Mast General Store



Mast Store featured in Southern Way of Life


If it seems like an odd combination at first -- shirts and skirts, a few feet away from the pans and preserves, which are a few steps from The North Face and Necco Wafers -- then you've become too conditioned to the conglomerate-owned-"big-box"-store way of shopping.

Before there were mega-malls and specialty stores, before there were department and discount stores, there was the general store - a family-owned, folksy place where you could buy flour, fabrics, nails or grain while getting caught up on local news (or gossip) - where those short on cash paid in trade (a chicken for a sack of flour, etc.) or were extended credit.

Today, no one would give good odds that such a business could survive, much less prosper.

But one general store has - nine times over. Mast General Store has gotten hotter 'n a black hat in August. It's gone from one rustic slice of late 1880s America to nine busting-at-the-seams purveyors in the heart of bustling downtowns in the western Carolinas and East Tennessee.

From 1883 to 1979, there was only one - the Mast General Store in Valle Crucis, North Carolina (in the heart of High Country, near Boone, Banner Elk and Blowing Rock). Today, there's the original; the "Annex" just two-tenths of a mile down Highway 194; the one on West King Street in downtown Boone; and Mast General Stores in Asheville, Hendersonville and Waynesville, NC; and on Gay Street in Knoxville, Tennessee; and two in South Carolina - on the Main Streets of Greenville and Columbia.

And all nine stores are in buildings dating from 1883 to 1945 - which is one reason why Mast General Store won Preservation North Carolina's highest award - the "L. Vincent Lowe, Jr. Business Award," given to businesses that protect or promote the state's historic side. And Preserve America awarded the Mast General Store with its 2006-2007 "Gatekeepers of History" award, given to those " whose work epitomizes the ideals, values, and traditions on which America is based." In each store are fixtures from the past mingling with new display units; ornate pressed-tin ceilings, and either restored well-oiled worn wooden floors or terrazzo that looks as though it was laid a century ago.

Continue reading this fantastic article by Southern Way of Life by clicking HERE.