Future still on horizon for Kress building

Joel Goodman sits in front of one of the gigantic windows of a condominium for sale at his Kress Plaza on South Main Street. Photo by Mark Wineka, Salisbury Post

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Sheila Ezzo's condominium at Kress Plaza left in place an old store information window that is now outside the master bedroom. Phto by Mark Wineka, Salisbury Post

Joel Goodman stands behind the kitchen counter of the "R" condominium he has for sale at the Kress Plaza. Photo by Mark Wineka, Salisbury Post

In 1960, young Kress employee J.C. Ludwig was instructed to paint over the word "white" on the door of the men's coat room and toilet. Developer Joel Goodman saved many of the store's old doors. Photo by Mark Wineka, Salisbury Post

At closing every night, the S.H. Kress five-and-dime store at 300 S. Main St. locked every door except the one near the front candy counter.

J.C. Ludwig actually enjoyed the tedious chores of polishing the store’s brass and mopping the tiled floor each night in those days, because he and his male cohorts were able to talk to each girl clerk as she left through that one open door.

A lot of young guys managed to negotiate last-minute dates at closing time, Ludwig recalls.

Memories of the old Kress store in Salisbury often flood back for Ludwig and many other Rowan County residents who worked there as high school and college students or shopped at the place with their families.

The five-and-dime has long since closed, but developer Joel Goodman bought the historically significant steel and concrete structure in 2005 and transformed it into Kress Plaza.

Friday will mark the 100th anniversary of the 1910 Kress building’s opening as a five-and-dime store. And it’s almost three years now since Goodman sank $1.7 million into its renovation, only to see it fall victim to a recession, bad luck and stalled dreams all around it.

Goodman wishes he could afford a 100th birthday party for the building.

“When the day came, I wanted to have a gala affair — the whole 9 yards,” he says.

Instead, he’s putting whatever resources he has left into selling two remaining condominiums upstairs and finding tenants or buyers for large commercial spaces on the first floor and in the basement.

Since completing the project in 2007, Goodman has sold only three residential suites of five that were available — essentially one per year.

The Realtor he was relying on to market Kress Plaza went out of business.

The neighboring downtown development he counted on — a proposed $18 million renovation of the Empire Hotel and a possible downtown conference center across the street — fell into limbo.

Goodman realizes Kress Plaza is on its own.

The sour economy and real estate market hurt Goodman, too.

“The timing was not good,” he says.

But Goodman still finds comfort in knowing he has one of Salisbury’s most solidly constructed historic buildings. He also believes his top-notch restoration will pay off in the end, because every effort was made to honor the Kress tradition and give the city something it could be proud of.

“We still feel like we’re going to survive,” Goodman says, but in the next breath he tells you, “it’s just a very hard time.”

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Samuel H. Kress founded his five-and-dime store chain out of Memphis in 1896 and gained a reputation for building first-class downtown structures across the country.

The S. H. Kress & Co. formed its own architectural division that eventually employed more than 100 architects and draftsmen. Its first two architects were Julius H. Zeitner and Seymour Burrell, who collaborated in the design of the Salisbury store.

The design incorporates a lot of stone trim, complementing yellow brick. Keystones and a three-sided roof parapet wall also lend distinction to the Salisbury building.

The S.H. Kress store opened here Sept. 17, 1910 — Store No. 221 in the Kress system.

Goodman says a significant renovation occurred in 1936. With those changes, the Kress store in Salisbury became the first in the chain to have air-conditioning (on the sales floor).

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J.C. Ludwig remembers having to open the drains on the old air-conditioning unit on the Kress store’s roof.

But the air-conditioning didn’t extend to the second floor. In the summer, when Ludwig exited off the freight elevator, the heat rolled at him like waves from a furnace. He would immediately go to the huge front windows and throw them open for cooler air.

In 1955, when he was 16, Ludwig was hired to help at the store over Christmas. Manager D.E. Hall then tried to give Ludwig as many hours as possible while he finished high school and went on to Catawba College.

“I worked there about six years,” Ludwig says, and he ended up doing about everything at the store. By his last summer, he had worked long enough to earn a week’s paid vacation.

“That building put a lot of us through college,” he says.

As a student working summers, Ludwig became a basement stock room manager for toys and glassware. Later he would manage the upstairs stock room.

The ladies in charge of the sales floor included Betty Green in the back half and Violet Taylor in the front portion. Haywood Morris was “porter” or janitor, whose jobs included firing the store’s furnace, cleaning the windows and rolling out the awnings.

Ludwig remembers that his mother worked at the Kress store with Taylor and Green in the early 1930s.

But when Ludwig’s mother married in 1934, she had to quit, because Samuel Kress would not allow his stores to employ married women — he believed they should be at home.

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Sheila Ezzo lives in a 170-year-old farmhouse in New Jersey and commutes daily to a job in Manhattan.

She is a widow, and her boys have grown and moved away. She began looking to the South as a place to retire and specifically wanted a small-town environment and a “repurposed” building to live in such as an old school, mill, church or store.

“I was looking for a town that was a real town and not a manufactured one,” she says.

Ezzo checked out historic preservation properties on various websites. Her computer search and a trip to see friends in Cary eventually led her to visit Kress Plaza in Salisbury.

“I absolutely fell in love with it,” she says.

Last September, she bought the “S2” suite. (The five Kress condos were assigned the Kress letters — K-R-E-S1 and S2.)

Ezzo liked the transoms, doors and pass-through windows left over from the store, the natural light pouring in, the detailing and all the history connected to the Kress Plaza.

Not many places have a 12-foot-tall shower stall with a 10-inch rainhead spout, as Ezzo’s does. One of her two full bathrooms has an original Kress door still labeled “girls toilet.” A closet door carries its original “office supplies room” label.

Still working as a software trainer in New York, Ezzo has furnished “S2” so that it’s comfortable for her when she takes long weekend trips to her future home. She already has made seven visits since her purchase.

“We’re just tickled to have her here, and what a great advocate for Kress,” Goodman says.

Ezzo became quite familiar with Kress buildings and appreciative of their designs during her extensive search for a future home. Many across the country have been turned into residential condos, she says.

“One of the things about Samuel Kress was that he loved European architecture,” she adds. A well-known art foundation also bears his name.

Ezzo says she looks forward to the day when commercial tenants settle in on the first and basement floors.

It will be good for Salisbury, and good for the Kress building, she says.

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Goodman describes with pride the care his construction company took in restoring the Kress building’s exterior and all the elements he provided for inside.

On a quick tour, he points out things such as the tile of the 1910 sales floor, which will be restored to its original luster once the first floor has an occupant.

He motions upward to the Kress signature bale-and-hook lights that he also preserved.

The first floor offers commercial space for enterprises ranging from 1,800 to 6,342 square feet. In the basement, Goodman has an additional 4,405 square feet available.

People keep telling Goodman what a great space the first floor would make for a restaurant, and he has pushed a plan that would provide 99-seat capacity. But he’s open to other proposals.

Upstairs, showing off the empty “R” residential suite, Goodman says “it has entertainment written all over it.” Light pours in the front windows, which measure 5- by 8-feet and afford one of the better views of South Main Street.

The sales prices for the “R” and “S1” suites are $239,000 and $215,000, respectively. They also come with one-time historic preservation tax credits of at least $44,000.

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Chris Borre bought Suite “E” in the Kress Plaza in February 2008.

“I just like the building, the history behind it,” he says.

Borre works at the city water plant at Kerr and Jackson streets. He moved here from Pfafftown, and one of his criteria was he wanted a home from which he could walk to work.

He looked extensively through the downtown before choosing Kress Plaza and has no regrets.

Borre likes features such as the 12-foot-high ceilings and the refinished maple flooring. And if he doesn’t walk to work, he rides his bicycle.

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J.C. Ludwig met his wife, Ann, at the Kress store.

Management in those days might hire as many as 50 young sales girls to work the weeks around Christmas. Ann landed a job at 16.

If it happened to rain, instead of sending most of the girls home, the store managers might send them upstairs to Ludwig’s stock room.

“I would put them on a tagging machine,” that placed prices on the merchandise, Ludwig says, and a romance with Ann, one of those taggers, developed over the years to come.

Ludwig remembers when the store removed the “white” and “colored” brass signs over the water coolers in 1960. He also was instructed to use black paint to cover the word “white” on the door of a men’s toilet and coat room. Goodman still has that door preserved in the basement with several others.

Kress management tried to talk Ludwig into staying with the chain and becoming a manager.

But by 1961, he saw the decline already happening with the store and downtowns in general. He opted instead for a long career as an educator in the Mooresville school system.

During his restoration, Goodman learned of Ludwig’s connection to the Kress store, and the men became friends as Goodman tapped his memory for where things had been or how they used to work.

Ludwig even traveled to the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., in hopes of finding the original blueprint for the Salisbury store.

It wasn’t available.

Ludwig used to tease his wife that he was going to buy the Kress building, given what it meant to them and knowing how well-built it was.

Goodman would surely listen, if he’s still interested.

Even after 100 years, a lot of the building’s future has yet to be decided.