store – Building a better South

June 14, 2015June 17, 2015

Old store, Cummings, S.C.

This old store, marked with the spray-painted word “sold” in a window, is very near this vernacular house in Cummings, S.C. (One of our favorite photos).

The store, replete with an area where gas pumps used to be, is in Hampton County, located in the southern part of South Carolina. It was home to 21,090 people in 2010, about 4,000 fewer than a century earlier. More. Some 22.6 percent of Hampton County residents live below the poverty line.

Hampton’s annual Watermelon Festival is the state’s longest, continually-running festival. The town of Hampton includes a brownfield of a former medical waste incinerator. More.

QuickFacts from the U.S. Census

May 22, 2015May 22, 2015

Business construction, Kingstree, S.C.

Construction is moving along apace on a new Family Dollar building on Main Street in downtown Kingstree on the spot once occupied by a Piggly Wiggly grocery store, writes photographer Linda W. Brown. She says the town already has two Family Dollar stores and, presumably, one will move into the new building. Kingstree also has two Dollar General stores.

April 17, 2015April 15, 2015

Parker Street, Brooklet, Ga.

Many of Brooklet’s historic downtown storefronts have been restored or well maintained and Parker Street continues to be the commercial heart of the town, writes VanishingSouthGeorgia.com photographer Brian Brown.

Brooklet, home to about 1,400 people, is in Bulloch County, Ga., about nine miles east of Statesboro, which is home to Georgia State University. Bulloch County, located in eastern Georgia county along Interstate 16, is deeply in poverty with 31 percent of residents living below the federal poverty line. The county, which has a median household income of $33,902, is home to 72,694 people (2012), two thirds of whom are white.

March 12, 2015

Ferrell Store, Salters, S.C.

Country stores like this one in the Salters community of Williamsburg County, S.C., are a dying breed.

Kingstree photographer Linda W. Brown writes that J.A. Ferrell opened a store in his Salters home in 1880.

“Some years later, he built this building on the edge of his property and moved the store operations there. He continued to run the store until his death in 1918. Three other merchants have operated a general store on the premises. The last, Frank Moseley, closed the store in 1990.”

February 26, 2015February 25, 2015

Cedar Lawn store, Bulloch County, Ga.

Old store near the Emanuel-Bulloch county line in eastern Georgia.

You used to see stores like this all over the South, but they’re slowly being taken away by time and neglect. This store has a Twin City address, which would make you think it’s in Emanuel County, but it’s not, according to VanishingSouthGeorgia.com photographer Brian Brown.

“It’s just over the Bulloch County line on U.S. 80, near Portal,” he writes here. “The community around the store is known to locals as Cedar Lawn. Residential stores like this are few and far between today. It’s always been a common practice in cities for shopkeepers to live “above the store” but was seen less frequently in rural areas.”

The store is a dozen miles northeast of Bulloch County’s seat, Statesboro, home to Georgia Southern University. Yet the eastern Georgia county along Interstate 16 is deeply in poverty with 31 percent of residents living below the federal poverty line. Bulloch County, which has a median household income of $33,902, is home to 72,694 people (2012), two thirds of whom are white.

February 11, 2015February 12, 2015

Store, near Britton’s Neck, S.C.

This old store, located near Britton’s Neck in Marion County, was probably replaced by the convenience store that is now across the road from it, writes photographer Linda W. Brown of Kingstree, S.C. Country stores provided those who lived in rural areas a means of buying staples without having to drive all the way to town.

Marion County, rural in nature, is home to just over 33,000 people. An estimated 23 percent of residents live at or below the federal poverty level.

More on Marion County

November 18, 2014November 19, 2014

Green shutters, Williamsburg County, S.C.

Former editor Linda W. Brown found this old building with fastened green shutters near Workman Crossroads in western Williamsburg County, S.C.

UPDATE: We first ran this picture on Oct. 1, 2013, and offer it today to steer you to a brand new section of the BEST pictures of the Southern Crescent project. Click here and you can find more than 30 of the most compelling images that we’ve offered since we got started more than 18 months ago.

“I’m not sure if this was an old store that had a shed added to it or exactly what its function was,” Brown wrote. “I think it’s a pretty cool old building, whatever its purpose was earlier in its life.”

We wholeheartedly agree. Old buildings like this can be found across the rural South on farmland that has gone fallow and where tenant families moved on a generation or two ago. Or in small towns near railroad tracks that no longer carry trains.

Just under 34,000 people live in Williamsburg County, which is about the number who lived there in 1900, according to Census figures. Population peaked in 1950 at 43,807, but has dropped slowly since then.

About two-thirds of county residents are black, with almost all of those remaining being white. Only 2 percent of those in the county are of Hispanic descent. Some 32.8 percent of residents live in poverty, according to the Census. Of the county’s 1,921 firms, 36.5 percent are black-owned — a percentage that is three times South Carolina’s average.

November 14, 2014November 15, 2014

Old store, Jamestown, S.C.

Kingstree, S.C., photographer Linda W. Brown admits that this old store in Jamestown in Berkeley County isn’t technically in the Southern Crescent. But the surrounding rural community, buffered by tens of thousands of acres of national forest, certainly does fit the image of the Crescent region with its vintage gas pumps that harken back to a time of country groceries as focal points of communities.

September 5, 2014September 4, 2014

In the beginning, Williamsburg County, S.C.

Genesis store, Williamsburg County, S.C.

Overlooking nothing but fields, the Genesis Variety Store & Diner in northeastern Williamsburg County, S.C., posts its menu beside the front door, with breakfast including grits, country ham sandwiches and waffles, writes Kingstree photographer Linda W. Brown. Later in the day, the store offers barbecue, cheeseburgers, hot dogs and onion rings among its tasty offerings.

More on Williamsburg County.

August 15, 2014

Old store, Clarendon County, S.C.

An old country store on the side of the road in eastern Clarendon County still proclaims the message that “JESUS SAVES.” But as photographer Linda W. Brown of nearby Kingstree, S.C., observes, the Almighty apparently was not able to save the store from closing.

Clarendon County has 34,357 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2012 population estimate. About half of the county’s residence are white; the other half are black. Some other statistics:

High school graduation rate of those 25 or older: 76.3 percent.
Bachelor’s degree graduates: 13.8 percent
Median household income: $33,267
Poverty rate: 22.8 percent

More QuickFacts from the U.S. Census.