Here are a couple of Winnipeg's tiniest stores !
767 Mountain Avenue
1936 ad (source)
This building opened in the mid-1930s as Henry Barber Shop.
The namesake was Henry Purpur who came to Canada with his family from Austria in 1911 as a twelve-year-old. Here, he met wife Elizabeth had four children: Carl, Don, Edna and Florence. The family lived at 383 Seymour near Mountain in the 40s and early 50s.
After more than 50 years as a barber, Purpur retired in 1970 and the shop was sold off. It appears to have become an out-building of the adjacent property at 739 Mountain which was home to Chokan's Grocery from the 1930s to 1970s.
Henry died in December 1977. Elizabeth died in September 1995. The former Henry's Barber Shop was demolished in 2012.
5 comments:
There were a lot of those tiny neighbourhood stores scattered around the city at one time.
I vaguely recall a tiny convenience store at the northwest corner of Riverton and Watt in Elmwood, called Annabella's or something like that. It was run by an elderly woman who kept us River Elm kids well stocked with gum and candy, until she closed up shop about 30 years ago.
Cute little places. Too bad so many are gone now. I have a "thing" for convenience stores I've just never dug into the history of many of them because it would unleash a whole new type of building to research !
I got my first haircut there, over 50 years ago. I feel by losing these little shops/stores, we lose our sense of community and socializing with neighbours. A place to gather and relate with others is gone forever.
u are so right
Wow I came across this and this is my great grandfather. Elizabeth was my great grandma. I was born in 1985 so I never met Henry.
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