One-Eleven restaurant owner Michael Lovelady had original plans to turn his building into an administrative office for his engineering company, Correctional Electronic Supply, until he saw all the history it had to offer to the public.
“We found so many historical elements and didn’t have the heart to turn it back into offices,” said Lovelady. “We took a big leap of faith with the restaurant because we wanted the public to be able to enjoy the history.”
Lovelady, who was raised in LaFayette, said the city is the perfect setting to come back to after 30 years of being gone and do something like this.
The three-story building, Lovelady’s first historical restoration, appears as if it were pulled straight out of the Historic District in Savannah. With the help of family and friends, they followed blueprints and went off of old photographs to recreate the layout of the original 1906 hardware store both inside and out.
Inside there is the freight elevator that was used in the 1920s to move Ford Model T’s upstairs which is used today alongside original cellars and stucco.