This is a Jamaican restaurant in a corner building in downtown Winchester, Virginia:

It’s been a Jamaican restaurant for as long as Google Street View goes back. Obviously it looks like, and at one point or other probably was, a house. It was apparently also office space at one point, which is a common use of buildings like this in downtown locations.

However, it also has a much more interesting use in its history, back in the 1920s.

Take a look at this photo from a neat account on Facebook that traces the history of tons of historic buildings in Winchester:

In the thread some folks remember more recent locations for the bus terminal, but as far as I can tell there isn’t one in Winchester now. And there’s absolutely nothing about the old bus terminal on the internet, at least not that can be easily searched.

Notice the walk-up ticket window in the old photo. The window is still there, but it’s no longer a sliding or opening window. The awning over it makes me wonder if at some point in its restaurant life it was an ordering window. If it ever was, it hasn’t been for a long time.

Between 1920 and 1930 Winchester grew from about 7,000 people to about 10,000. And it was big enough and important enough to have a bus terminal. It’s endlessly interesting to me how much larger a role small cities had in American life a century ago than they do now.

Today, Winchester is sort of accidentally the final frontier in the D.C.-area sprawl, but it’s very much its own place with its own history, and that was even more discernible back then.

Food for thought. And today, just food.

Related Reading:

What Do You Think You’re Looking At? #22

Life Under the Diner

Turkey Hill Hunting

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