Then and now downtown Black Mountain

More old buildings to post about today.

This is an early photo of a building which still stands today in downtown Black Mountain.

"Along the north side of West State Street is the Kaltman building, a series of eight similar store fronts constructed in 1928 by Samuel Kaltman, a clothing manufacturer from New York who came to the area in 1921 for his health. By 1926, along with his wife, Bessie, he was a leading developer in Black Mountain controlling about half of the real estate in Black Mountain’s downtown business section. Besides the Kaltman building he also built a garage and store building at the corner of State and Cherry Street. Kaltman died of a stroke in 1938 in his shop on Church Street where he made men’s trousers. These store fronts have been home to a wide variety of businesses since their construction including a drug store, hardware store, grocery, meat market, tea company, barber shop, cupcake shop, wine market, and running store.  (Source: Swannanoa Valley Museum and History Center post on Facebook, Jan 15, 2019.)

2018 view - The Merry Wine Market on left, the Vertical Runner, then Kitchen Emporium, then Hey Hey Cupcake...and I think a hair salon is next.  The Kaltman engraved stone is still visible on the edge of the center part of the building.  I'm also impressed that there are still trees in the background, and some may be the same ones that were there 90 years ago.  Obviously the canvass awnings have been replaced!

My photo of the shops in the same building in 2013.

In the postcard below, the same building is shown, and a white gas station at the far end, which is across Montreat Rd.  The 7up sign is on the wall of a taller building that abutts Kaltman's building. In the first photo (around 1928-30) Standard Oil was using that wall for its sign.

"In 1927, the gas station at the corner of Montreat Rd. and State Street, the site of Black Mountain's town square, pumped more gasoline than any other station in North Carolina. The New Theatre, just to the east on state Street was renamed the Pix, and was managed by Lee Hiltz's stepson Laddie Terrell.  It closed in the 1960s. (Source: Swannanoa Valley, by history museum.)

I admit to having no idea who Lee Hiltz or her/his stepson Laddie Terrell were.  That gas station was gone by the time I moved here in 2007...but there was just a parking lot where now a nice Town Square has been established. (And we haven't had a movie theater since I moved here either.)

In 2014 I took this photo looking south along Montreat Rd. The signal lights are at State Street, where if you turn right you'd see the Kaltman building on your right, and to the left in this photo all those blue awnings are part of Tyson Furniture.  But closer to where I was, you can see some greenery next to the sidewalk, and that was the early stages of the Town Square.

Below you can see the beginning of the Women's March in Black Mountain in January 2018.  It began in the Town Square, and I'm standing close to the bench in the foreground in a grey coat, hands in my pockets looking at the camera.

I'm sharing this post with Sepia Saturday this week.

Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to share history through old photographs.

We're always looking for others to share their old (or not so old) photos with the Sepia Saturday folks.  Come link to your post, give a comment and join us!