The historic Friendship Nine site in Rock Hill is up for renovation. Here’s the plan.
One of Rock Hill’s most historic, and culturally significant, sites soon may get a facelift -- ahead of reopening for business.
The Rock Hill Board of Historic Review has a public hearing scheduled for Jan. 9 on proposed changes at 135 E. Main St. That’s the site of the McCrory’s Building, which is home to the lunch counter where African-American students from Friendship College were denied service and were arrested after refusing to leave in 1961.
They became known as the Friendship Nine, pioneers in the Rock Hill civil rights movement.
Piedmont Regional Multiple Listing Services Inc. owns the site. It’s under contract for sale, and Sherwood Development Group out of Concord, N.C. is the applicant to renovate the property.
Because the site is in a city historic district, renovations require approval from the historic review board. The application proposes “a general enhancement” of the Main Street facade. The double door would be removed to allow a vestibule accessing multiple suites. The new brick opening would be similar to property photos from the 1940s.
The application proposes removal of an existing transom, a brick veneer section, new storefront and replaced upper windows.
The application doesn’t propose any changes to the historic lunch counter, itself designated as an historic site.
Built in 1901, the Main Street address served as home to Rock Hill Supply Company and numerous retail, restaurant and offices since. Some occupants include Moore-Sykes Dry Goods, Cohen’s Chain Store, Baker’s Shoes and Saletime Variety. For 60 years the site was McCrory’s Five and Dime, including at the time of the Friendship Nine protest.
Most recently the site was a restaurant, Five & Dine, which operated about five years before closing in late 2018.
Major renovations came in about 1940, adding stucco and cement to the front facade and reconfiguring the entry, removing arches and squaring second-floor windows.
About 1977, the entry was removed for interior mall access while upper floor window openings were bricked. The site was part of conversion to the Town Center Mall, and enclosed shopping area.
In 1994 the first-floor entry was reconstructed after demolition of the Town Center Mall roof. Single-pane windows were installed too. That renovation was the first while the property had a city historic district designation, approved in 1991.
The proposed changes would remove windows and the entrance installed in 1994, the transom installed around 1940 and the stucco on the first floor. They would replace stucco on the second floor and windows there, in favor of arched windows similar to an historic photo from 1917. A new central archway entry also would be similar to the 1917 photograph.
The transom, or structural element separating the door from the window above it, is an issue for the historic review board. The applicant proposed using it as a decorative element inside the building. But it was in place at least since the circa 1940 renovation, so it’s part of the architectural history related to the civil rights era protest.
City staff presenting its recommendation to the review board is in favor of most of the renovations, but not removing the transom. There is an option to incorporate it into the new storefront, removing only a central section of it to make way for the arch entry.
The public hearing on Jan. 9 will be held at 6 p.m., at City Council Chambers in City Hall, 155 Johnston St.
