{"id":3415,"date":"2011-03-18T23:35:06","date_gmt":"2011-03-19T04:35:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?p=3415"},"modified":"2011-04-23T22:54:22","modified_gmt":"2011-04-24T03:54:22","slug":"g-e-x-membership-department-store-home-gold-financial-home-quarters-warehouse-blue-cross-blue-shield-palmetto-gbh-2340-broad-river-road-1973","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?p=3415","title":{"rendered":"G-E-X Membership Department Store \/ Intertec Data Systems \/ Home Gold Financial \/ Phar-Mor \/ Home Quarters Warehouse \/ Blue Cross Blue Shield \/ Palmetto GBH, 2340 Broad River Road: 1973"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I never heard G-E-X<\/i> pronounced Gee-Eee-Eks<\/i> as the spelling here would imply. It was always just \"Gex\" to rhyme with \"Vex\". Not that I heard about it that often. Given the 21 Dec 1969 phonebook listing (ie: for 1970) above, it sounds like it was a Costco<\/i> or Sam's<\/i> before its time -- certainly we did not have a membership, and I never went with anyone who did. (There are some pictures of the membership cards here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The building (behind Applebee's<\/i> just North of I-20) is certainly massive, and it seems to have had a department for everything, including groceries and meat, which really<\/i> makes it sound ahead of its time. Wikipedia says G-E-X was another label for G.E.M<\/a> the Government Employees Mart<\/i> and that the electronics department eventually morphed into Circuit City<\/a> by way of Ward's<\/i>. The December 1972 phonebook is the last one to list the Columbia G-E-X<\/i> which meshes with Wikipedia's claim that the chain went under \"during the discount store shakeout of 1973\".<\/p>\n

After G-E-X<\/i> the spot seems to have been a number of different operations including Home Quarters<\/i> and Blue Cross<\/i>. In fact, LoopNet<\/a> says Blue Cross<\/i> has a lease on the whole building that lasts until September 2012. Currently the building seems to be empty, with the last branding on the street sign as Palmetto GBH<\/i> which seems to be some sort of Medicare related operation (their sign is still on the storefront in the LoopNet listing). <\/p>\n

UPDATE 21 March 2011<\/b>: Added \"Intertec Data Systems\" & \"Phar-Mor\" to the post title. Those apparently closed in the early 1980s and 3 October 1992 respectively. (Also fixed spelling of Applebee's<\/i>..)<\/p>\n

UPDATE 6 April 2011<\/b>: Added the 1970 Bellsouth Yellow Pages ad for the pharmacy department (which apparently was open to the general public).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I never heard G-E-X pronounced Gee-Eee-Eks as the spelling here would imply. It was always just \"Gex\" to rhyme with \"Vex\". Not that I heard about it that often. Given the 21 Dec 1969 phonebook listing (ie: for 1970) above, it sounds like it was a Costco or Sam's before its time -- certainly we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[45,89,84,229,64,29,4],"class_list":["post-3415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-broad-river-road","tag-computers","tag-department-store","tag-i-20","tag-insurance","tag-pharmacy","tag-stores"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}