine shop as well as a parts store, and so similar in size to the one on Millwood.

UPDATE 19 December 2012 -- It's now Kids Club USA:

I'm drawing a complete blank on Appliance Professional in West Columbia just across from Zesto. I'm sure I saw it open many times, but not being in appliance-buying-mode, my eyes just skipped right over it. Anyway, it appears they moved to Saint Andrews Road (East of Broad River Road) this summer and the building is now available.

Really, the building isn't that interesting, but I like the reflections of the Zesto cone.

UPDATE 24 Sep 2010: Added a picture of the front side of the building that I forgot.

Mushi Mushi (can anyone translate that?) was in the little strip adjacent to the Wal Mart and old Fire Mountain Grill / Ryan's on Garners Ferry Road (and almost next to the old Larry's Subs).

There are actually a number of vacancies in this complex, which seems to me to be in a reasonably good location -- there's direct access from Wal Mart and an additional light for side access from Garners Ferry. Of course, in this case, the old Ryan's being a Hibichi Grill itself now can't have helped.

I never ate at Mushi, in fact I don't think I've eaten at any "hibachi" place. I certainly couldn't get my mind around sushi, I'm afraid. Maybe if they had tried this concept I might have stopped by..

(Hat tip to commenter Midnight Rambler)

UPDATE 25 October 2018: Add tags,update post title format, add map icon.

Because 1928 Rosewood Drive was the site of Chippendolls, which is one of the more popular posts here, I always notice the buliding when I drive by.

The other day, it seemed to me that something was different, and it finally hit me that I was pretty sure that Gamecock Stop had occupied the whole building at one point. Looking back at my photos for Chippendolls (like the first one above) I confirmed that, as does this Loopnet posting.

Google also turned up an entry for S & S Art Supply in the "B" part of the building. Apparently that came and moved before I even noticed Gamecock Stop vacating that part of the building. This blog post says they opened on 8 Aug 2009, and apparently sometime this year they moved to 1633 Main Street.