Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This picture comes from commenter Dennis, who says:

I was very excited when Mary Ella's opened about a year ago because I'm in this neighborhood a lot and there's nowhere to eat lunch. (2911 Millwood is across the street from Epworth Children's Home property.)

I went exactly once and the food was good, and hot, and not overly expensive, but... you know how sometimes a place just isn't for you even though you couldn't say why? Maybe it's because the place is so tiny -- about 10 tables -- and soo quiet. Great place to read I guess. They advertised a southern homemade style buffet, but the building is so small the buffet stayed on the stove in the kitchen and the one waitress brought you what you asked for from a chalkboard menu. Made me self-conscious about seconds and thirds, which to me is the point of a buffet.

So Mary Ella's is done and the banner promises the grand opening of Cafe Millwood. Could not tell if they're open yet or not. I peeked through the windows and did not see any change at all from Mary Ella's. The sign says breakfast which will be great if true.

I do know that feeling. In a small place especially, you can get too much attention.

Someone mentioned in Have Your Say a while back that they thought Miyo's on Main Street was closed. When I was in the area and decided to check it out, I found it to not be the case.

However, in looking at the Miyo's building, I noticed the old wall markings for Dr. Feelgood's, a place I had never gone to and had not even thought about for years. In fact, while I had heard the name, I never realized that this was the location. I just assumed it was in Five Points or on Rosewood. (I also have sort of a mental blank spot for Main south of the Capitol -- If someone says "it's on Main Street", I automatically think of Main from Gervais to Elmwood..).

UPDATE 13 Feb 2010: Changed closing date from "1980s" to "mid-1990s" based on comments and looking in the 1998 phonebook.

I first wrote about this building in a closing for The Big T (Taylor Street Pharmacy).

After The Big T sold out, CVS ran the old pharmacy as one of its stores for a number of years though it was no longer a 24-hour store, and in fact was not even open on Sundays. I guess the rise of 24 hour Wal-Marts pretty much obviated the need for an all-night store, and the downtown location was just not a draw anymore for residential shoppers.

As of today (10 Feb 2010) it appears that they are still moving things out of the building. There was a rental truck in the lot, and I saw a couple of people go in and out.

UPDATE 9 March 2011: Added the store number (5766) based on the comments.

UPDATE 10 March 2011 -- Remodeling work is ongoing, and some of the original Taylor Street Pharmacy signage is visible now:

UPDATE 5 July 2022: Updating tags, adding map icon.

Here's another Main Street landmark, The Shulte-United Building (which also comprises 1624 Main Street). Look at all the gold and filigree along the roofline!

I don't actually know what Shulte-United was or sold, and while I can find out on the web that the place is on Historic Columbia Landmark list, nothing besides that bare fact is mentioned.

Normally, googling a street address will bring up a good bit of useful information about a place's retail history, but the most recent cites I'm getting for this place are that it was the 1996 headquarters for the Cliton/Gore campaign (that web site is still up!)) and the South Carolina Democratic Coordinated Campaign HQ during the same time period. The interior seems to have seen work since then, but if there was another occupant, I'm missing it.

Given the nature of the architecture it's perhaps not surprising that the realty agency whose placard is in the display window seems to specialize in Art Deco properties in Miami.

In my childhood, this little strip in front of Richland Mall was the first (or first I knew of) location for Ambassador Animal Hospital, which later moved down Forest Drive east of Trenholm. Our dog always seemed to know when the car was headed in that direction. She would always act a bit off there, and I vividly recall the one and only time that she snatched a fly from the air and ate it was in the Ambassador lobby.

Since then the strip has been through a major overhaul, possibly at the same time the old Richland Mall went to the enclosed "Fashion" incarnation though I could be wrong about that.

I know that Wild Birds Unlimited was there for quite a while, but I never had the need to go in. I noticed the other day that the building was vacant, and a google search reveals that WBU has moved to the Piggly Wiggly plaza by Cardinal Newman.

UPDATE 6 March 2010 -- Here's the new location in Forest Park:

UPDATE 8 June 2010 -- Looks like some work is being done on the old location:

UPDATE 22 June 2022: Adding map icon and updating tags. Also note that they have moved from Forest Park as well.

I noticed on Google Analytics a lot of traffic coming in from a link on your site.

Welcome!

Some of the places you mention do have entries here including:

The Big Bird

The Basil Pot

Peaches Records

The Sub Cabin

Take a look at the Alphabetical Closings page for more of your favorites!

Ted

I first wrote about this hard-luck building on Saint Andrews Road near the I-26 interchange when it had stopped being a D's Wings. (It had been a number of other things even before that). The second time I wrote about it was when it had just stopped being Baja's Southwestern Grill.

This time, it has just stopped being Delmonico Diner, something it had been in preparation to start being for quite a while. I drove over a few weeks ago to see the state of the place, and I believe the roadside sign said "open", but they were turning away customers who actually parked and tried to go in. According to commenter Alicia, when the place did open for real, they only made it for a total of three days before closing the doors. I'm sure there's a sad story there, and I'm sorry to see that.

The building is up for sale again, and I suppose it is well fitted as a restaurant, but I have to say that if I were looking to start an eatery somewhere, I think I would have to consider this spot's track record and look elsewhere.

(Hat tip to commenter Alicia)

Here's another victim of the decline of downtown retail, a store that with the front sign, awnings and recessed entrance almost perfectly typifies those bygone days..

I'm not much of a clothes shopper as I've noted quite a number of times here, and I'm even less of a shoe shopper. Growing up, we used to do most of our shoe shopping at Jack's on Sunnyside or Poll Parrot at Trenholm Plaza (I think I still have some premiums from that store..). Once I grew up and noticed that my feet were no longer changing size, I discovered that if I picked a shoe that was made year after year, I could just order a pair sight unseen and never have to "shop" for shoes, and that's pretty much what I've done with size 10M Sebago Docksides.

I'm not sure exactly when this store closed, but given the "2007" support sticker on the door, I'm guessing 2008.

UPDATE 9 Feb 2010: Added a picture I missed the first time.

Assuming that things are working correctly, you most probably will have noticed a Google AdSense ad box between the list of pages and the first post on the page.

I actually signed up for AdSense in the middle of last year, but when I changed the blog to the current theme, which I like quite a bit, there was really no place to put ads that wouldn't mess of the flow of things since the theme has only one sidebar. I consider the recent comments very important, so I didn't want to push them down, and there's not really any point putting an adbox halfway down the page. I finally took the time to go through the tutorial and figure out that I could probably put in a horizontal adbox near the top by hacking it into the theme's header HTML code.

That's how. Now why? This is a hobby blog pure and simple and that's not changing. At the same time, if I can make a little money with it, well, I am certainly not averse to that. Frankly, I have my doubts. By its nature Columbia Closings is a very local blog for a medium sized city, and simply does not have the traffic stats that something with a wider geographical appeal might have. My other venture into commercialism, the Columbia Closings Cafe Press store has so far cleared me a grand total of $10.00 (and cost, if I recall correctly, $60 to set up, so I'm still $50 under water on that -- not that I mind as it was fun to put the calendars and other products together).

So, we'll see what happens. If the ads bring in a miniscule amount, I may drop them, otherwise not. At any rate if you surf without javascript turned on, or if you Firefox users load the adblock plugin, you should be able to avoid seeing them.

Edna's, of course is a Columbia institution that has been on Broad River Road since forever, but at one time there were at least two other connected restaurants. One was off of Forest Drive behind the Tasty Bake Shop and had indoor seating with unique folk-art on the walls.

The other, listed in the above ad from the 1970 Southern Bell Yellow Pages, was at the site of what is now Anthony's Dairy Bar, which itself has been there a good while. (And Columbia seems to have had a lot of "dairy bars", a name I don't recall seeing in any other city).

To the best of my memory, we never stopped at Two Notch Drive In. In fact, when we started going to restaurants almost everything had gone to indoor seating with the exceptions of the original Columbia McDonald's on Garners Ferry Road, and Bell's Drive In on Forest Drive or that's how it seemed to me anyway.