Falls Store
(ca. 1941)
The grocery and convenience store has long served Davidson’s African American community as a valued social gathering destination.
100 Mock Rd, Davidson, NC 28036
The Falls Store is one of the few surviving commercial structures associated with an African American community in north Mecklenburg County that dates from the Jim Crow segregation era. For decades, Falls Store – centrally located between Davidson’s predominantly African American communities of Mock Hill and Brady Hill – offered a significant convenience for the neighborhoods’ residents, as it was the only nearby place where they could purchase staple items and meals. The alternative was the collection of segregated stores and restaurants in downtown Davidson. As a result, the small cinder block structure served for decades as both a retail store and an enduring social gathering destination for the local Black community.
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Falls Store, constructed by Webb Shinn during World War II, is situated across Mock Road from another longtime anchor of Davidson’s African American community, the Davidson Colored School (renamed the Ada Jenkins School in 1955. The store was built for Edna Falls (1892 – 1979), a longtime resident of Davidson who worked at the nearby College preparing meals for the members of the Kappa Alpha and Kappa Sigma fraternities. Ms. Falls also ran a boarding house in Brady Alley that catered to the teachers of the Davidson Colored School, while still managing to find time to operate the small Mock Hill store. Initially selling simple snacks and home-baked treats for neighborhood children, she expanded her offerings to include groceries for residents who passed by the store’s central location on their way to and from work or school. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, she leased the building to Nora Bell Torrence who added prepared meals to the store’s offerings.
The building was later sold to Talmadge and Cecelia Conner whose family continued to operate the convenience store, focusing more on prepackaged food products rather than home cooked items and later adding an ice cream cabinet. For a period of time, the Conners’ daughter Castella ran a flower shop in the building. James and Daisy Raeford purchased the property in 2004 and returned the building to its original use. They added a small grill in order to offer breakfast and lunch sandwiches along with the store’s traditional fare of snacks and treats. The building continues to serve as a retail facility, most recently as a pizza restaurant.