As each person as a life story, so does every old building.
Elizabeth Garraux, whose true story is told in my historical novel, “When He Was Gone,” probably shopped in this grocery store in the 1880s and ‘90s when it was the Ferguson & Miller Grocery. Even back then, the stout brick building was fairly old.
The boxy, two-story building, built in 1856, is Greenville’s second oldest nonresidential building, after Christ Church Episcopal. It was built as a dry goods store, then it served as a grocery for decades under several different owners.
The black and white picture is from the early 1900s when it was Pool & Bagwell Grocers. It later became a furniture store and then it was Cancellation Shoe Mart, with a sign that said, “The Home of Famous Name Shoes.”
In the late 1990s, a 29-year-old budding restaurateur bought the building with a partner. On Nov. 7, 1997, Soby’s New South Cusine, one of Greenville’s most popular downtown restaurants, opened its doors.
This year, owner Carl Sobocinski, head of the enormously successful Table 301 group, celebrated his first restaurant’s 25th anniversary. So if you’re lucky enough to enjoy a bowl of she crab soup at Soby’s, take a look around, and just imagine what stories those brick walls could tell.
I am sure when Elizabeth was buying her flour and sugar in the old brick grocery store, she could never have imagined what the building’s future would be, or that her own life story would be retold in a novel.
Makes you wonder about what the future and beyond holds for each of us …