115 YEAR OLD DRUG STORE RUINS IN A SMALL GEORGIA TOWN (THE OLD BYRD SHOE STORE)

let's do all that over right [Music] hey everybody it's robert coming to you with sidestep adventures and today i'm out here with mr dan aiken and we are in the sleepy little town of waverly hall georgia where dan is the city historian and we're going to be taking a look at this building behind me today or what's left of this building and dan i believe you know about this building what is it well this is uh the facade of what used to be here uh only thing left is the front wall uh the building is uh the roof is gone the front is all that's left but this used to be originally the old drugstore for the town of waverly hall this was built in the early 1900s by dr louis weaver stanford and dr stanford was the local physician uh there were actually two drug stores here there was there was the drugstore of dr benjamin jamison that was on the opposite corner over there and then dr stanford had this one doc stanford's original drugstore was a little wooden building that stood right here on this spot and he had it torn down and he built this after he got to be prosperous and uh this for many many years in the early 1900s was the gathering place for everyone in town to watch who came and went on the train because the depot was directly across the street here and the train would come twice a day through here in the morning and the evening trains and uh they would see who got on who got off that was that was kind of the height of everyone's uh entertainment for the time uh but anyway that's about all that's left of it this was where they had the soda fountain and the big windows here on the front allowed everyone to see out this was just a hub of activity back in the old days later uh when dr stanford i think he died in 1926 his son george stanford took over and george stanford ran it for probably until the mid 1930s or so and then it was sold to mr ozi story and mr story had a meat market here throughout world war ii and i think later when mr story sold it well he passed away and then his daughter sold it to the vardaman family once it was rented out for a while and there was other stores i think mr robert phillips had a grocery store in here one time back in the 1950s and then it became vardaman's antique shop and it was watermen's antique shop when i was a kid operated by mr rod vardaman and he operated it until he passed away in the 1980s and after that it's it set vacant for a long time and one little leak on the roof developed into a large leak and it got worse and worse until the ceiling finally just the ceiling and the roof all caved in one day well it was cleaned out and the former owner of it told me that they wanted to put a new roof on it but the guidelines that the county wanted them to go through were more than they could afford so they said they had to have strict architectural drawings and so forth so they just they sold it as is and so here we have it today [Music] um [Music] and dan you remember what this building used to look like on the inside well when i was a kid growing up it was an antique shop and it i remember that it had a 10 a press 10 ceiling that was beautiful and all the floral swirls and it had wide tin crown molding along the edges i do remember that when you came in the door there was an angled platform here that mr vardaman kept antiques that he displayed in these big windows and originally that had been a platform for displaying things for the drugstore and i have seen a picture once of this building back when it was drugstore and there was a big display of medicine right here in the front and a display i think of life boy soap but i do remember that when mr vardham bought it a lot of the showcases and display cabinets and things were still in here when he purchased the place and he kept a lot of those things in here for many many years until he sold out the business and i remember some of the uh fixtures one thing i remember specifically was the uh soda fountain chairs you remember the little twisted iron chairs that that were popular in the soda fountain yeah there was a pile of those back there in the back and he used to sell those individually he had the tables and the chairs so that's just some of the things that i remember about it i've heard a lot of stories growing up here about the people other people who grew up in town back in the 19 you know the world war one era up until the 1920s they would gather here and look out these windows at the train and it was just a gathering place for teenagers back in those days but also on a sadder note dr stanford being the only physician in town i remember there was a back room back there and there was an operating room where he operated on patients and it was very depressing to go back there it was dark and dingy and mr vardaman had a pool table back there that he would go back there and play pool with his friends at times but the old operating room was still there and i just remember that it was all original it never had but one coat of paint on it and there were figures all over the walls where people had uh written things written notes and it was just a very strange place another thing now there's a lot of drainage issues with this building and these buildings and another thing i think is interesting that she said is that he used to keep this back behind these buildings graded down they did because the the it was not a public street but it was just a public access was a street that turned in here beside the fire station over here and went around these buildings and came out on kenmore street and that was kept up by the city even though the city didn't own it they kept it up and that was graded every so often and that ground back there was hard and it was well you know it's well compacted and it was it was not as built up as it is now over the years rainwater has washed all that topsoil down and has caused the ground level to be higher back there than it is in here so therefore all the rainwater comes into this building now so building next door was uh shorter than this building and when they extended that building over their next door they closed up the window in the operating room the operating room used to be right here or i guess i should call it the exam room this is dr stanford's little private area but they closed up this window here this is the old stove flew from where they had a stove or a heater back here in the exam room but that that was originally the bank over there and years later they built a second floor made it a two-story building and when they did they extended it was that about 10 feet maybe it looks like maybe this is the original end of the building there [Applause] years ago waterproofing was put here to keep water from seeping into that other building but i don't think that's doing much good anymore [Music] [Music] reaching [Music] one interesting thing about the drugstore is that uh back in the early 1900s the only place to buy gasoline was at the drugstore very few places sold gasoline because it was dangerous and there was no need for it it was used for cleaning clothing and when automobiles started becoming more common the first gas pump in waverly hall was right here in front of this drugstore and there is a photograph of that gas pump hanging in the city hall it's a it features a group of school teachers standing around it early one morning and of course they were here because they came to see who came on the train before school started and they would gather here and [Music] some of the teachers i think even came in on the train in the early morning and they would gather and then they'd walk across the railroad to the schoolhouse to open the school for the day's schooling some of your viewers may be interested in knowing that this is where the bird and baldwin store stood this was mr jim henry bird of the bird farm this is where he built his store uh it stood here of course it's been long gone i think it burned in 1920 somewhere between 1921 and 1926 it caught fire and was was destroyed but the bird store started out here as bird freeman and terry mr bird built a little wooden building on this corner and as his business grew he took in his nephew or robert baldwin nephew in law robert baldwin and he was robert baldwin senior was his name but he and mr baldwin were in business together here for many many years and they built a two-story brick building here and i'm told that there was a ramp in the back of the building was so big that they had a ramp that went up to the second floor and the entire second floor was a showroom for for wagons and buggies and uh he was a dealer in uh white hickory and white star buggies white hickory buggies i believe were from north carolina but he was the sole distributor for those here in waitley hall later the building burned and you can see where part of the building this is part of the front wall of the building this being the original front facade but later in the 1940s the ruins of the building there was a long wall that went down that street over there that was used for circus posters and whenever the circus was coming to town anywhere around here columbus or tarleton or wherever the circus was going to appear they would use that wall to display the posters now this was a alley between dr stanford's drugstore and the burton baldwin store right here so in 1910 the shoe business was so busy in the burton baldwin store that they built this store right here just for their shoe department and they cut a hole between the walls uh between the two stores they had a big arch doorway that went from this store into the big main store and uh they put the date right here that this was built the concrete out here was poured june the 7th of 1910 [Music] now these doors here originally had a shutter that went over them that covered the glass in the evenings you can see those holes right up there there was a wooden panel that would stick up there you would slide it on here and from the inside you would turn the key and this has threads on it and the threads would lock the shutters down and of course the windows they had shutters on them as well so that when they were and you know at night time they would close them up and had an iron bar that went across them to lock the place up securely but this was the burst ball with shoe store and then after they went out of business uh mr ap smith and his wife miss ruth had a cafe and a restaurant in this business in this building and then over the years it was different things came and went in here then part of the vardaman antique shops were all all these buildings the one on the corner over there the old dr jameson drugstore then this building was built here in the 60s and was going to be a post office but it never my plans fell through on that uh then this when i was a kid became vardaman's laundromat prior to it becoming an antique shop and a lot of people did not have washers and dryers back then and everybody came up here to wash and dry their clothes when this thing went in business it was very popular and that's about it after this antique shop closed this building was sold and it's been a bakery and a restaurant two or three other different things have come and gone here but it's soon to be under new owners and maybe something different will come to town all right everybody i hope you enjoyed seeing this old building here also learning some of the bird history here in waverly hall which is absolutely amazing that one of their buildings is still in fact standing here now also this wall uh the fate of this wall is kind of up in the air right now we're trying actively to save it in fact if you follow my other channel the old bird farm vlog i'll be doing some videos here as we clean this area up but a really neat place and lots of history here it really is again thank you dan for sharing it with us today thank you always a pleasure we'll see you next time you

Channel: Sidestep Adventures

Views: 22,339

Keywords: travel, where to live in america, top 10, move to, top 10 reasons not to, best cities to live in, world according to briggs, united states, ranked, lists, best states, best cities, relocate, maps, georgia voting restrictions bill, georgia, usa, best small towns, best small towns in america, moving to georgia, affordable housing, best places to live in the united states, georgia us state, small town life in america, trip xtreme, georgia usa

Id: ZLI_CPlfMV8

Length: 17min 14sec (1034 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 13 2022