TUSCALOOSA, AL — As part of an exciting new partnership with our friends at Historic Tuscaloosa, Patch will be bringing you a quick piece of local history each week provided by those working hard to preserve the memories of our community.
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For this week’s installment of our ongoing series, Historic Tuscaloosa sheds light on the history of S.H. Kress & Co., which was a 5-, 10- and 25-cent store on what is now University Boulevard in downtown Tuscaloosa.
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Historic Tuscaloosa’s Event & Digital Media Coordinator Sarah-Katherine Helms says the Kress building was first constructed in 1937 and was later sold to Spiller Furniture in 1987, before it closed in 2009.
In one historic photo (pictured below), Helms points out that the group standing in front are: Mrs. Oliver Turner, Jennie Lou Spencer, H.S. Weir, Vada Holman, Melba Bertels, Ms. Walter Burlerson, Miss Nickels, Cammie Tingle, James Weir, Mr. Marlowe and Miss Harrison.
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The store in 1932:
The store today:
At present, the Kress building is home to The Pants Store and Rock N Roll Sushi.
In another photo, Helms provided more background on employees at the time, along with an interesting story.
“Employees and managers of the Kress Store in Tuscaloosa in 1932 are shown,” she said of the photo show above. “They include Florence Bruce on the first row, extreme left. Florence Bruce would later meet her husband while working at the store. He was a University of Alabama law student at the time.”
Click here to learn more about our friends at Historic Tuscaloosa and be on the lookout for the next installment of our Memory of the Week.
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