November 04, 2007
Center Street wound its way from one decade to the next
By Gene Krider
For several months I have been going to Carolina Rehab by way of Stockton Street. Returning, I have an uneasy feeling every time I drive up the steep pavement to the intersection with North Center Street.
It just does not feel right.
I looked it up in the 1942-1943 “Miller’s Statesville, N.C. City Directory.” I saw the 200-block numbers that morphed into the 300-block numbers without an intersection marked. Now I paid attention to those numbers on the west side of Center.
The building at 201 was the “Southern Bell Telegraph and Telephone Co.”; a very small brick building taller than it was wide. The ground floor held the business office where you could walk through the angled door on the Center-Water street corner and pay your telephone bill.
The last 200 odd-numbered structure was Mrs. Kitty S. Gaither’s house at 255 N. Center St., and this was what was missing.
It was a red-brick, two-story house with a one-story front porch. From the sidewalk, exactly opposite the Stockton Street intersection with North Center Street, wide concrete steps rose to a landing and continued to another landing at the base of the house. From here another set of concrete steps rose to the front porch.
This high set of steps going up a sloping bank culminating with a house on top reminded me of an Aztec temple right in downtown Statesville.
I often wondered if the mailman had to climb all these steps to deliver mail. I knew that a garden supply store with access from Water Street was about the same level as the house and assumed that was the access for the house.
South of this house were two filling stations and another building ending with the telephone building.
North were Dr. Long’s dental office, his large brick home and finally the old Long’s Hospital.
North Center Street rose up gently until it got to Mrs. Gaither’s house and then plunged down to the Free Nancy Branch, which ran beside Mr. Bradford’s house. Then it flowed under Center Street and continued along the cindered parking lot beside Statesville Senior High School.
I never dreamed when I was walking home from senior high school that in 15 years, I would own and live in the white Williamsburg house and would walk along this route twice up and twice down to work in the West Building.
This block stayed the same until the late 1970s when Mrs. Gaither’s house was torn down, the land graded to the level of Center Street, and the Hardees building and later Citizen’s Saving and Loan building were built on these cut-down lots.
I did not know that in 1980, Design Associates would move into a large space with a loft behind the Citizen’s office.
It has been 27 years since I marveled at this Aztec-like part of Statesville. Now, three times a week, I return home by Stockdale Street and when I come to its intersection with Center Street, I look up and in my mind I see that huge flight of steps with a big brick house at the top.
Around town I see the tall cylindrical silver-painted water tank behind Mitchell College, the horses in the large white-fenced pasture that is now Newtown and Signal Hill Malls, and the iron stop sign at the end of the alley beside the First ARP Church.
These and many other lost places will always be a part of my Statesville.
