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A place that lives in memory
Old photos and stories might soon be all that's left of once-vital downtown block
By Beverly FortuneBFORTUNE@HERALD-LEADER.COM
Graves Cox, a men's and boys' clothing store, was a fixture on East Main Street from the time it was opened in 1888 by business partners Joe Graves and Leonard Cox.
"Nobody sold more Palm Beach suits in the state than Graves Cox," Joe Graves, 77, grandson of the founder, said earlier this week.
While in high school, Graves and his sister, Nancy Graves Talbott, worked between Thanksgiving and Christmas on the three nights a week when Graves Cox stayed open till 9 p.m.
"The company hired 20 extra employees just for the first floor for Christmas season," Graves recalled.
Graves Cox was on a vibrant block in a bustling downtown, Graves said.
It was part of the same block where developer Dudley Webb has announced plans for a high-rise mixed-use hotel and condominium complex. The CentrePointe project calls for demolition of 14 historic buildings.
On another corner was the Coney Island restaurant, opened in 1920 by Mike Levas.
"Everything that happened, happened at Main and Lime," said Evangelos "Angel" Levas, Mike's son.
In 1957, while Angel's parents were in Europe, he and his brother, John, converted the small eatery to Levas' Restaurant, one of the city's most popular white-tablecloth restaurants. With its famous martinis and original art on the walls, it was a place to see and be seen.
Griffin VanMeter is an organizer of Creative Downtown, a group trying to preserve the old buildings on that block, and memories of downtown. Last week, he taped oral histories of several people who remembered businesses once on that block.
Excerpts from the oral histories will be shown at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at the Kentucky Theatre. The event, Wake Up Lexington, will feature speakers on the historic, architectural and cultural importance of the block, plus ways to incorporate the buildings into the new development.
Many retail businesses have called the proposed CentrePointe block home over the years, including Graves Cox, Walgreen's, F.W. Woolworth, S.S. Kresge's, Johnny Furlong's restaurant, the Coney Island and later Levas' restaurant, Fred Fugazzi's restaurant and ice cream parlor, the Fig Tree restaurant, Joe Rosenberg's pawn shop and jewelry store, Wing's Chinese restaurant and other stores.
The Woolworth building was demolished in 2004. The Graves Cox building was torn down earlier.
On Monday, applications for demolition permits were filed with the city's Building Inspection office to raze four buildings in the block: 109, 111, 117, 119-21 South Limestone.
The protocol for demolition includes sending the applications to the city's division of Historic Preservation for review to see whether the buildings should be researched and documented before they are torn down. The office can take up to 30 days to complete the research.
Bettie Kerr, director of Historic Preservation, said on Wednesday that her office will put a 30-day hold on demolition for three of the buildings -- 109, 111 and 119-121 -- while her staff measures, photographs and does other historic research.
A bustling downtown
Graves and Levas did not participate in the oral history project last week at the Central Library, but they, like many others, have vivid memories of the block and downtown.
"It's hard to believe how bustling downtown was then," Graves said earlier this week. "There were probably 100 stores downtown, most along Main Street."
Graves Cox survives today in The Triangle Center, run by Len Cox, grandson of the original partner.
But in the time before shopping malls, people came downtown, frequently by streetcar or city bus, to buy furniture, shoes and clothing for the whole family.
Downtown had a variety of inexpensive lunch counters and fancier places including the popular Canary Cottage and Golden Horseshoe.
Doctors and dentists were downtown. The Lexington Clinic was at the corner of Market Street and West Second and patients went to St. Joseph Hospital, now the site of Connie Griffith Manor.
For the oral history project, Betty Pugh Wilkirson recalled when her father Hayward Wilkirson opened the S.S. Kresge Co., in 1925 in the building that is now The Dame. "It was a cheap department store that sold pots and pans, candy, socks, some clothes. It was similar to Woolworth's but it didn't have a lunch counter," she said.
A reporter for The Lexington Herald, Wilkirson said she was the first woman on the night shift to cover hard news, and eventually became a police reporter.
Some nights when she got off work, she and other reporters would go to Johnny Furlongs, a little restaurant on South Limestone, in a building now slated for demolition."Uncle Johnny always had a huge roast beef and a huge ham cooked in the window, so you could see it," said Wilkirson, 88. "Sometimes we'd sit around a big round table and he would cook pork chops and corncakes for us at 2 a.m."
Fred W. Croney Jr. , 52, recalled the segregated lunch counter at Woolworth's. "We had been in there before and been served," he said. But one day when he was downtown with his mother and brother, "The person at the counter decided to enforce segregation. They said we could buy food, but we couldn't eat in there."
"My mother was a proud woman. She was very, very angry and hurt," he said.
Croney said his mother tried to shelter her children from the pain of racial discrimination whenever she could. After the incident at Woolworth, "We never went to Woolworth's again. We went to McCrorys."
Frances Swinford Barr, 82, remembered going downtown on her date with her late husband, Bill Swinford. After they married, he bought a diamond pin for his wife at Rosenberg's. "It was my first piece of good jewelry," she said.
A Sunday closing
From the time he was a youngster, "Angel" worked in the Coney Island, which sold hot dogs, hamburgers and chili.
"It never closed. We were open 24/7," Levas said. "My dad would work all day and half the night. He would go home about midnight, dead tired, and the relief cook Louie Week came in to work from midnight to 8 a.m."
One Sunday, Week left at 8 a.m. and "Angel" at age 10 was there alone. He called his father to say "Louie had to go home." Levas' father said to lock up and come home. "I said, 'Where's the key?' My father said, 'I have no idea. It hasn't been locked since 1920.'"
"Angel" called Pinkston's lock company, which came out and made a key. "So then we closed that Sunday and we never opened on Sunday again," he chuckled.
During the 1970s and 1980s, downtown retail died. In an attempt at revitalization, Dudley Webb and his brother, Donald, opened Festival Market at the corner of East Main and North Broadway. "When it opened, it had 32 restaurants, so the downtown pie was sliced an additional 32 times," Levas said. "Most of us didn't make it, and neither did they."
IF YOU GO
What: "Wake Up Lexington, An Event to Save Our Block." Preservationists want to save old buildings in the block bounded by Vine, East Main, South Upper and South Limestone. Speakers will discuss the architectural, historic and cultural importance of the block, plus alternatives to the design of the proposed 40-story hotel and condominium project planned for the block.
When: 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday
Where: Kentucky Theatre, 214 East Main Street
Admission: Free to the public.
For more information: Go to preservelexington.org.