The now former site of Ward’s Feed Store on Revere Street.
For years, this store was on the corner of Cherokee and Main.
This was the old paint-up sign on Cherokee.
Moving Right Along…
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Monthly Archives: July 2015
Cancerama 1973
This was a tough one to scan and clean up. It’s 19.75″ by 9.75″ and, over the years, it’s gone from white to a light ecru, but not a consistent shade. Three people are on the phone in their photographs. I don’t know what to say to that.
I didn’t actually participate in this one. In a later year, I actually got tossed off the telethon because I was singing so badly and loudly. Never did fit in, never will.
Model City Motel
Here we area at 3109 Bristol Hi-way in the late 40s or early 50s. Published by Fred W. Stanley, Johnson City, Tenn. It’s a Dextone “Made Direct from Kodachrome and Ansco Color By Dexter Press, Inc. West Nyack, N.J.” Postally unused.
On the back:
MODEL CITY MOTEL
New and Strictly Modern
Located 1 1/2 miles from downtown Kingsport, Tenn. on U.S. Hi-way 11-W. Away from the city noise. For reservations, phone 4309 or write Model City Motel, 3109 Bristol Hi-way, Kingsport, Tenn. Owned and operated by Charlie Chase and James McAinch.
(The “McAinch” is a typo. It should be “McAninch”. In 1959 Charlie Chase and Bobby McAninch were listed as the owners of this bide-a-wee)
The Downtowner Motor Inn
Architect’s rendering of the not-yet-quite-built Downtowner Motor Inn, corner of Center and Shelby Streets in downtown Kingsport. It was announced in the Kingsport Times-News in 1960 and was probably open for business in 1961. Having a Downtowner was a big deal at the time. The only other one in Tennessee was in Memphis. This one lasted until the early 1990s. At some time in the 70s, I took my mother to the restaurant there to have breakfast. I found a cockroach in my biscuit.
The Downtowner corporation began in 1958 in Memphis. At one time, it was owned by Perkins
Pancake House and then changed hands several times until it mostly went belly up in 1993.
When I first came to Kingsport in 1956, this lot was empty. You could look out the back door of the Kress building and see the old City Hall on the west corner of Shelby and Center. Hinch Gilliam had a cab stand up on the Market-Shelby corner on this lot.
There must be hundreds of copies of this card. They’re all over the web for sale at prices ranging from $10 to $24 each. I probably paid a buck when I bought this one a decade or so ago.
Bob Lawrence's Kingsport 