Lake City’s The History Store to renovate, open coffee shop

LAKE CITY — The owners of The History Store plan to reopen their business in mid-September after renovating the two-story building and adding a coffee shop, they said.

The store’s gift shop will remain on the first floor, where the new, “European-style” coffee shop will be located in the back, said Jamie Daniels, who bought the building in 2002.

“I’m a coffee lover,” he said. “I’m a coffee fanatic, in fact. And I’m always trying to get a better cup of coffee.”

He and his brother, Kent Daniels, plan to have the store’s air conditioning unit moved from behind the building to the upstairs, which will give them space for a back patio, they said.

Jamie Daniels said his goal is to offer a nice social spot with good variety. He plans to offer a “real” cappuccino machine as well as espresso and iced drinks, he said.

Kent Daniels said the coffee shop is something his brother, who returned to Lake City after living in Atlanta, has had a “passion” for doing over the past 10 to 15 years.

In recent years, The History Store also has had a tea room in the back part of its first floor.

The brothers also plan to add an upright piano that’s more than 70 years old to the coffee shop area, Kent Daniels said. Their grandmother bought the piano with money she earned by selling eggs and used it to offer lessons to children in the Hannah community, he said.

Meanwhile, Kent Daniels, who started The History Store in August 2003 as a project after retiring as a high school history teacher, is looking forward to using the building’s second floor for office space and storage of historical files.

He said he’ll bring down historical records, genealogical information and other files for people who are physically unable to walk up to the second floor.

The History Store’s physical location is quite historical itself, he said — records show it’s the oldest two-story brick building in Lake City, built from February to March in 1903, he said.

The building first opened as a drugstore run by S.B. Courtney, Kent Daniels said, and its 11 upstairs offices still remain intact.

He remembers it as L.T. Coward men’s clothing store when he was growing up, he said.

“We’re going to try to keep as much original (material) as we can,” he said.

They plan to clean and reuse old boards and leave the original metal office numbers on the top part of the door frames, he said.

Stickers and signs on upstairs office doors show that the Greater Lake City Chamber of Commerce apparently had been in the building in 1959, and one door designates a “private laboratory” for a doctor’s office that was once in the building.

Painted on one wall is a sign that says, “Positively no smoking alowed (sic) in this building.” That might have been because of the 50-gallon container of kerosene that Kent Daniels said was once kept on premises for heating purposes.

THE HISTORY STORE

• WHERE: 133 E. Main St., Lake City
• PHONE: (843) 374-3050