Story by Jessica Blomquist - Photos by Angelina Bellebuono

Madison’s downtown businesses have evolved over the years as some varieties of business became more profitable and others slowly faded in popularity. The days when families came to town to buy their necessities are over, and now specialty stores featuring gift items and art reign.

“It used to be oriented toward business,” said Woody Williams, who has lived in Madison since 1953. “Now it’s more oriented toward tourism.”

“When our family operated the business, Madison had a very viable downtown business community that catered to the needs of the family,” said Barry Lurey, whose family owned Mack’s Department Store.

The drugstores, grocery stores and clothing stores previously located downtown satisfied the necessary needs of families in Madison.

“Those were the things that were important to small towns at the time,” said Lurey.

The downtown family businesses that offered one type of product have given way to big box stores on the strip where all of a customers’ needs can be met in one building.

“In most cases where you used to have to go to a number of different places to get what you need, now you go to Wal-Mart,” said Williams. “It’s big and impersonal now. Used to be you dealt with your friends, but it’s not like that anymore.”

City Planner Monica Callahan said the changes in downtown businesses are just a result of changing trends.

“Our downtown market is evolving and continues to evolve,” Callahan said. Currently, gift shops, antiques stores and art galleries are popular downtown businesses. There are two varieties of stores that have gone out of downtown or are almost gone from downtown: grocery stores and gas stations.
According to Callahan, a grocery store needs more than 40,000 square feet to succeed in downtown. Ingles has 65,000 square feet and Wal-Mart has 60,000 square feet in grocery alone.

“Gas stations and grocery stores are finding it hard to compete against affordability on the strip,” Callahan said.

A movie theater would also be unsuccessful in Madison solely because a population of 3,800 people is not enough to warrant one.

“Our community is not large enough to support a movie theater, let alone one downtown.”

For Bank of Madison, Clifton Hanes, downtown shopping was a social event. Shop owners would open at nine in the morning so that those who lived in the country could come and shop all day, often until nine or 10 at night.

“I remember it as a happy time,” said Hanes. “Downtown Madison at the time was a social event.”   

ANNE SATTERFIELD
REMEMBERS

Anne Satterfield fondly remembers her father’s store, Baldwin Pharmacy, a monument in downtown Madison from the 1930s until it went out of business in the late 90s. A favorite hangout for teenagers in its heyday, Baldwin’s featured a soda fountain, a Wurlitzer jukebox, a popcorn maker, a soft-serve ice cream machine and a comic book stand.
“People were really bad about standing there reading comic books and then putting them back on the shelf,” Satterfield said. “I must say I was as guilty as anybody else.”
First and foremost though, the store was a pharmacy and Satterfield’s late father Asbury “Doc” Baldwin was known to return to the store after hours to fill a prescription that a customer was unable to request earlier.
“That was the life and times of a small town drugstore,” Satterfield said.
He also knew each customer by name and loved to tell stories, a quality she thinks is hard to find.
“Daddy had a phenomenal memory for people and names,” Satterfield said. Her father also worked with customers to help them get vital medication even if they were hard up to provide payment.
“If people didn’t have the money, Daddy would have never ever thought about withholding their medication,” Satterfield said. “He was good to people.”
Other past residents of Madison warmly recall spending their youth hanging out at the pharmacy after school, in particular, Lakeland, Fla.-resident Bill Jago, Jr. who was born in Morgan County in 1929.
“I particularly remember Doc let some of us young folk who were too young to be in WWII, lift the jukebox from his store to Main Street in front and have a street dance when we learned WWII had officially ended,” he said in “Main Street Was My Beat,” a self-published history of Main Street.

In 1935, Barry Lurey’s father Harry opened Mack’s Department Store, which remained in business until January of 1998. In those 63 years, Lurey remembers most the customers they served and the employees who made Mack’s successful. Lurey believes that small town downtown stores knew their customers well; therefore it was typical for employees and customers to have personal, candid relationships.
“I have fond memories of the people who used to shop with us,” said Lurey who constantly runs into some of his old customers. “They always tell me how much they miss our store in downtown Madison.”
One of the employees Marie Patrick, who worked in the women’s and children’s shoes department at Mack’s for almost 30 years, was saddened by the store’s closing in 1998. She was 89 years old.
“She said to me, ‘Oh Barry, and I had hoped to work until I was 90,’” Lurey said. “She could do a day’s work like a 49-year-old. One of the reasons we decided to close our store was we knew that we’d never be able to replace the employees we had. We were all getting older. And when they left, we’d never be able to replace them. So we just decided to go out of business.”

Louise Armour and her late husband Everitt opened Armour’s Five and Ten on Saturday, August 24, 1935 and worked there until its closing in October of 1996.
“We lived together and worked together for 72 years and four months,” said Armour. “I really want to say that after those 72 years, we never called the police on one another.”
The five and dime store carried all varieties of items priced at five cents and higher, including candy, which was scooped up and weighed for customers.
In its early days, a customer with a sweet tooth could purchase a fourth of a pound of candy for five cents.
Of her fondest memories of working at Armour’s, it is the Christmas season that she enjoyed the most.
They would begin putting out Christmas stock the day after Thanksgiving.
“We were busy, busy, busy putting everything out at that time,” Armour said. “We would go up to the store and stay until 12 o’clock at night putting toys together.”
According to Jago’s “Main Street Was My Beat,” when the store was sold in the 1996, “the displays and most of the stock were the same type carried in the 1930s. It was like stepping back in time.”

Sonny Pennington began bagging groceries at his father’s grocery store, Pennington Supermarket when he was a teenager. Later renamed Pennington’s Magnolia Market after moving to another location where more space was available.
The supermarket had personal service, which allowed customers to call in their grocery lists and have their groceries delivered to them. They also had manual charge accounts, allowing customers purchases to be tallied up monthly instead of having to pay at each shopping trip.
Pennington admits that a grocery store could not last downtown now due to lack of parking and the inability to carry enough varieties of products.
“It would be different to run a grocery store downtown with the parking situation,” Pennington said.
Another aspect of working at his father’s downtown grocery store that Pennington enjoyed was its close proximity to the Madison Theatre, a movie theater owned by Hoyt Dooley and once located downtown. Pennington normally attended the Saturday matinee at the theater, which was segregated at the time with seats in the balcony for black patrons and seats in the lower section for white movie-goers.
“Elvis Presley and James Bond movies were the ones I remember liking at the time,” said Pennington. With lots of teenagers and children attended the movies, the theater could get quite loud with talking and laughing.
“Mr. Dooley would stop the film if we got too loud and then make us be quiet before starting it up again,” Pennington said.

BARRY LUREY 
REMEMBERS

In 1935, Barry Lurey’s father Harry opened Mack’s Department Store, which remained in business until January of 1998. In those 63 years, Lurey remembers most the customers they served and the employees who made Mack’s successful. Lurey believes that small town downtown stores knew their customers well; therefore it was typical for employees and customers to have personal, candid relationships.
“I have fond memories of the people who used to shop with us,” said Lurey who constantly runs into some of his old customers. “They always tell me how much they miss our store in downtown Madison.”
One of the employees Marie Patrick, who worked in the women’s and children’s shoes department at Mack’s for almost 30 years, was saddened by the store’s closing in 1998. She was 89 years old.
“She said to me, ‘Oh Barry, and I had hoped to work until I was 90,’” Lurey said. “She could do a day’s work like a 49-year-old. One of the reasons we decided to close our store was we knew that we’d never be able to replace the employees we had. We were all getting older. And when they left, we’d never be able to replace them. So we just decided to go out of business.”

LOUISE ARMOUR 
REMEMBERS

Louise Armour and her late husband Everitt opened Armour’s Five and 10 on Saturday, August 24, 1935 and worked there until its closing in October of 1996.
“We lived together and worked together for 72 years and four months,” said Armour. “I really want to say that after those 72 years, we never called the police on one another.”
The five and dime store carried all varieties of items priced at five cents and higher, including candy, which was scooped up and weighed for customers.
In its early days, a customer with a sweet tooth could purchase a fourth of a pound of candy for five cents.
Of her fondest memories of working at Armour’s, it is the Christmas season that she enjoyed the most.
They would begin putting out Christmas stock the day after Thanksgiving.
“We were busy, busy, busy putting everything out at that time,” Armour said. “We would go up to the store and stay until 12 o’clock at night putting toys together.”
According to Jago’s “Main Street Was My Beat,” when the store was sold in 1996, “the displays and most of the stock were the same type carried in the 1930s. It was like stepping back in time.”

SONNY PENNINGTON 
REMEMBERS

Sonny Pennington began bagging groceries at his father’s grocery store, Pennington Supermarket when he was a teenager. Later renamed Pennington’s Magnolia Market after moving to another location where more space was available.
The supermarket had personal service, which allowed customers to call in their grocery lists and have their groceries delivered to them. They also had manual charge accounts, allowing customers purchases to be tallied up monthly instead of having to pay at each shopping trip.
Pennington admits that a grocery store could not last downtown now due to lack of parking and the inability to carry enough varieties of products.
“It would be different to run a grocery store downtown with the parking situation,” Pennington said.
Another aspect of working at his father’s downtown grocery store that Pennington enjoyed was its close proximity to the Madison Theatre, a movie theater owned by Hoyt Dooley and once located downtown. Pennington normally attended the Saturday matinee at the theater, which was segregated at the time with seats in the balcony for black patrons and seats in the lower section for white movie-goers.
“Elvis Presley and James Bond movies were the ones I remember liking at the time,” said Pennington. With lots of teenagers and children attended the movies, the theater could get quite loud with talking and laughing.
“Mr. Dooley would stop the film if we got too loud and then make us be quiet before starting it up again,” Pennington said.