Columbia Closings   What’s not in Columbia anymore

1101 Harden Street was the address for PT’s Cabaret, The Punch Line and Greenstreets as well as a gaggle of other businesses over the years including tax preparers, nightclubs, eateries, and military recruiters.

The building sat on the corner of Harden and Senate Streets (a corner I believe many people would be surprised exists..) across from Time Warner Cable and next to Food Lion. The ongoing demolition is supposed to result in a Cook Out restaurant being built, and although it was a separate address, the old Bob Andrews Motors building was also knocked down as part of the project.

Lots of pictures from three different days follow..

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Well, I believe the only Indian restaurant downtown is now gone. There is no goodbye sign on their door, but the web site is gone, the phone is disconnected, and fairly major work is being done inside. I suppose it could be a remodel, but in that case I would expect a sign to that effect.

As things worked out, I only ate at the India Pavilion once. Growing up my father had occasional “American faculty mentor” relations with visiting foreign students. At one time, this included an Indian couple. They were nice and we had them to the house for dinner a few times (my father duly explained that my sister’s guinea pigs were not being raised to eat..) and they returned the favor by having us to their apartment once. Now, I was a very finicky eater with very narrow tastes, but I was informed by my parents that I would try whatever was offered to us. The only thing I can remember about it is that part of the meal was some sort of chutney, which I thought was the worst thing I ever tasted. I’m sure that it was well made, and that I would probably like it now, but at the time it made such a strong negative impression on me that I never even considered Indian food as an option until I was in my 30s, walking in Charleston and thinking Hey! That smells really good! with no preconception of what type of food it was.

So, anyway, with a childhood dislike, then living out of town and then generally going someplace with parking, I go most often to the Indian places on Bush River & Saint Andrews Road. Still, the time I did make it to India Pavilion it was fine, and it’s a shame to see another longtime (an archived version of their web site says founded 1990) Five Points restaurant go.

(Hat tips to commenters Joel & Luke).

UPDATE 2 Sept 2010 — It’s to be another Pho Viet restaurant:

Well, moving a bit further into Five Points than yesterday, today’s posting is “ripped from the headlines”, which is to say I was reading The Free Times at lunch today and ran across a breaking story by Patrick Wall to the effect that Elbow Room was closed as of Tuesday night. He has an update on his blog that the new operation in that building will honor the existing Elbow Room bookings, which is nice if a bit odd seeming.

I’ve written about this building before when it was Dodd’s / Von Henman’s / Monterrey Jack’s / Agave / Nacho Mamma’s / 5 Points Pub. To be honest, I wasn’t really aware that 5 Points Pub was gone and Elbow Room had moved in. In fact I’m not sure what the last show I saw in a nightclub was. Perhaps The Swimming Pool Qs at Doc’s Gumbo Grille if you want to call that a nightclub. Anyway, I wish the new operation luck — it’s starting to look like anything going into that storefront is going to need it.

Here’s another storefront in the strip with Clydes / This That ‘n’The Other and Miss Sun Fun Headquarters. The last tenant was apparently Liberty Tax Service, a tax preparation chain which still has a number of Columbia offices.

Before that, it’s a bit murky in that I can say something that wasn’t in this storefront, but not anything that was.

In 1998 (or perhaps late 1997) a party store was trying to locate here, but the liquor license application was contested. According to this SC Administrative Law Court Decision, the applicants apparently gave up on that idea before their appeal and rented the property to someone else. That “someone else” could plausibly have been Liberty, though no name is given.

Liberty had to have been gone by 2006, when tattooing became legal because Cap City Ink applied for a zoning exemption to establish a tatoo parlor at 946, but later changed their minds (something usally harder to do when tatoos are concerned..)

Actually, I don’t remember this place as a Caribbean restaurant at all, but that’s what google is turning up for it. Apparently it was an attempt at doing well by doing good, as this 1999 ABC permit hearing decision notes:

The permit was granted despite some misgivings by a neighbor business, but as far as I can tell, the restaurant did not last long at all. I have not verified that by any phonebook research, but note that the only “Five Points Association Member Sticker” in the window is for 1999. The building certainly has not seen much if any work since then, and appears to be in a fairly advanced state of disrepair.

Now, despite not finding any online evidence for it, what I remember this place as is some sort of night club which used the roof as a deck. You can see the hutch that presumably terminates a staircase from the ground floor, and the roof is also directly accessible from the side street as the building is more or less cut into a hillside. I can remember thinking that it was pretty neat though I never visited the club.

I did find this 1998 zoning board minutes which implies that the place was some sort of restaurant in 1990 which was forclosed on at some later point, but no other details are offered..

I think I also remember some sort of drumming studio here as well.

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“What Good Is Sitting Alone In Your Room?”

Actually until the last year or so, I didn’t even know there was a drag cabaret in Columbia. I think I had kind of a vague idea that a nightclub was in Punch Line location, but I figured in Five Points it was probably a college hangout.

The building is PT’s was in never seemed to really thrive. It’s at the way outside edge of Five Points, and aside from The Punch LIne, I can’t recall ever stopping there. The address for PT’s is Harden Street, but the building also fronts on an odd little section of Senate Street which is totally unconnected with the rest of Senate Street. (Come to think of it, the State House also cuts off Senate Street, so it actually has three discontiguous segments.)

The Free Times says the next tenant in the PT’s space will be a burgers and milkshake operation, soooo..

“Right This Way, Your Table’s Waiting..”

UPDATE 25 July 2010: OK, the PT’s building at 1101 Harden Street has now been demolished. See the link for details.

Aside from being an interesting article in its own right, Eva’s cover story in this week’s Free Times has a lot of good pictures of old-time Five Points (as does the front cover of the issue itself).

This closing has been talked about long enough that I actually got these photos last year, knowing I would have to deploy them eventually. This Hardee’s has been a fixture in the old Five Point’s Sears parking lot for years. I think it may even date back to when Gene’s Pig & Chick across College Street would have been its competition. (It certainly does not date back to Hardee’s original space-age designs such as at Silver City or The Eggroll Station though).

This story from The State last year tells how the Hardee’s is going to be replaced with a Chick-Fil-A, and how it will all be carefully landscaped in accordance to the new Five Points streetscaping guidelines. Color me unimpressed. You have only to compare US-17 as it passes through Mount Pleasant where everything is set-back so far and blends in so blandly that you can’t even tell you are passing stores that want to sell you something with US-17 in the Myrtle Beach area where even failed and vacant storefronts are exuberant to see how guidelines can suck the life out of a road. Not to mention this quote:

“Chick-fil-A is a business of high quality and we anticipate this development will add great character to the already diverse and eclectic makeup of Five Points,” she said.

Of really? Replacing one national fast-food chain (which is actually currently on the rebound) with another national fast-food chain will add character and diversity to Five Points? I guess character and diversity aren’t what they once were..

(Hat tips to commenters Tom, Mike D, Larry & Jim)

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This rather handsome brick building on Harden Street in Five Points was, according to the Historic Columbia Foundation, built as a laundry in the 1930s (this city property valuation report claims it was actually built in 1930). I’m sure it has been many things over the years, but most recently, it seems to have been a used furniture store called Habitat Store which was associated with The Habitat For Humanity charity. I used to love going to used furniture stores, back when they were “junk stores” rather than “antique stores”, but I can’t ever recall this one, so I’m guessing it probably started after I left town in the mid 80s.