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Many stories bound to downtown iron

Five O'Clock Shadow

By Charles Deal | Special to the Record

Published: October 4, 2009

The building at the western end of downtown Hickory's Main Drag — the city's only remaining iron-front building — is the source of many stories.

In its better, more recent days, it was the home of The Hickory News for about 20 years. Old-timers in Our Town know it better as the former Lutz Drugstore. Believed to be about a century old, the building's west wall on Third Avenue, NW, was made of handmade brick, the clay likely dug onsite in creating a basement for the two-story structure. Dried in the sun, the bricks are colorful but fragile.

A round plate high on the building is indicative of an innovative feature. A steel rod running through the width of the structure is fitted with a turnbuckle. If the adjustable turnbuckle is taut, it's likely the building would survive an earthquake.

The iron front was added some years later, which accounts for the better, professional brick. A member of the Menzies family operated a drugstore in the same building around 1900 when Third Avenue was known as Watauga Avenue, when many streets in Hickory were identified by the names of trees.

The other iron front building, home to the Times-Mercury long ago, was razed during urban renewal.
Lutz Drugstore was a major, unofficial communications center in the city.

Each morning, a group of downtown businessmen would meet over coffee at the drugstore, talk about overnight news and wait for the Record for verification in mid-afternoon.

Yet another drugstore operated in the building when Hickory's first telephone company began operation on the second floor. "Double-A" Shuford, one of the founders, had telephone No. 1, the drugstore was No. 17 then and for many years. A high school boy was the central operator. He sometimes played music for phone subscribers.

The drugstore was also an unofficial political office for the Democratic Party. Anyone with plans to run for state or national office would get off the train at Hickory station and walk across to the drugstore for a meeting with the most powerful political figures in the city, drugstore owner Horace Lutz Sr. and Hickory Postmaster J. Henry Hill Sr., who also operated nearby restaurants.

It is believed but not documented that President Franklin Roosevelt made a late-night stop in Hickory to confer with Lutz and Hill about making another run for the presidency. On the Nazi assassination list, the president's visit was not announced nor verified that it really happened.

It was in front of the drugstore that electric lights were turned on in Hickory, among the first in North Carolina. Many years later, the Hickory Rebels Baseball team became among the first pro teams in the nation to play under lights. It happened at College Field, owned by Lenoir-Rhyne College.

An enclosed staircase in the Lutz building was used to access the second floor, where Margaret Huggins operated the city business and credit bureau for some 30 years. On a really cold day, she said, it was not unusual for ice to form in her office. At the time, no one seemed to know the building's owner was actually a family in Buncombe County.

A country doctor was a street-front tenant on the second floor. Passersby soon learned to make a wide arc around the building, opting for the street instead of the sidewalk. The doctor was known to chew tobacco and spit the dregs out a window.

The drugstore has another distinction, Hickory's first passerby shooting. A man standing in front of the building was gunned down by someone in a car, resulting in a non-serious flesh wound.

Other than a source for medications, Lutz was often the scene for that first date over a soda or milkshake. A more serious purpose was seeing soldiers and sailors off to war. It was a short walk from the drugstore to the rail station.

Happy homecomings after the wars often happened in a booth or at one of the black marble tables.

Charles Deal is a former editor and publisher. Reach him at chazdeal@aol.com.