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Commercial buildings offer glimpse of city's history
Photo courtesy of Gene Krider
In 1950, these buildings were occupied by Fisher Drug Company, Boulevard Barber Shop, Poole’s 5&10 Cent Store and Poole’s Grocery Store.
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Published: October 19, 2009
When we speak of buildings from the past, it is easy to forget that they were not only different in style, but also existed in a different social and technological time.
The telephone and automobile drastically changed the way we lived, just as the Civil War and World War II changed our ways of life. The Civil War was the first war fought with railroads and telegraphic instant communication. World War II was the first fought with advanced airplanes and radios. In each case, the post-war periods took technical advances and forever changed where and how we built commercial and residential buildings. This month I am still focused on pre-World War II buildings.
Even a casual look at the 1940-41 Statesville City Directory shows how our life has changed. There were 73 grocery stores and 44 filling stations in Statesville's city limits. A&P and Colonial Stores were the only chain grocery stores. Most of the filling stations were national or regional outlets, but there were several local stations. Ironically, these stations were full-service — tires and batteries could be replaced, oil changed and minor engine repairs done. Today, they are called service stations but are literally filling stations for the gas tank and the stomach.
Architecturally, the neighborhood grocery stores were modest stand-alone buildings that served residential areas all over the city. Filling stations were brand-designed buildings in may styles. The old Riddles Shell Station on the corner of West Front and Race streets was a California Mission Style with a single pier and wood braces supporting the drive-under roof covered in red clay tile. It is still standing.
The Esso station at East Broad and Tradd streets is Streamlined Art Deco and replaced a Bluebird Station, not because it was out of style, but because the brand had changed.
If you remember, Bluebird stations had a very steep-pitched blue roof with a wide dormer on the back. The second floor had room for an apartment. Many stores had second-floor apartments so the manager or owner could keep watch over the business during closing hours.
There were 11 gas stations within three blocks of the square (there are none now) and five grocery stores (also gone.)
Most grocery stores were "mom and pop" operations located in all the residential areas around downtown and at strategic crossroads throughout Iredell County. These tended to be general stores, little Walmarts, in fact. Their customers were expected to have horse or automobile transportation, but most offered free delivery service.
Cooper Grocery Store on Boulevard just south of the railroad bridge was our family grocery store and my mother called them early each day with her grocery list. The things she bought daily were perishables like meat and bread. Other items were canned tuna and sardines, bags of Nosoca flour from the Statesville Flour Mills Co. and soda crackers. Our refrigerator was a 6 cubic foot 1928 General Electric, which had a minuscule freezer meant only for ice-making and serviced a family of eight. There were, by today's standards, very few shelves to store edibles. There were more ice boxes than refrigerators in town, which required daily deliveries of ice blocks.
These home deliveries of groceries, ice and milk started during the depression years and continued throughout WWII. I think most families canned (really bottled) produce from Victory Gardens.
Contrast this with today's well-stocked larders and big refrigerator-freezers. Instead of daily deliveries, we drive our automobiles to Walmart or Food Lion and make frequent trips to gas stations that sell items like milk, cigarettes and bottled water. Very few people walk to grocery stores now.
Architecturally, all these buildings were plain and simple wood structures, the only frill being a square front wall to hide the pitched roof behind and provide space for a painted sign identifying the business.
There is a lone building on the south side of West End Avenue before it merges into Front Street that was originally Hals-Wood Food Store. Look at it and you will see back into the past when these neighborhood stores helped feed us.
The only area that could be called a shopping center back then were the empty brick buildings on the north side of Western Avenue facing J.C. Steele on the east of Boulevard with Western Avenue Baptist Church on the west.
Being brick, these retail buildings would blend in with the stores downtown. They all have common side fire walls and second floors and the brick street walls have corbeled brick (bricks extended beyond the brick face) in decorative patterns. The entry doors are set back from the show windows on each side. They are like their contemporary downtown buildings.
Over their lifetime, they had many varied occupants. In 1950, these businesses occupied the three buildings: Fisher Drug Company, Boulevard Barber Shop, Poole's 5&10 Cent Store and Poole's Grocery Store. Unless the present recession turns into a depression, we are on the way to having shopping centers at all the exits from interstate highways I-40 and I-77.
I have neglected an extremely important institution — Mitchell Community College's Administration Building — which, during my lifetime, went from a small Presbyterian girls boarding school housed in a single building and has grown to a three-campus N.C. Community College for students of all sexes and ages. It is a remarkable center for all arts and vocations. The original building, with its beautiful Greek Doric portico, has dominated the western view from the Square since it was built in 1854. Shearer Hall has just been beautifully renovated as a fine music hall.
Only the non-leaning Pisa-like water tower behind Mitchell College is gone. It supplied all of Statesville with potable water when I was growing up. I wonder if anyone knows if the dare to climb the open ladder up the tower was ever attempted.
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