This building, at 519 Holston Street, housed one of the first clinics in Kingsport. It was also the home of Charlie Deming, the man who helmed “The Gloomchaser” morning show on WKPT-AM from the early 1940s to 1973. This was taken in 1991. The building has long since been demolished.
If you can’t find a pen when you need one, don’t blame the advertising specialty companies!
Around 100 years ago, John Ballis built the Ballis Tourist Home at 310 West Sullivan Street, with a grocery store and gas station beside it.
Happy birthday?
According to information in the Kingsport Times-News, the Greek-born Ballis chose that name to avoid being tagged as a “foreigner”.
February, 1981
This is a very old sign. The building on which it was painted, at 313 East Sullivan Street, was built in 1920. When I was a kid, it was Brown’s Custom Shop.
THE PEOPLE’S STORE
GROCERIES & MEATS
I’m not sure about that ampersand.
Courtesy of Carl Swann.
Heritage Federal Savings and Loan Association, 110 East Center Street, started out in 1930 and meandered on until 1981, when somebody kicked off a flurry of acquisitions (read all about it here). It officially lost the name in 1995 when it was acquired by First American National Bank, now part of Regions Bank.
The logo, which is partially cut off in this shot, is a symbolic Minuteman haloed by, guess what, 13 stars. Heritage, get it?
One snowy evening, around 1957 or 1958, as I was sloshing my way down to the library, which was then on the corner of East Center and Shelby Streets, I saw Martin Karant doing a live remote in the big window at Heritage Federal. He was soliciting money for some organization. I walked in and volunteered to help (I was quite young at the time). I stood outside, in the snow, for a half hour or so and offered a canister for people to put coins in. In those years, there were quite a few people out walking around downtown in the evenings, shopping and so forth.
Back in June of 1967, I was working as a photographer for the Kingsport Times-News. I got dispatched to this service station, then known as Smith Shell, to photograph the aftermath of an accident: a lady driving away from getting gas snagged the hose of one of the pumps. The pump overturned, electrical connections were severed and a fire ensued, quickly extinguished by the Kingsport Fire Department. By the time I got there, the fire was out and the KFD was mopping up.
I just looked up the photo I took. It’s at newspapers.com.
The station was built in 1955 by J.D. Smith. I remember him well, but from the 1980s or so.
Lee Apartments, 1941 to 2018. According to Calvin Sneed’s article in the Kingsport Times-News, these apartments were completed at the same time as the ones in Riverview.
This postcard, copyright 1964, was published by the Colorcraft Studios in New York. I can’t find any information about this company, but it was credited with a lot of 1964/1965 World’s Fair postcards. On the back: BROAD STREET METHODIST CHURCH P.O. Box 907 Kingsport, Tennessee 37662
First Broad Street United Methodist Church, 50 years later.
This paint-up is not that old, but it’s beginning to fade. Clifton’s is on corner of East Market and Unicoi Streets. Years ago, Unicoi Street came up in some news story or other and I was perplexed…I’d never heard of it and I’ve lived in Kingsport since Hector was a pup*. The street is a one-blocker, though, and forever didn’t have much of anything located on it and, more importantly, it wasn’t on any of my paper routes.
* Obsolete phrase. See https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/since+Hector+was+a+pup
Bob Lawrence's Kingsport 