This storefront is located on Main Street. Scott was a chain of 5 and 10 (five and dime) department stores located from coast to coast, though I haven’t been able to find much information about the company online, other than a few specific locations that were open from the 1930s until the early 1980s. Many used Art Deco design in their architecture. Hopefully, the entry and transom signs will be preserved.
Multi-directional signposts like this one are usually found in tourist locations, so I was surprised to see this one in a yard in Oglethorpe.
Sandwiched between the far-flung locations of Kennebunkport, Maine, and Key West, Florida, is the Piggly Wiggly, 3/10ths of a mile distant.
After many years of decline, the historic lands and waterways of Butler Island, just south of Darien, were purchased and modernized by Col. Tillinghast L’Hommedieu (T. L.) Huston, in 1926. A dairy was part of the Butler Island Plantation enterprise before it was converted to an iceberg lettuce farm, and some of the dairy structures were maintained throughout Huston’s ownership. This barn and other related buildings have been gone for decades, but may have still been in use when R. J. Reynolds purchased the property after Huston’s death in 1938.
This real photo postcard, dated Tues. Apr. 16, 1935 wasn’t mailed, but features a somewhat exaggerated, tongue-in-cheek message on the reverse: “Near border of Georgia & Florida. Air fresh & fragrant with blossoms. Cattle have free range in this state & receive excellent attention, as card shows. Autos barely escape colliding with hogs, cows, chickens, dogs, turtles, etc. on the highways.” It isn’t signed.
This historic general store on the corner of Lamar and Forrest Streets has been well-maintained and is a great example of commercial architecture in late-19th-century Georgia. It is virtually unchanged from its original appearance. The sign notes that the business traded in stoves and crockery. Selling hardware, groceries, and sundries, J. W. Harris & Co. would have been the equivalent of a big box store today.
Americus Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
I first published this photograph on 15 June 2010 under the title “Wisenbaker’s Grocery & Market”, but I’m replacing it with a new post to update what I’ve learned, and to share a little about Dasher, thanks to an excellent brief history of the community by Faye Cook Wisenbaker. I believe this sign came from another building and was saved for its local importance.
Faye writes that all of the area south of Valdosta in present-day Lowndes County has connections to the Dasher and Wisenbaker families, who had their Georgia origins with the Ebenezer Salzburgers of Effingham County. James Wisenbaker and Christian Herman Dasher are the earliest known members of their families to have arrived in this frontier area of the Wiregrass Region. Dasher is believed to have arrived circa 1832. James Wisenbaker was his son-in-law and they had left the Lutheran faith in 1819 and began having services in their homes.
The area around Dasher was first settled circa 1842. Richard Herman Wisenbaker was also living in the area around this time, as he established “a congregation of New Testament Christianity” which would eventually be known as the Corinth Church of Christ, and today, Corinth Baptist Church. Faye notes that sometime before 1861, Wisenbaker “constructed a home using slave labor”.
The town was formally established as a station of the Georgia Southern & Florida Railway in 1889 at the residence of Virgil Franklin Dasher. By 1916, thanks to the timber and turpentine business, and the presence of the railroad, Dasher was a thriving place. The Dasher Bible School was established during that year and met in the Church of Christ until building a larger campus in 1928.
Victory Tabernacle takes up pretty much all of the historic center of Flovilla and their adaptive re-use of the commercial block and adjacent storefronts probably saved these places. Storefront churches are often some of the only tenants in the abandoned downtowns I’ve been documenting for years. As with businesses, I don’t endorse churches, but that doesn’t limit me from being glad they’ve kept these old buildings alive.
One of the storefronts is one of my favorites in all of Georgia. A sign on the transom reads “Gospel Singing” and that’s flanked on either side by neon versions of the words Victory Jubilee. It’s a perfect scene. When I was making these photographs, mid-day on a Friday in October 2017, the church was meeting and I could hear gospel music coming from inside, just as the sign promised. It almost felt like a movie, surreal.
Update: Kimberly Rooker recently contacted me and shared a bit of the history of this property. She wrote, in part: “My family owned and operated the General Merchandise store on that property that you photographed in Flovilla. It is still standing as of today….but the Victory Tab[ernacle] has vacated it…sadly. My great great grandfather was JT Edwards from a pioneer family of the Jasper and Butts Co. areas. I showed my daughter the store last year…..just as my dad showed me the store front in 1989. There is a ton of history on the Edwards family in Flovilla/Indian Springs that was passed down to me orally when I was a child by my grandmother...”
At the extreme southwestern corner of Talbot County is the historic village of Box Springs. According to Ken Krakow: The community was named for a local spring that was boxed in and used as a watering stop for the railroad. Pipes were run from the “boxed-spring” to a water tower adjacent to the tracks. The name Boxed Spring was later changed to Box Springs, as it was easier to pronounce. A post office was established in 1853 though the area was likely settled earlier. The town was incorporated in 1913 and dissolved by 1931. Little of that era remains here today.
This old store, built in the early 1900s, sits in a thicket of privet and has always intrigued me; I may even have a family connection to Mr. Browning but need to research further. As the place succumbs to nature, I can only imagine it in its heyday, when the train stopped at the nearby tracks and people came through here enroute to and from Columbus.
This church is still active as far as I can tell. Though it is likely a relatively modern congregation, its whimsical chapel is as fascinating as any older church I’ve found lately. Typical of many rural Holiness churches, it’s fairly simple in design, but in its artistic facade, Freedom Tabernacle is a work of art in itself.
From the cross that spells out the church name to the hand-painted sign above the entrance, the message is clear.
The straightforward sign reads: Take Jesus for Your Saviour, and, curiously or not, Saviour is spelled in the British fashion. The stars are a common theme in Christianity, but more often associated with black congregations in my experience.
A local favorite and popular stop for travelers through Thomaston since 1950, Piggie Park is an old-school drive-in specializing in barbecue, scrambled hamburgers, cheeseburgers and hot dogs, and Brunswick stew. And some people love their greasy fries. They also have handmade milkshakes. It’s a no-frills old-school place where carhops still come out and take your order, and judging by comments throughout social media, they are very efficient and always have a smile on their faces.
The original location was on the south side of town and when most of the development moved to the north side, Piggie Park moved with it. The neon sign is one of Thomaston’s most identifiable logos.
When The Founder, the movie about Ray Kroc and McDonald’s, was made a few years ago, Piggie Park was transformed into two different 1950s restaurants and used as a set location for filming.
There’s a long tradition of homemade church signs in Georgia, and throughout the South. I find a simple statement like this infinitely more interesting than a flashing digital billboard.