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.
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
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.
I picked this up at Kingsport Camera Shop, then on Cherokee Street, at some point while I was drooling over the new Nikon cameras. This was when photographers were beginning to acknowledge that the Japanese were rolling out excellent cameras and lenses. Single-lens reflex cameras were still fairly new in 1969 (a year earlier, I had shot Pentax SLRs at the Times-News).
Look at those prices, which I thought were sky high even then. This is just the cover. The leaflet goes on to price lenses, camera bags, medical lenses, viewfinders, photomicrographic lenses and so forth. Prices range from a high of $895 for a 220 degree Nikkor fisheye (f5.6) to fifty cents for a plastic case for a 52mm filter. The plastic body cap ran you $1.35.
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.
Yesterday (May 18), this building was completely gutted by fire.
It’s latest label had been as an IGA, before Food City opened their downtown location on the former Kingsport Press property. The IGA closed shortly thereafter. Earlier, it had been a White’s Supermarket, but it had been built as Oakwood Market #2 in 1949 and was the first of the grocery stores to make up what would be known as Supermarket Row, along Canal Street. Wallace Boyd, Sr. had come into Kingsport from Kentucky and had opened the first Oakwood Market in Greenacres in 1947 (this is from a story in a 1947 issue of the Kingsport Times).
The store in Greenacres had an “exotic” canned food section that mom and I would drop by and snicker at. Chocolate-covered grasshoppers and snails and the like. But, like some of the things you see in antique stores, they hadn’t moved in years.
Btw, when Oakwood #2 was built, it had a waterfall on top. It was a triangular structure over the middle of the building. At the top of this, say, 20′ waterfall was the Oakwood sign, painted by Carter’s Art Shop (I used to know a guy who did some of the painting), and under it, on either side, was a continuously-cycling flow of water down a simulated rock waterfall. Most amazing. It is the nature of water to go anywhere there’s an opening, so I suspect that it leaked.
This is a Haynes Publishing postcard (printed by Dexter) from the mid-60s. When the photo was taken, this barrel-roofed building was over 40 years old; it was finished in 1940 as the Kingsport Civic Auditorium and Armory. It was built under the Public Works Administration. If the resolution of the image were better, I might be able to read more of the sign, but I think it’s for a wrestling match. I checked the Times-News archives, but couldn’t match anything up.
I wonder if all the armor, since it’s no longer an “armory, is now down at the library…
I have several views of downtown Kingsport taken from Cement Hill. Several years ago, when I was new to postcards and rather dismissive of chromes, I thought this was a recent card and, based on seeing the old City Hall, I dated it to the early 60s. But I didn’t realize until today, when I was looking at it again, that I could date it really accurately. The red arrow points to the old City Hall (and library) and the yellow arrow indicates the Downtowner. The Downtowner opened for business in 1961 and The Kingsport Times-News (November, 1962) reported that the old City Hall was mostly demolished. The photo for this card was taken in summer of 1962.
It was published by Haynes Distributing Company in Roanoke and was printed in West Nyack NY by Dexter Publishing Company. Joyce L. Haynes took the photo. I’m not turning up any information on Haynes Distributing Company, nor of Joyce L. Haynes. She does, however, show up as the photographer for many postcards of this period.
A 3.75 x 3.75″ ashtray. Information square is fired on the underside. My mother’s favorite restaurant. Made their own pies with real meringue, browned on top. In my 20s, I thought the place was stodgy, but I’d love to have a meal there now. Food was excellent, waitresses motherly. And I don’t mean that in any derogatory way.
I think the restaurant began in the early 60s. In 1953, Jack May was managing both Jack’s Grill in Sullivan Gardens and the Luncheonette at the new Little Store. Jack and wife Jeanette co-owned Center Street Restaurant and, later, Jack’s Restaurant on Main Street. There’s a complicated history in all this, but I can’t find a source for it right now. I’ll update as I learn more.
05/08/2021: Updated time line:
From the late 1940s to 1960, the building at 504 West Center Street was owned by Cardwell and Alberta Hounchell. The original building was a a block building painted white (in the only picture I’ve seen of it) and known at “Center Street Restaurant and Grill”. (When I was a kid, we lived in the apartments at 315 Cherokee Street. In one of the apartments lived a man named “Happy” Hounchell. He was a barber with a shop behind Bingham Furniture on New Street. I wonder if they were related.) (the man and the family, not the furniture store and the barber shop)
An ad in the June 6, 1951, issue of the Kingsport News touts a “completely remodeled” restaurant with pale green walls and gray leatherette upholstery. The current building, though, is shown in the records as having been built in 1952.
In 1979, the restaurant was owned by Gary and Angie Francisco. It closed in August, 1989.
Bob Lawrence's Kingsport 