History of Downtown Greensboro : 1950s

Part Three of an interview with Minas Dascalakis, owner of downtown Greensboro's Matthew's Grill at 223 North Elm Street near the original O.Henry Hotel.
Also heard - Aleck Alexiou, his father owned the Princess Cafe on South Elm.
Minas begins talking about what life was like in Hamburger Square and all the hotels in the vicinity. Then about the demise of the O.Henry.
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Minas Dascalakis explains, “A friend of mine was assistant manager to the city, he comes into the restaurant one night and he says, ‘We got $300,000, community development money, and we don’t know what to do with it.’ I was talking to the officials just like I was with them. I said, ‘Mike, why don’t we do something here with that rathole [the O.Henry] up here?’ He went back to Hugh Medford, the director of public works, he talked to him and he called General Townsend, he was the past city manager, they named the lake in his honor. He talked to him. The next morning he come in, I didn’t even unlock the door yet, ‘You know, you might have something there.’ Okay. The city bought the hotel, city destroyed the hotel. Southern Life
Insurance Company came in with the cooperation of the city, you know
how that works, politics, they bought the property where the hotel was.
“I was on a committee at that time, we wanted to put three floors below Elm Street for a parking deck, one floor on Elm Street for retail, a mall type of space. [The new city manager] was very much against it. He didn’t last I tell you that. He took his shoes and left. If he allowed that almost 200,000 square feet to become retail on that corner and have two floors on top of them for offices and three decks below for parking, downtown Greensboro would look different from today.”

[@joydascalakis9256]

Thanks so much for this. We miss my father in law !

[@sasantarom]

This is so fabulous!