A clothing company in Bristol bought Fuller & Hillman out some years ago. When I was young, however, if you dressed well, you bought your clothes here or at Sobel’s. I didn’t buy my clothes here…or at Sobel’s. Later, I bought hats at both stores. They had great hats.
This building’s been a lot of different businesses. In 1997, it was Jay’s. It’s on Market Street, a little over a block west of Broad Street.
In 1959, this gas station, at 666 Sullivan Street, was Estep’s Gulf service station (I looked it up). I took the reference picture for this in the late 70s or so. Note the price of gas.
Further notes: Lovedale was an intermediate area as the business section of Kingsport moved gradually to its current location. At first, it was down on the river: Old Kingsport. After the Civil War had laid waste to this area, things moved a little to the east, to the intersection of the Bristol Highway (Bloomingdale Pike) and Scott County Road, which went up to Gate City. It was called Peltier then. Later, for reasons unknown to me, it became Lovedale. Slightly to the north, a wholesaler named Lynn maintained a farm. That came to be called Lynn’s Gardens.
The first airport in town was in Lovedale. Zoom, zoom.
The guy who owned this venerable restaurant once, in junior high school, saved my ass from a bully (I was pathetic: wore glasses. was poor. read a lot. couldn’t fight my way out of a paper bag.). I always appreciated that. A few years ago, he said the bully guy had died a decade ago. I was surprised that I didn’t have any reaction to that news. Time and wounds and all that stuff…
I took the reference picture for this drawing the day they tore this historic building down. That’s why you can see through the front door. The site is a parking lot now…for a church.
To be more precise about the date of the Homestead’s demise, I took the information from Jeff Fleming’s comment below and checked back to my journals from 1992. This, apparently, was my final drawing of this building (I apparently did two others. One I remember, the other I don’t). Unfortunately, I made no mention of when I actually took the picture, but it was before August, 1992.
Bob Lawrence's Kingsport 