The building at right in this photo (320 Middle Street – current occupant, “Montevallo Makers”) was constructed adjacent to the existing Montevallo Bakery & Cafe building by Pat. J. Kroell in 1936.
When we last encountered venerable Montevallo businessman, Pat Kroell, he had recently sold his Montevallo Mercantile Co. business and building on Main Street to Mr. Stanley White in March of 1936. By July of the same year, the Montevallo Times carried a brief article telling its readers that Mr. Kroell had started construction of a new business building on a vacant lot he owned next to Montevallo Cafe on Middle Street. From all accounts, Mr. Kroell had been the owner for some time of all the property at the corner of Middle and Main streets next to his father’s ornate Victorian family residence (Owl's Cove) where several commercial buildings were put up over time.
The newspaper article indicated that the building under construction on Middle Street might be available for rental upon completion, but its first occupant actually became Pat Kroell’s 30 year-old son, George, who had previously worked in construction at various places along the East Coast before returning to Montevallo to open a small grocery store in his father’s new retail space.
In 1940, at the age of 34, George Kroell was found dead unexpectedly in his grocery store. He was the seventh of Pat Kroell’s eleven children and this tragedy prompted a great outpouring of sympathy among family members and friends from all over. George Kroell, who was also a father of two, was buried in the Kroell family plot in the Montevallo City Cemetery.
At the age of 70, Pat Kroell took the reins of his deceased son’s store and built it into the type of thriving grocery, mercantile, and dry goods business that he had been involved with all his working life. He was able to keep it going well into his 80’s until he sought out two young men, the Rochester brothers, to step in and handle day-to-day operations.
By the early 1950’s, Pat had stepped away and turned everything over to the Rochesters.
In a curious turn of fate, when the building on Main Street that Pat had sold to Stanley White in 1936 became available following the departure of Joe Klotzman’s department store in 1953, the Rochester brothers returned this latest incarnation of Pat Kroell’s store back to where it had gotten its start.
Following the move, Kroell’s Middle Street building became home to a shoe shop that was operated by a variety of owners well into the late 1960’s.
Thank you Clay Nordan, Vice President of Montevallo Historical Society, for this information!