In a one-sentence notice in March 1959, the Chattanooga News-Free Press reported that Buchanan Funeral Home on West Ninth Street had relocated to 2628 South Broad St.
The bigger story was that much of Cameron Hill and the surrounding streets on the western side of the city - including parts of West Ninth Street - had been leveled to make way for new highway and business construction.
Most of the affected area contained 19th century houses, some of them 25-room mansions built for affluent northern families who had moved to Chattanooga after the end of the Civil War.
But a fair number of the structures leveled in the name of progress were family-owned businesses: Places such as Kopkin Grocery and Buchanan Funeral Home and Capistrano Bar-B-Q.
Photo Gallery
5A State Baseball Tournament
The Class 5A state baseball tournament at Veterans Park in Rogers.
A newly published collection of historic photos displayed at the website ChattanoogaHistory.com shows the homes and businesses of westside neighborhoods just before they were flattened by progress in the late 1950s.
Here are some of the businesses in the photos accompanying this article, taken by photographer Pat St. Charles Jr. for appraisal purposes in the 1950s:
> Buchanan Funeral Home was owned by Percy Buchanan, who died in 1969. Buchanan's obituary notes that the West Ninth Street mortuary "served residents of Chattanooga for 45 years, often giving free service." At the time of his death, Buchanan was the last living founding member of the Baptist Church of Bushtown, which later became Orchard Knob Baptist Church.
ChattanoogaHistory.com
Launched by history enthusiast Sam Hall in 2014, ChattanoogaHistory.com is maintained to present historical images in the highest resolution available.If you have photo negatives, glass plate negatives, or original non-digital prints taken in the Chattanooga area, contact Sam Hall for information on how they may qualify to be digitized and preserved at no charge.
> Kopkin Grocery, at 1101 Grove St., was a typical neighborhood store of the era. Signs on the front of the grocery for R.C. Cola and Camel cigarettes touted popular brands of the day. Newspaper archives show that store owner Sol Kopkin, who died in 1991, lived to be 105 years old. He was a member of the B'Nai Zion Congregation. When he died he had 10 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren. Kopkin's son, Jack, gained fame as the co-founder of the Office Depot chain of office supply stores.
> Little Dave's Food Market, 1018 Cross St., was a combination neighborhood store and boarding house. In May 1956, a fire swept through the store, ruining all the goods inside, according to a news report. This may explain the "For Rent" sign that was hanging in the store window when the St. Charles photo was made.
> S&K Food Market was also located on Cross Street. In June 1957 the owners of the store co-signed a letter to then-Chattanooga Mayor Peter Rudolph "Rudy" Olgiati, who had supported an ordinance mandating Sunday store closings. S&K Food Stores was among 131 independent groceries in Chattanooga that supported the mandate. A "thank you" letter to Mayor Olgiati read, in part, "We believe a grocery manager and his employees deserve a day of rest."
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Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com.