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This historical building
in which you are chowing down on "Marvburgers" was built in 1894 and
has been a department store, shirt factory, assembly point for Model A Fords,
casket factory, apartment building, and poolroom--among other things.
Sardis resident J.O.K. Hubbard
erected it for Sardis businessman George Case. The hand-cut sandstone and
brick foundation, along with the native poplar clapboards and 2x5 framing
timbers, all were constructed strictly by hand labor. Now all the poplar
has been timbered out and 2x5s are impossible to find.
The elaborate storefront of the
60-by-40-foot, 30-foot-tall structure featured medallions, rosettes, dentils,
colored glass above six large display windows, and other ornaments of the
Victorian era. All have been carefully restored.
Case put a department store on
the first floor, boasting that it sold "everything from a tack to a steam
engine." On the second floor, women operated sewing machines to make
"Case shirts--they have long tails!" This was back when gentlemen
did not leave their shirttails hanging out.
The beautiful counter where you order ice cream, with its alternating walnut-and-pine countertop, is original to the building.
In about 1906 a worker shut
down a gas motor in the basement, which drove the belts to run the sewing
machines, to take a lunch break. Upon his return he lit a match to
restart the motor. The resulting explosion blew the lower east wall off the
building in one piece. There were no serious injuries and the wall was
reattached, but the building's post-explosion lean to the west was not
fully corrected until 1999 during our renovation.
The building had housed a bar,
blacksmith shop, movie theater, and other ventures when Marvin and Ethel
Merriner rented it in the 1940s. Marvin was a West Virginia hillbilly who had
run away from home to join the circus, literally. He became a railroad
engineer but an accident in the 1920s [anyone know date?] left him partly
crippled. Refusing a railroad office job as "charity," to make a
living he opened an ice cream parlor and grill in the small white
building two doors east on Mound Street that now serves as the Lee Township
office. After setting up business anew in the Case building, Marvin and
Ethel bought it in 1947.
They ran a grocery on the east
side and a poolroom with three maple-and-slate tables on the west. Marvin also
built apartments on the second floor, renting them for $12 a month. There was
no running water--tenants carried water upstairs from the town pump and
visited an outhouse behind the building. (Lumber from that outhouse is
incorporated in the renovation, but we won't say where.)
The grocery and poolroom--the
"Dew Drop Inn"--was the town gathering place. Kids stopped
by Marv's on the way to and from school for pop and candy. Chances are,
the people at the next table can tell you stories about bygone years at
Marv's. In those times there was still something of a barter economy in
post-Depression Appalachia and Marv and Ethel sometimes took payments in the
form of chickens, eggs, hams, or hay.
When Marvin died in 1964 the
building was inherited by his son, Charles. As a college dean in South
Carolina, Charles built an apartment in the back of the first floor for him
and his wife Irene to stay during summers in Sardis. Charles later spent his
final working years with the Monroe County school system and lived here for a
time during retirement.
After Charles died in 1998,
Sardis residents pleaded with his adult children not to tear the building
down, as Sardis would lose something irreplaceable. So they decided to restore
the building and open a business in honor of their father and grandfather.
"Marv's Place" is an acronym for Marvin's
Aging Relatives' Venture.
Marvin used to say, upon
confronting a construction project: "Figure up all the labor and
materials you could possibly need. Cost them out down to the penny. And then
just double it."
Unfortunately, his relatives
did not take that wise motto fully to heart.
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