A look back at 3 Charlotte institutions that closed before we got to enjoy them

But many good things also come to an end here and the current pace of Charlotte’s growth is bringing with it incredible change and a city unrecognizable to those who came long before us.

Let’s take a look way back at some of the retro institutions that had 50-year runs in a few well-known spaces we celebrate as new concepts today.

Spoon’s Ice Cream Parlor

Address: 415 Hawthorne Lane
What is it now? Sabor

Whitney Spoon and his wife Elizabeth opened their ice cream shop on Hawthorne Lane in 1929. Elizabeth became famous for her decadent ice cream and the couple would go on to serve it to generations of Charlotteans before selling the business in 1978. The kicker? None of Elizabeth’s ice cream recipes came with the sale.

But you might still be able to give it a try. According to the Southern food blog So Does That Make Me Southern?, two original Spoon’s ice cream recipes — strawberry cheesecake and banana — are available in Dawn O’Brien’s book North Carolina’s Historic Restaurants and Their Recipes. They’re also available on the blog here.

Today’s Charlotte taco lovers will recognize the old Spoon’s building as Sabor’s original Hawthorne location.

The Flamingo Supper Club

Address: corner of N. Tryon and W. 6th
What is it now? Discovery Place was built on the site

At the height of prohibition in North Carolina (which took effect a full decade before the ratification of the 18th Amendment imposed the restriction nationwide in 1920), The Flamingo Supper Club was the place to party in Charlotte.

As the story goes, owner Frank O. Ratcliffe was a notorious bootlegger known for selling booze at a time when others couldn’t and wouldn’t. Flamingo was a speakeasy when speakeasies were really speakeasies.

Ratcliffe’s club was located at the corner of N. Tryon Street and W. 6th Street at what is today the Discovery Place campus. The Flamingo was known for live music, gambling and plenty of illegal liquor transported up from Florida on flatbed trucks covered in oranges.

The former Flamingo building was condemned in 1978 and the family sold the land to the city to develop Discovery Place. But Ratcliffe never saw that happen.

The infamous bootlegger died in 1977 but not before leaving a legacy for his kids to dig up. Literally. He buried a surprise  — and the key to unlocking much of his past — on the family’s golf course along Mallard Creek.

It took them 15 years to find it but his kids eventually unearthed a collection of seven mason jars stuffed with recipes from old moonshiners. Those recipes became the base formula used at the family’s distillery, aptly named Seven Jars Distillery, which operates today on Brookshire Boulevard.

Anderson’s Restaurant

Location: 1617 Elizabeth Avenue
What is it now? Anderson’s still runs a catering operation out of the back kitchen but the front restaurant is Viva Chicken

For decades, Anderson’s Restaurant on Elizabeth Avenue was the laid back, no frills place to see and be seen in Charlotte. The family-run joint opened by patriarch Jimmie Anderson in 1946 (first as Mercury Sandwich shop) became a favorite among well-known city leaders, politicians and people about town before closing in 2006.

Jimmie’s son Gary took over the restaurant in 1979 and after a good run made the gut-wrenching but inevitable call to shut down the 60-year-old restaurant. But not for good. Within weeks he had shifted to the back of the building, running a downsized catering and pie delivery service out of the same kitchen under the same name.

Today, the Anderson’s legacy (and its pecan pie) lives on. The pie has been on the menu since Jimmie ran the restaurant and he’s the one who dubbed it “the world best.”

The front restaurant in the old Anderson’s space operates today as Viva Chicken, a popular Peruvian rotisserie.