This was the location of Kingsport’s B. F. Goodrich store in the 1940s (it’s now Anchor Antiques). B. F. Goodrich was a very early company to put rubber on the road.
When I was a kid, B. F. Goodrich was on the corner of New and Cherokee Streets, 324 Cherokee, the former home of Kroger. I bought my Schwinn bike there after my second-hand English bike rattled its last transmission.
I have posted before on the Downtowner Motor Inn but I recently ran across this matchbook listing the amenities of this place, corner of Center and Shelby Street.
It went up in 1960 and lasted under various names (“Port o’ Kings”, “Motor Inn”, Kingsport Inn”) before being demolished in the early 90s
This rather shopworn ice scraper was issued sometime before 1995, when the North American Numbering System assigned the area code of 423 to parts of East Tennessee (Tennessee had originally been assigned 901 in 1947, then in 1954, 901 went to West Tennessee and the rest of us Volunteers had to make do with 615). Old 247 prefix was CIrcle-7.
If you can’t find a pen when you need one, don’t blame the advertising specialty companies!
Kingsport used to have several, individually owned book stores, like this one:
Google didn’t turn up anything when I searched for this club, but I did see an article from 1965 in the Kingsport Times-News that indicated about 4,000 people filed in to attend a Kingsport Riding Club Horse Show at J. Fred Johnson Stadium.
From the 1941 Maroon and Grey annual
This is from the Kingsport Times-News 02/27/1955. J. Mack Ray (1910 -1968) was from Cocke County. He moved to Kingsport to start this restaurant.
He was also a three-term state Senator.
What’s a Potato Toffenetti? Read all about it here
From Wednesday, February 13, 1957. Kingsport News
As I’ve noted before, my Kingsport Times paper route took me down Shelby Street, behind the Post Office (it became the library in ’61). The tempting smells coming from Pal’s made my stomach rumble. Still does, even today.
For the record, $1 in 1957 would be worth $9.36 in 2021(CPI Inflation Calculator)
In my previous (August, 2015) posting on Parkway Plaza, I was a little dismissive of it, which was wrong. When this Plaza was built, in 1961, it was poised to take advantage of the fire hose of traffic heading into Kingsport from the Southwest Virginia/Southeast Kentucky region. Well, then I-26 (completed in 2003) went in, bypassing Kingsport and taking the fire hose with it.
In an article written by Frank Creasy for the Kingsport Times-News edition of June 4, 1961, Greene Investments announced that the new Parkway Plaza was scheduled to open that October and would feature anchor stores Kroger, Grants, and W.B. Greene Ladies Fashion Shop. The Plaza actually opened in November and included One Hour Martinizing #4, Reba’s Coiffures, Potter’s Barber Shop, Armour Drug, Top Value Stamp Store and Dutch Oven Bakery.
Kroger and Armour Drug store kept their downtown locations, also. The other Kroger was located approximately where the church-owned building sits across from Mafair UMC at Prospect Drive. Armour Drug had their store a little to the east of that building.
For its time, it was a happening place.
Bob Lawrence's Kingsport 