An old grocery store eyesore on the Northshore is transformed
When Tennessee law firm Davis, Kessler & Davis decided to expand by opening an office in Chattanooga, they considered many things most businesses would consider: location, accessibility, parking and—well—how some old Tennessee barn wood would look on the outside and inside of an old grocery store.
Residents couldn’t miss it every time they drove down Cherokee Boulevard: the dilapidated and crumbling eyesore, the former Pruett’s grocery store on the Northshore. Built in 1949, then shuttered for years, most Chattanoogans probably thought the best use of the ugly building was to tear it down and just sell the land.
“After searching high and low throughout the Chattanooga area for two years for the perfect location, there was something special about that old building that spoke to me,” said Andy Davis, a former Baylor School student. “And the more I thought about bringing it to life, the more I wondered about how some old barn wood might improve its inner and outer self—maybe give it a more natural personality and fit with the Northshore community.”
And so the search began. In small towns across Tennessee, Davis and his family, friends and colleagues started looking for old barns that property owners no longer had a need for.
“We asked them if they wouldn’t mind if we tore the barn down for them,” Davis explained. “Some people wanted a fee for tearing down their barns, but most of the property owners were just glad to see them go.”
After restoring countless planks of barn wood and painstakingly conducting what sometimes seemed like insurmountable challenges, six months later, the old building with the old barn wood is now a new architectural and artistic showpiece.
With the help of Roberts’ team and Matt Sears from Sears Haskel, when visitors enter the building they are greeted with walls of richly colored and restored wood in herringbone and geometrical patterns, light fixtures transformed from logs and tree branches, columns of highly polished barn beams and other support structures that still display the cutouts from where they were banded together in an earlier life.
“We wanted to respect the character of the Northshore by reusing an existing building that had been around since the ‘40s,” said Roberts.
And the natural ambience extends beyond the internal structure. Desks, counters, conference tables, chair rails, ceilings—just about everywhere you look—the old wood has been given a new life.
On the outside of the building, the natural wood influence continues. The two entrances of the building are graced with rough-hewn wooden awnings supported with a triad of support beams. The top of the brick façade is lined with horizontal stretches of the naturally brilliant and varied-colored barn wood.
“The Northshore community continues to be a burgeoning area of growth for living, working and playing in Chattanooga,” said Honor Hostetler, Community Outreach Director for the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce. “We are excited about the beautiful restoration of the old Pruett’s grocery store on Cherokee Boulevard. It’s clear that Davis, Kessler & Davis will take an active and highly visible role as the newest neighbor in North Chattanooga.”