Greensboro History

The 1950s

Greensboro returned to third place (behind Charlotte and Winston-Salem) among North Carolina cities in the 1950 census, with a population of 74,400. A 1957 merger with the adjacent town of Hamilton Lakes would eventually take Greensboro into the number two position statewide.

The suburban boom was on, and Greensboro saw a boom in shopping center and housing construction on its fringes. Grocers began to see the need to move away from downtown and into the new outlying neighborhoods where their customers lived.

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New Shopping Centers

Arguably, Greensboro’s first shopping centers were such planned community centers as the Tate Street area near Women’s College, the State Street area in McAdoo Heights, and the Bishop Block, just north of downtown on Elm Street. All were developed and planned by a single entity and qualified technically as shopping centers. However, the well-known suburban model began in Greensboro with 1950’s Summit Shopping Center, a large center with its own parking lot sited across from St. Leo’s Hospital at the former entrance to the ORD army base.

By late in the decade, community shopping centers were joined by larger regional centers with a broader array of merchandise and even branches of the downtown department stores. Friendly Center, located on Friendly Road between Greensboro and the neighboring town of Hamilton Lakes, was the prime example in Greensboro.

New Greensboro shopping centers of the 1950s (and their supermarket anchors) included:

  • Summit Shopping Center, Summit and Bessemer Avenues, 1950: A&P
  • Lawndale Shopping Center, Lawndale Drive, 1950: Ralph’s Food Palace and Big Bear
  • Plaza/Irving Park Plaza, Battleground Avenue, 1951: Colonial
  • Florida Street Shopping Center, Florida Street and Freeman Mill Road, 1957: Winn-Dixie
  • Friendly Center, Friendly Avenue, 1957: Colonial and (five years later) Winn-Dixie
  • Southside Shopping Center, Asheboro Street, 1958: Colonial
  • Northeast Shopping Center, Summit and Bessemer Avenues, 1959: Big Bear

A&P

A&P began the 1950s with six locations in Greensboro. Of these, three were less than five years old, while two others had operated for more than two decades.

The Summit Shopping Center branch was brand new, having opened in 1950 as an anchor of Greensboro’s first large-scale suburban shopping center. The other two newest branches, on Commerce Place and Asheboro Street, remained solidly anchored downtown.

The two oldest branches, one on East Market Street and one on Lee Street would not make it to 1955. Market Street closed for good early in the decade, and Lee Street relocated to a new. modern building a few doors down in 1954.

On 26 June 1957, the ten-year-old store on Walker Avenue relocated farther out on Walker near its intersection with West Market Street, west of the old town of Hamilton Lakes. The new 14,000 square foot store featured six checkout lanes, a self-service meat department, and parking space for 114 cars.

By decade’s end, A&P had five locations in the city, none of them in the northwestern quadrant where Greensboro’s growth would ultimately occur. This was a mistake the chain would repeat in countless American cities.

Bi-Rite

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Butler’s Bi-Rite, 1320 Glenwood Avenue, 1955. (Greensboro Daily News)

I. Essa had opened his grocery on Gorrell Street in east Greensboro in 1935. Robert Butler had opened his store in working class Glenwood in 1936. In 1955, these two independent grocers, along with C.R. Little and several others joined together in a cooperative venture known as Bi-Rite stores. Their original intent was to band together in order to pay for newspaper advertising to compete with the large chains. Eventually, the federation engaged in cooperative buying, and the stores all assumed the Bi-Rite name. Butler became president of the new organization.

Bi-Rite reached into many outlying areas of the city, particularly in the southwest and the east, before the chains did, and therefore the co-op was well-positioned when development caught up.

Butler’s store in Glenwood took on the new name in 1955, following a large-scale expansion. New (not rebranded) stores opened on Lawndale Drive (1957) and High Point Road (1959) among others. In addition, the former A&P on Walker Avenue was purchased by one of the co-op members when A&P relocated in 1957.

Bi-Rite very quickly became one of the biggest names in Greensboro grocery retailing, and remained so for two decades.

Big Bear

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Greensboro’s first Big Bear, Lawndale Drive, 1954 (Greensboro Daily News).

George Hutchens’ National Food Stores (no relation to National Tea Company) had operated stores in neighboring High Point since 1915, and its first Big Bear supermarket had opened there in 1938. The chain had expanded to Winston-Salem in the early 1940s. On 23 March 1954, the first Greensboro branch opened in the new Lawndale Shopping Center, northwest of downtown and a few doors down from Ralph’s Food Palace. The new store featured a Kiddie Korral, complete with merry-go-round, TV, and blackboard.

A second Big Bear followed in 1955, on Fourth Street in the Proximity mill village. This branch was replaced four years later by a 17,200 square foot store in the new Northeast Shopping Center a few blocks away. National Foods, as the parent company was still known, was the developer of the center. The Big Bear store was called the “most completely equipped and stocked food store in North Carolina” upon its opening on 10 November 1959. It featured one of the chain’s trademark “Deli-Kitchens” and a two-way radio linkup to the corporate offices and warehouse in High Point.

Colonial

In 1950, Greensboro was served by two Colonial stores, both of them downtown. These two were joined by the first suburban location, in the new Irving Park Plaza on Battleground Avenue, in 1951.

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Colonial, 2924 High Point Road, 1959. (Greensboro Daily News)

Like Big Bear, Colonial recognized Greensboro’s northwesterly pattern of development early on; the chain was an anchor in the city’s first regional shopping center, Friendly Center, in 1957. However, Colonial Stores also launched stores in the southwest (High Point Road) and southeast (Asheboro Street) in 1959. These twin 16,500 square foot stores featured the corrugated metal front and modernistic “rooster pylon” that were duplicated all over the south. Both eventually anchored small convenience shopping centers, and both offered a unique parcel pickup system wherein customers picked up their groceries using a numbered slip at a pickup station on the side of the store.

An additional Colonial store operated briefly on the edge of Sunset Hills on Madison (now West Friendly) Avenue from roughly 1953-1958. The newer of the two downtown stores closed in the late 1950s, while the 1938 Washington Street store remained open. By decade’s end, Colonial had five Greensboro locations.

Dixie-Home/Winn-Dixie

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Dixie-Home, 1614 Battleground Avenue, 1955. (Greensboro Daily News)

On 26 June 1955, Dixie-Home Stores of Greenville SC opened its first Greensboro location,a 15,000-square-foot unit on on Battleground Avenue. Dixie-Home had been operating in the southwestern part of the state for some time, and this was the first of four Greensboro stores planned by the company. Dixie-Home would, later that year, merge with Winn & Lovett stores of Florida to become Winn-Dixie.

Two more stores opened, now under the Winn-Dixie banner, in 1957, one in the Florida Street Shopping Center and another near the corner of Spring Garden Street and Pinecroft (now Holden) Road.

Kroger

Kroger entered the Greensboro market in 1952 after several successful years in neighboring High Point and Winston-Salem. The first Greensboro location was on Spring Garden street, a few blocks west of the Woman’s College campus.

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Kroger, Bellemeade Street, artist’s rendering from advertisement, 1955.

Bucking most trends of the time, the second was located downtown on Bellemeade Street on the site of the old Tate-Walsh mansion. Open 28 June 1955, its 18,000 square feet of floor space were decorated in pastel red, gray, and green with a “scenic wallpaper” above the meat department. The store also featured nine checkout lanes and a “new” parcel pickup system very similar to Colonial’s “unique” one.

A warehouse and a third store were under construction in the 1950s as well, although the latter would not open until 1960.

The Rest

There was considerable activity among Greensboro’s independents and small chains as well.

The Ivory Store was down to one location by 1950, its location at 610 Walker Avenue. Now called Hensley’s Ivory Store, this store relocated to a 1930s-era A&P at the corner of Walker and Elam in 1958. Additionally, a new store had opened around 1953 on High Point Road on the southwestern edge of the city. The High Point Road store was expanded in 1958.

Piggly Wiggly made a reappearance in 1959 in a building vacated by Colonial Stores a year earlier on Madison Avenue near Sunset Hills. The 8,000 square foot store was completely remodeled by the company and franchised to veteran grocer J.D. White.

Ralph’s Food Palace, the six-year-old pioneer on Lawndale Drive burned down in 1954 and was rebuilt simply as Ralph’s, an apparently rather whimsical store with cartoon-like murals and aisle markers with “street names” like Pickledilly Lane, etc.

Perhaps the most prophetic event, however, was the 11 September 1958 opening of Clark’s on Burlington Road. The innovative New York chain operated some of the first superstores in the country, combining a discount department store and a supermarket under one roof. Greensboro’s branch, located in a former tobacco warehouse, just as its first A&P supermarket had been twenty years before, contained 120,000 square feet and was one of the first big stores to be open on Sunday. Clark’s opened stores in Winston-Salem and Charlotte around the same time as the Greensboro store.

Updated on 26 November 2022
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One thought on “Greensboro History

  1. Larry Talbott

    December 25, 2018 at 3:43pm

    As a high school student I worked at the Kroger’s Golden Gate store starting in March of 1973. It closed later that same year when the new Palmer Plaza superstore opened..

    Permalink  ⋅ Reply
    • Kelly J Heath

      October 12, 2021 at 7:10pm

      What was the name of the Italian restaurant at Golden Gate Shopping Center in the corner back in 70

      Permalink  ⋅ Reply
      • Author

        Groceteria

        October 12, 2021 at 9:11pm

        The Flamenco. I think at one point there’s also a second location called the Flamenco Too. I believe the Pavilion restaurant on Vandalia Road near Pinecroft is run by the family of the Flamenco’s owner.

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  2. Janice DeGree

    January 18, 2020 at 6:25pm

    My Mom took me with her when she shopped at Big Bear in Lawndale Shopping Center until it closed. I have fond memories…

    Permalink  ⋅ Reply
  3. Darius Burwell

    July 25, 2020 at 7:42am

    As a kid growing up in the 1980s my family use to shop at the old Food World on Summit Ave. It wasn’t the biggest or the best looking supermarket, but it was neighborhood, so that was enough for us.

    We were saddened for a minute when one day we looked up and old Food World was gone, and some new people called Harris Teeter had their name on the store.

    They upscaled the place, but it never had the same feel as the old Food World did.

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  4. JAMES BAILES

    November 20, 2020 at 11:58am

    SHOPPED AT LITTLES BI-RITE FOR SO MANY YEARS
    MR. LITTLE USED TO SELL A LOT OF OUR CORN MEAL AND OTHER PRODUCTS (BAILES OLD MILL /OAK RIDGE NC)

    THOSE WERE THE DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES !
    EVER WISH YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME ?
    GREAT WEB SITE ! KEEP THE MEMORIES FLOWING !

    JAMES BAILES, MD
    FORMER OWNER OF BAILES OLD MILL IN OAK RIDGE , NC
    CURRENTLY 20 YEARS IN PUERTO PLATA, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC……GREAT PLACE TO LIVE !

    Permalink  ⋅ Reply
  5. Lisa Muratori

    October 2, 2022 at 3:48pm

    Can anyone give me the histor g of the Top Value Store that was in Golden Gate? I have a box that was delivered there in Fecember of 1972 with the original merchandise still inside. Thanks..

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  6. Brenda Adams

    July 21, 2023 at 2:32am

    I worked at Bi Rite on Liberty Road/421 in Greensboro in 1977-1978. I loved it. My first job as a teenager – cashier. The store was robbed at gun point in fall of 1978. I happened to be working that night. My Mom made me quit and I cried and cried! I was 17 years old. The old store still stands today with a few changes and is a Dollar General Store.

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  7. Roger C.

    March 10, 2024 at 8:14am

    There used to be a sewing shop in the Zaire shopping Center at the corner of Holden and high point Road. Does anyone know what the name of that store was and did it move to another location and other details about that store?

    Permalink  ⋅ Reply
    • Author

      Groceteria

      March 10, 2024 at 10:02am

      Piece Goods Shop. It was a chain based in Winston Salem and they’ve been out of business for decades.

      Permalink  ⋅ Reply

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