Photo of The Month – Dec 2009

End of an Era

Picture contributor: Sherry Harris Phelps

Trucks are poised to haul away all that can be stripped from the store building before it's imploded. — End of an Era

We aren’t certain as to the dates when the old Store Building was demolished, but it was sometime in the mid 1960s.

A zoom-in shows the building's interior has been gutted. Scraps of the remains lie about along the front. — A closer view

It appears the building has been gutted, or nearly so, and now only the shell is left to be torn down. The Memorial Building has been abandoned but is still intact.

By now the entire downtown, including the sites of the superintendent’s house and the mill office, is a parking lot. The pavement covering the end of Reservoir Street (foreground) is scarred and eroded.

If only they could talk, these nearly-60-year-old walls would have lots to tell us about the generations who, since 1909, had used this old landmark. It had housed facilities and businesses that provided nearly everything the citizens of Cliffside needed or wanted.

The photo was taken by Roy Lee Harris.