This week we return to Main Street and continue to explore the history of businesses and buildings along Montevallo’s primary thoroughfare. Anyone who remembers downtown as it was in the 1950’s will recall that the building next door to Hicks’ Ben Franklin store (Smitherman’s today) was where Harvey Rochester ran a grocery and general merchandise store before he opened a large department store in the new Whaley Shopping Center across the street in 1964. But before Mr. Rochester occupied this building, it played an important role in a topsy-turvy parade of businesses that came and went in the neighborhood during the depression years of the 1930’s and the pre- and post-war years of the 1940’s.
The story begins with Pat Kroell, son of legendary Montevallo merchant, George Kroell. When the elder Kroell died in 1925, Pat took over the decades-long business, but was forced into bankruptcy around 1932, at the height of the depression, and liquidated his stock and sold the old Kroell building that stood where the Subway is located today. He then became associated with Montevallo Mercantile Co. two blocks to the west. In the 1972 photo shown on this page, a part of the painted sign on the side of the building reads: “PAT KROELL, MGR.” Within a few years, Pat took full ownership of the building and business. In 1936, Mr. Stanley White, of Uniontown, AL, came to Montevallo looking to open a new hardware store. He made an offer to Pat Kroell for his building and business, and Pat accepted.
White Hardware became the new owner and occupant of the building and proceeded to build a strong and popular following among local customers. In addition to war looming on the horizon, 1941 was a year of unusual upheaval and activity for this particular Montevallo business location. To the delight of many citizens, Stanley White agreed to rent his basement, accessible from an alley at the rear, to Tommy Latham so that he could set up and operate a bowling alley open to the public. Newspaper accounts show that bowling became quite the rage in town, with leagues springing up and keen competition developing among the teams and participants.
But this new source of local fun and entertainment would be short-lived. That same year, the Klotzman brothers, Joe and Sam, had a parting of the ways. They had worked together in the operation of a clothing and dry-goods store on Main Street next door to the bank since the 1920’s. They agreed that Sam would retain the existing store while Joe looked for a new location to start his own business. A resourceful and shrewd businessman, Joe Klotzman must have made Stanley White an offer he couldn’t refuse. It seems apparent that Joe was not interested in having a bowling alley operating underneath his new clothing store, so he found a new home for Tommy Latham’s lanes on the street-level floor of the Masonic building at the corner of Main and Vine streets. But this was not the end of the turmoil. Advertising and news accounts point to the fact that almost as soon as the bowling alley had moved, Stanley White’s hardware store moved into the store on Middle Street where Gilbert’s Ready-to Wear had been the occupant for many years. And Gilbert’s relocated to the Masonic building where the bowling alley had taken up residence. No doubt, whoever had the most financial resources won out in this struggle, and the bowling alley was the loser. By January of 1942, Latham’s bowling alley had moved twice but had the rug pulled out from under it by forces beyond its control.
Joe Klotzman soon proved that he could be successful on his own and proceeded to develop a strong retail business in the old Montevallo Mercantile building that lasted more than ten years. Around 1953 he moved his family to Selma and went into the furniture business.
The departure of Joe Klotzman created a Main Street vacancy soon filled by Harvey Rochester. Rochester and his brother John had operated for the previous few years the store on Middle Street that Pat Kroell had established after he sold Montevallo Mercantile to Stanley White in 1936. Although it took considerable commercial turmoil and a couple of decades, the retail dynamics of all these businesses and businessmen had now come full circle.
Thank you Clay Nordan, Vice President of Montevallo Historical Society, for this information!
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