Our town of Roanoke, Virginia has not had a downtown retail anchor for nearly a quarter century. That will change—and gloriously so—come next year.
GEORGE DAVIS PHOTO COURTESY ROANOKE CITY LIBRARY VIRGINIA ROOM
The old Heironimus building in downtown Roanoke, Virginia, will get new life when Mast General Store arrives next year.
When I was a boy in the ‘50s and ‘60s and visiting my grandparents in Radford, Virginia, one of the big occasions for my grandmother and her three daughters was a shopping trip to downtown Roanoke.
For there, within the space of a few bustling blocks, were the retail palaces of their time for this part of the world: Multi-floor department stores complete with everything from dresses to davenports, along with elevators, escalators and those strangely comforting “boing boing” signal noises in the background.
In downtown Roanoke in that era the prime specimens were Leggett’s, Miller & Rhoads and Heironimus. At their apex, just before the coming of the malls (in our town, Crossroads was the first, in 1961), those stores were a strong lure, perhaps most strongly to ladies dressed to their near-Sunday best to spend a day wandering their floors, wondering at their wares, and pausing in their lunch rooms at midday.
The fall was hard and fast. Those suddenly appearing clusters of scores of stores surrounded by acres of free parking quickly changed the retail landscape, and spelled the end for the swanky downtown department store. The last of them in Roanoke—Heironimus—hung on until 1996.
And downtown Roanoke, with due nods to the likes of Davidsons and Orvis, of chocolatepaper and LaDeDa, has not had a retail anchor since.
There’s a different kind of anchor about to change all that. Mast General Store, with its original 1883 store in Valle Crucis, North Carolina still a popular destination, is coming to Roanoke next year.
And to downtown Roanoke. And to the long-vacant Heironimus building. With the escalators preserved, if not functional. And with more other-era wonders like creaky wooden floors (a Mast tradition) and the facade restored to its original (the building went up in 1914) appearance.
And product lines to keep you inside and perusing much the way your grandmother did more than a half century back.
We at Blue Ridge Country root hard for all the downtowns in our seven-state region. And have drawn an even sharper focus on that love over recent issues with the addition of Joan Schroeder’s hard-working column (see page 14 in this issue) on mountain towns.
The coming of Mast General is going to be a great day for this one we live in.
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The article above appears in our May/June 2019 issue. For more like it, subscribe today or log in to the digital edition with your active digital subscription. Thank you!