Piggly Wiggly - Roxboro And Club

36.019002, -78.88907

2206
Durham
NC
Cross Street
Year built
1950-1960
Year(s) modified
1970-1990
Construction type
Neighborhood
Building Type
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Piggly Wiggly, looking northeast from North Roxboro, 1950s.
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

Thanks to the readers who successfully identified this mystery photo over a year ago, it can join the ranks of the full-fledged before-and-after Endangered Durham post. The Piggly Wiggly structure above, built in the early 1950s after the construction of the US 70 bypass just to the south has been enlarged and converted into a multi-tenant suburban complex.


Looking northwest, 06.13.10

(Find this spot on a Google Map.

36.019002,-78.88907

Comments

They had an incinerator on the back of the store inwhich they would burn their boxes. I think this later became a Western Auto.

Ah, but the original parking curb and island remain!

Cool building. Very cool signs. Unfortunate generic remodeling.

Why can't we still build commercial structures that have any character?

You'd have a heck of time getting a cool vertical sign like that approved under Durham's sign ordinance.

Many an architect will tell you that creativity has been beaten out of their venerable profession.

Generic, safe, boring, predictable and egalitarian is what the rules (e.g. zoning ordinances) prefer.


Something "cool" often requires a (expensive) struggle.

I don't think there's a Piggly Wiggly within 50 miles of Durham anymore. Odd.

BZZZT. Pittsboro has a Piggly Wiggly!

Really? That's great; thanks. They carry some things I can't find elsewhere. Thank you.

Not sure when it sropped being a Piggly Wiggly, but by about 1970, it was a Winn-Dixie, and the taller building built beside it was Eckerd Drugs.

It was indeed Western Auto when I was a kid, and Eckerd's with the grill where you could eat lunch.  Around back was the ABC store, a barber that was there for years, and also a florist.

The barber shop is still there .It's the oldest barber shop in Durham.It started in a hotel on main street in the 40's.Moved to Hyde Park and Holloway in the 60's.Then moved to this shopping center in the mid 70's.I am a barber there.

After the Piggly Wiggly and before it was the Advance Auto it was a Winn-Dixie grocery store. I worked there the fall of 1965 till April 1966. I would burn all the cardboard in the incinerator in the rear of the building.

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