Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This Walgreen's was originally an Eckerd's and then a Rite Aid, as you can see from the design of the building. It sits on an oddly shapped lot at the intersection of North Main & Colonial, and was the only drug store in the general vicinity.

Here is a story from The State about the closing, and how the neighborhood was very unhappy about it. Here's more from WLTX

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

This isn't quite the post I thought I would be making. Here's the thing: I remember a local restaurant that was on this side of Rosewood Drive for many, many years. It was on my "someday" list though I didn't get to it and it was torn down after I moved out of town. The only anecdote I can remember about it right now was that in the late 80s, or maybe the 90s, USC had a famous football coach (whose name I can't remember, let's call him Freddie) commit to come coach the Gamecocks. The whole town was in a commotion, and this restaurant put up on their signboard: Freddie heard about our food!.

Then, of course, the Chicken Curse struck, and he reneged on the deal and decided not to come to Carolina -- leaving the restaurant flat-footed for a couple of days with a very ironic sign.

Anyway, I was pretty sure this was the spot, but the only thing I can see before the old building was torn down to put up the Eckerd's which became Rite Aid is a pool hall called Charlie's which tried several times (apparently with success in the end to get a liquor license).

UPDATE 7 Dec 2010: Updated post title to Charlie's Cue & Cushion based on the coments.

UPDATE 10 August 2020: I have not noted it previously, but this Rite Aid closed as all the others did, and is now a Walgreens. Also added map icon, added Rite Aid to the title, updated tags.

I posted before about bygone Columbia grocery chain Edens. After I located one of the buildings on Rosewood, I have been looking for some of the others from time to time when I remember. I didn't have any luck with the two Main Street locations, but here is the Harden Street one.

Growing up, this was always Eckerd's to me, and it never really occurred to me that it had not been built as a pharmacy. Looking at it now though, I'm pretty sure this must be the original grocery building from the 1950s. In particular, I don't think anyone would site the doors on the street instead of the parking lot on any building newer than that. In fact, thinking about it, I'm surprised nobody ever changed that.

UPDATE 24 Nov 2010: Added Greenbax Stamps and Thrift Store to post title based on comments.

UPDATE 30 Nov 2010: Changed "Thrift Store" to "Community Thrift" based on Dennis's comment.

UPDATE 26 November 2019 -- This place is now Pet Supermarket:

UPDATE 10 August 2020: Update tags, change Eckerd's in post title to Eckerd Drugs.

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?

Read the rest of this entry »

Here's yet another of Columbia's (or West Columbia's in this case) former Eckerd Drugs locations, and like a number of former drugstores in the area, it's been re-purposed as a discount store, a Dollar General in this case. I didn't get any front-on shots because people were in and out constantly while I was parked next door at Walgreens, but it's the standard Eckerds look.

I'm not sure when the Walgreens went in, but its being there may have something to do with why this Eckerds did not continue life as a Rite Aid.

UPDATE 13 May 2011: Changed the closing date in the post title based on commenter Andrew's research.

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

This space, to the right of Barnes & Noble on the lower level of Richland Mall was the mall's drugstore, Eckerd Drugs.

I'm trying to remember if the original Richland Mall had a drug store and I don't think it did. Eckerd's came in with the enclosed Richland Fashion Mall stage, and may have ended there. I don't think it made it to the Midtown at Forest Acres stage, but I'm not sure exactly when that started, and I refuse to call the mall that anyway.

It certainly did not make it as late as the Rite-Aid buyout of Eckerd's. I'm not sure exactly when it closed, but I think it was the early 2000s. By that time, Eckerd's had already seen the writing on the wall which required corner stores, and had moved the Trenholm Plaza store to the current corner-equivalent location that RIte AId on Forest Drive now occupies. The Richland Mall store had no drive-through, and could never have one, and while the parking was as close to strip-mall parking as Richland Mall gets, it still wasn't as good as a real strip-mall.

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

Here's another Eckerd's that didn't survive into the Rite Aid era. This one is at the intersection of North Main and Sunset Drive and is now a Family Dollar. Not related to the store, but I've always disliked this intersection because just after it crosses Main, Sunset narrows to one lane with very little warning. I move into the left lane before crossing, but it seems as though someone always gets caught by surprise and wants to merge suddenly into my lane.

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

Here's another closed Eckerd store, although google indicates that this one was open as recently as the Rite Aid transition, which is not how I recall it. This store sits at the intersection of Two Notch and Beltline, and is now a children's dental clinic.

I'm pretty sure this location also once housed the local AMC dealership, name now forgotten, where I bought a really awful, I mean world class bad, car, though all those structures have since been torn down (or if they were like the car, may have just fallen apart..)

UPDATE 25 January 2012 -- Interestingly, the building directly across the street (in the old Payless Shoes/Carzzz location) is also becoming a dental clinic.

UPDATE 10 August 2020: Add tags, map icon, change "Eckerd" to "Eckerd Drugs" & "Rite Aid Drugs" to "Rite Aid" in post title.

UPDATE 17 November 2022: Changed title from "Eckerd Drugs / Rite Aid" to "Rite Aid / Eckerd Drugs" based on the comments.

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 suppose I shouldn't do two Eckerd Drugs posts so close together, but writing about the one on Taylor Street made me think about the one at Dutch Square, and I already had the pix, so why not?

The Eckerd's at Dutch Square is the only Eckerd's I know of which had a lunch counter. Even at the time Dutch Square was built in the early 70s, drugstore lunch counters were on the way out, but I suppose they figured they had a captive audience and plenty of foot traffic, like an old downtown, plus there was no food court at the time (I believe Chik-Fil-A, Annabelle's and a cafeteria were the only restaurants in the mall).

The layout of this store was a bit unusual. I have taken the pictures catty-cornered because that was the way the store was oriented. You can see that the current tenant, The Dress Barn has an entrance on both the main up-and-down corridor of the mall and on the cross corridor leading to a mall entrance on the Dutch Square Boulevard side of the mall. So did Eckerd's, with the lunch counter being situated crossways such that if you walked in through the main corridor entrance and out through the cross corridor entrance, you would have walked across the whole lunch counter space parallel to the counter.

Between the lunch counter area and the main store proper, there was a silver turnstile which only allowed passage in not out, which I always considered an unfriendly touch, but I suppose it helped with shoplifting since there was no store checkout on the lunch counter side (the store entrance with registers was on the cross-corridor near the mall door).

There was also an Eckerd's in Columbia Mall, and I'm unsure which store packed it in first, but I'm pretty sure the Dutch Square one did not make it out of the 1990s.

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