ARNALL GROCERY OPENING, 1929

ARNALL GROCERY OPENING, 1929

Arnall Grocery Opening, 1929

This crowd was gathered for the opening of a new self-service grocery started by the H.C. Arnall Merchandise Company on April 17, 1929. The photo, a companion to another published in this feature April 21, 1987, is provided y Dorsey Beavers, present owner of Arnall Grocery Company on East Broad. The company had moved from what is now the Kessler's building to the former Burdett warehouse building on the northeast corner of Perry and East Washington Street. Arnall Merchandise, founded in 1869, was celebrating 60 years of business in Newnan with a grand opening sale. The retail store where customers served themselves rather than having orders filled by clerks was a new concept, and the was the first such self-service super store in Georgia, according to Beavers. The company continued to operate a wholesale grocery business in part of the building. In later years the store was known as the Krazy Kat. Shortly after World War II, the company name was shortened to Arnall Grocery Company. The building that covered half a city block burned February 18 and 19, 1978, in a fire so intense that it cracked windows of Craft Cleaners across the street. At that time, Beavers noted that the location was once a slave market, that during the Civil War it was a hospital for soldiers, and after the Battle of Brown's Mill was a prison for federal soldiers. Used as warehouse and full of cotton, a building at the spot burned at one point and was built again, Beavers said. At the time of the 1978 fire, Millians and Thompson grocery had been operating in the East Broad Street end of the building for 13 months and Arnall Grocery was using the back for storage. Arnall Grocery Company had been purchased by Beavers in 1976 from Joe Arnall, father of former Gov. Ellis Arnall, and moved to a larger building down East Broad. After the debris was cleared, Gov. Arnall later agreed for the land to be used as a city parking lot.

Newnan Times-Herald

April 17, 1929

Dorsey Beavers

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CCR 1987.05.26

Photograph