Suite Goodbyes on Main Street

VENTURA — Goodbye, 597 E. Main St. For many years you were the swanky shopping address in downtown Ventura, first as the Jack Rose women’s store, then as Joseph Magnin. You sent untold thousands of women out your doors with something pretty under their arms.

Au revoir, 577 E. Main. Your address was your name back in the ‘40s: the Five Seventy Seven Club. You were later known as the Pump Room and Toppers and slid your last beer across the bar as Paddy’s.

Adios and adieu, 535 E. Main. You were downtown’s “biggest store in the county,” Montgomery Ward & Co. But in the 1960s, like many other downtown stores, you abandoned 535 for the hinterlands then known as Ventura’s East End.

In fact, goodbye to the whole odd-numbered side of the 500 block of East Main Street, except for the corner bank.

Everything but that bank is being dismantled, flattened. No dramatic explosions or wrecking balls, but still, the demolition man rules.

In those stores’ place will rise a 10-screen movie theater, surrounded by tourist-friendly shops.

Some of the farewells are sentimental. “I regret losing the interesting buildings,” said Don Shorts of Ventura’s Historic Preservation Alliance.

Some of the farewells are relieved. “We’ve called that block ‘No Man’s Land’ for years,” said Ed Elrod, who owns Ventura Bookstore on the even-numbered side of the 500 block.

The odd-numbered side, having faded to a motley collection of empty buildings, “has been bad for any surrounding business,” Elrod said.

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Meanwhile, bricks are coming down and concrete is being broken up with pneumatic drills.

“They’re doing what’s called soft demolition,” said Joel Dispenza, who is overseeing the project for Century West Environmental and keeping an eye on asbestos and lead removal.

Much will be recycled--the Jack Rose building alone will yield 400 truckloads of concrete chunks that will become part of a levee in Northern California.

A 10-screen movie theater will be built in the middle of the block, directly across Main Street from the long-gone American Theater, which featured a single screen and thrived early in the century at 532 E. Main St.

“The American was famous as the town’s best necking spot,” said Burt Henderson, whose County Stationers store replaced the theater in 1952. “It had two-person loges, and people really worked to get a loge on the weekend nights.”

The new Century Theater will be flanked by storefronts in an architectural “cross of Art Deco and downtown Ventura styles,” according to developer Victor Georgino.

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Although part of one huge building, the storefronts will present different facades, “with tile, brick, marble--we’ll use five or six different surfaces, with setbacks and patios,” Georgino said.

Most retail leases on either side of the theater are not finalized, but Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and Kelly’s Coffee and Fudge are waiting to move in by the summer of ’98.

The only remnant of the present will be the bank building at the corner, which has safeguarded the money of Venturans for most of this century, as Union Bank, Union National Bank, Security 1st National Bank and, currently, the Versa-telling Bank of America.

The county’s first drive-up window debuted at Union National, Henderson said. “There was a vacant lot beside the bank which cars used to turn around, and they put a window in the wall of the bank,” he said.

Reminiscing about the old 1941 Montgomery Ward, Henderson recalled that “people came from all over to shop at that store.”

But soon even the shell of that building will be gone.

So hail and farewell, Fancy Music and J.B. Penney Music, Western Auto and Brigham’s Men’s Clothing at 573 E. Main. (During WWII, you housed an Army recruiting office and the Red Cross.)

Arrivederci, Buick Used Car Lot, Harry Eggert Barber, the Hotels DeLeon and Rose (both of which predated the Jack Rose site), Snodgrass Electric Refrigerators and Jos. Dill shoe shiner. Have a care, Jss. Schnitzer Auto Wrecker, doing business at No. 507 in 1926. You served us well.

So long, County Stationers, the store that had five East Main Street addresses during its 98-year tenure and was the final tenant of the Rose (No. 597) building. Yours may have been the first store in Ventura that played background music.

R.I.P.