“Historic Norman commercial block of stone buildings.”
City Directories and History: 1961 – Kyzer Radio and TV Repair, 1981 – Economy Drugs
The 1912 Sanborn Map listed this location as a furniture store which adjoined the grocery next door. However, it is best known as the southern unit of the Norman Building and was used to house the Obear Drug Store. Note the building was originally made of local rock and had a beautiful exterior staircase leading to the public areas of the second floor.
Information on the general area: The west side of the one hundred block of South Congress street begins at Liberty Street with an interesting set of Cast Iron stairs leading to an upstairs series of spaces used over the past century for many purposes including a Masonic hall, hotel, and most recently the past home of Saint Theresa’s Roman
Catholic Church which is now on the 321 Bypass west of town. The rugged granite wall of this building dates to an earlier store built in the Nineteenth Century by Mr. James Turner and later remodeled by the Charlie Norman family into the pleasant facade of three store fronts in the early Twentieth Century. The Norman family of three brothers, Charlie, Mose, and Frank and Charlie’s wife Hygdesgia, belovedly known by the town until her death in 1989 as “Mrs. Norman,” operated their dry goods business in this building along with Economy Drugs in the corner space followed by a liquor store, then the dry goods store. The Normans in the early twentieth century lived in the house standing on Liberty Street beside the Southern Railway but moved to their present home on Vanderhorst Street early in that century. Brothers Mose and Frank operated businesses in the one hundred block of North Congress Street. Dr. Obear, father of Mr. H. N. Obear, ran his pharmacy in the Economy Drug location before Dr. and Mrs. Ed Teal acquired it in the 1960’s. They operated it until the early 1990’s. [Courtesy of J.M. Lyles]
Also see other data on the Norman Building
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