This has been identified as a cold storage facility and one source says it was owned by the Swainsboro Ice Fuel Company and built circa 1930. I believe that date is incorrect, since this style didn’t even emerge until the mid-1930s. I’m not sure about the ownership. Charles T. Elliott, Jr., thinks it may have been owned by Otis Price. All of the examples I’ve previously documented date to the 1940s. For some reason, this was one of the most popular designs for cold storage facilities, often referred to as meat lockers or freezer lockers.
Cold storage facilities were important resources before the 1950s, when home freezers rendered them largely unnecessary.
The Streamline Moderne style is derivative of Art Deco, and represented a radical, even futuristic, style for its day. Surviving examples are relatively rare in Georgia and should be preserved. This structure has had many tenants over the years, including a wholesale company, beauty salon, pool hall and bar. It is presently used for storage.
This building was once what we called a meat packing plant. During the late 1960s-early 1970s, it was purchased by Stroud Wholesale Company. Delmer Stroud, Ralph Stroud, bros plus a nephew were owners. The family including a number of we kids pitched in and worked to clean the place up for the family business to move from Electric Drive.
As meat packing plants go, it was gross. There was one huge room with large shelving lining the walls and lots of large grained salt. This room had a heavy door of metal and was lockable. We thought we’d never get the smell cleaned but we managed to clean it repeatedly until it was good to go.
Stroud Wholesale later moved to the old Ramsey Candy Company building on Church St, now demolished and home of Swainsboro Police Dept.
Stroud Wholesale was sold in the late 1990s.
So good to see photos of the old place online.
My husband used it to start his pool room in it. It no longer has anything left in it but it is still a nice building.
Love the photos and building!
At one time I owned a butcher block from this facility. Remember going there with my mom, even though we had a freezer at home. Maybe butchered beef or pork. Owned, built by Otis Price?
What a beautiful little jewel of Deco design! I certainly hope the folks in Swainsboro appreciate it, and someone can make it into something viable again. As you say, Brian, this rare style of building deserves preservation.
There is a building just like this in Edison, GA.
https://vanishinggeorgia.com/2018/02/24/calhoun-county-frozen-foods-edison/
What a neat building! I have not seen one of these before. I was born in 1951, so our original refrigerator was a GE (I believe) model with the old-style freezer compartment hat had to be defrosted by hand, once in a while, when the frost built up. “Frost-proof” models didn’t come out until sometime in the 1970’s, as I recall. The first one I had I bought in the late 1970’s or early 1980’s when the old one in my downtown apt. died.
I do remember seeing an actual “ice box” type of refrigerator in an old wooden house in a small town in North Carolina, in the early 1960’s. You literally put a huge block of ice on a shelf, with a drip pan below, that had to be emptied out every day as the ice slowly melted. But that was “early refrigeration” for back then. (1940’s?) An “ice man” would come by delivering a fresh block of ice every week.
How times have changed.
Fred- If you recall you’re the one who helped me identify the one in Edison!