Jorgensen's General Store — Grant-Valkaria, Florida

Jorgensen's General Store is the two-story 1894 trading post and post office at 5390 U.S. Highway 1 in Grant, now part of the Town of Grant-Valkaria, and it is also known as Grant Grocery.

The building stands on the west side of U.S. 1 at the corner of 1st Street, just east of the old Florida East Coast Railway line and west of the Indian River. It is a frame vernacular building of heart pine on a masonry pier foundation, with a front gable roof framed on King post trusses (National Register nomination, section 7). The nomination lists two names for it: the historic name Jorgensen's General Store and the other name Grant Grocery, with Florida Master Site File number BR 1710 (nomination, form page 1).

The Town of Grant-Valkaria lists the same address in its historical sites as the Grant Grocery Store, now called Grant Station, and gives its significance as the site of the early post office (Town of Grant-Valkaria history page). The town page also states that Grant Grocery opened in 1894 and is listed on the National Register. It is one of three historic sites the town names on U.S. 1, with the 1916 Bensen House at 5795 and the Grant train depot at 5799.

The store is listed under National Register Criterion A because it is a rare surviving community general store tied to the early settlement and commerce of Grant, and the only historic commercial building left in Grant.

The nomination marks Criterion A, for association with events that shaped broad patterns of history, and names three areas of significance: Early Settlement, Commerce and Communications (nomination, section 8 form). It sets the period of significance at 1894 to 1949 and names two significant dates, 1894 for construction and 1929 for the turn of the storefront toward the new U.S. 1. The level of significance checked on the first page is local, not statewide or national. The builder of record is Louis Bensen.

The statement of significance gives the core reason in one line: the Grant store was one of the earliest commercial properties in Grant and is the only remaining historic commercial property in the community (nomination, section 8). It says the store gave the isolated settlement stability and a focal point, and it cites surviving features: beaded board walls and ceilings, heart pine floors, hopper and double sash windows, original post office features and the layout of the front entrance.

The National Park Service record for the listing carries National Register Information System ID 99000711, lists Bensen, Louis as architect and gives the significant years as 1894 and 1929 (NPGallery record). The digital record for Jorgensen's General Store lists a publication date of 6/25/1999. The nomination itself was prepared in May 1999 by the Grant property owner with Gary V. Goodwin, Historic Preservation Planner at the Bureau of Historic Preservation in the R.A. Gray Building in Tallahassee (nomination, preparer page).

Louis Bensen built the Grant store and served there as postmaster and storekeeper from May 1894, and the Jorgensen family owned it from 1911 until 1956, holding the Grant postmaster job for most of those years.

The land under the store came from a 200.5 acre tract that John M. Samuels bought from the United States government in 1886; it stayed in the Samuels family until 1898 (nomination, section 8 page 2). Bensen built the trading post between 1892 and 1894 and served as postmaster and storekeeper until July 1896. John B. Wells was postmaster from July 1896 to March 1898 and Catherine Shaw from March to September 1898, while Lars Jorgensen kept the store. Jorgensen bought the trading post in 1911, named it Jorgensen's General Store and served as postmaster and storekeeper until 1912.

After 1912 the Grant postmaster job passed between daughters Laura Jorgensen Berry and Carrie Jorgensen Gutermuth and daughter-in-law Helen L. Jorgensen until 1956. The nomination records that Carrie Jorgensen was also the railroad express agent and the first female telegrapher on the east coast. The family sold the store in 1956, and the new owners renamed it Swiger's Town and Country Shoppe.

Marshall D. Richards was Grant postmaster from 1956 to 1983, but the post office functions left the building in 1959 and he finished his term at the new post office. The store's post office boxes were sold to the Wabasso post office in Indian River County (nomination, section 7 page 3). The name Grant Grocery came from a lease that ran from 1968 to 1971, and the building still carried that name when it was nominated.

In 1929, with the arrival of U.S. 1, the front of the Grant store moved from the railroad side on the west to the east side facing the Indian River, and later work added electricity, a 1956 addition and 1995 windows and brick facing.

When Bensen built it in 1894 the entrance faced west toward the railroad and the county road, with a wooden porch and four roof dormers, two facing north and two south (nomination, alterations). The 1929 work added about 30 feet to the length, creating the second-story overhang that rests on two columns over the U.S. 1 entrance. Electricity arrived around 1940, along with plumbing for a sink and a rest room. Even so, the nomination judged that the building keeps its integrity and its place of distinction in Grant.

In 1956 a one-story addition went onto the northeast corner of the Grant building and living quarters were partitioned off upstairs, and most second-floor sash windows were swapped for jalousie and awning windows in their original openings. In 1995 the jalousies on the overhang gave way to Anderson windows and the east columns and lower south wall were faced in brick. The only noncontributing resource is a 10 by 12 foot aluminum storage shed from 1980 at the northwest corner (nomination, section 7 page 4).

Inside, the Grant store keeps its partly partitioned post office corner with the original safe, an original cashier counter with a built-in cash drawer, yellow pine beaded board walls and a heart pine floor.

The store floor is one large room with two storage rooms added on the north side (nomination, interior). The post office area sits in the southwest corner and the original cashier counter in the northeast corner. Walls and ceilings are yellow pine tongue and groove beaded board, and the floor is tongue and groove heart pine. A stairway in the northwest corner leads to second-floor living quarters with five bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen and a living room. Outside, the east face on U.S. 1 has three concrete steps up to a recessed wood door under the overhang, which is carried on two large brick columns (nomination, exterior).

The setting explains the layout. The store occupies the southeasterly corner of Lot 17, Block A, on the west side of U.S. Highway 1 (the Dixie Highway) and the north side of 1st Street, just east of the old East Coast railroad and northwest of the Grant Volunteer Fire Department (nomination, setting). Before 1929 its door faced the railroad and county road. The Smith General Store stood about 300 feet south until it burned. When the Florida East Coast Railroad ended passenger service, the Grant train station was barged across the Indian River to a fish camp, and the Grant freight station stayed in use until 1956 before it was moved near the 1916 Historical House.

The store opened three years after the Grant post office was established in 1891, in a fishing and farming settlement that the railroad reached in 1890 and that the Big Freeze of 1894-95 pushed further toward fishing.

The nomination traces Grant's start to Louis K. Smith and his family in 1880 and a one-room school house in 1884 (nomination, historic context). The first Grant post office ran out of the home of Edwin Nelson, the first postmaster, before Bensen's store took over the mail. The population doubled in 1892, and fishing, farming, orange groves and pineapple plantations became the main industries; after the Big Freeze of 1894-95, residents relied mainly on fishing to supplement farm income. The store, the school house and the church all sat on First Street in the center of Grant, among wooden frame buildings and shell roads.

The Town of Grant-Valkaria history page adds that the first train stopped in Grant around November 1893, which led to the Grant Station (Town of Grant-Valkaria). The Florida Department of State marker for the Bensen House records that Atley Bensen and his brother Adolph fished commercially, grew pineapples and operated the Jorgensen General Store, which opened in 1894 (Bensen House marker). By the nomination's count Grant had 250 residents in 1965 and 400 in 1989, while the February Grant Seafood Festival drew about 80,000 people in a weekend (nomination, section 8 page 2).

For Jorgensen's General Store, National Register listing is formal federal recognition; under federal law it places no restrictions on what a non-federal owner does with the Grant building unless a federal project or funding is involved.

The National Register is the official list of the Nation's historic places worthy of preservation, authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (National Park Service). Listing is the first step toward eligibility for federal preservation tax credits and grant programs. The National Park Service says nominations usually start with the State Historic Preservation Office, that a property generally must be at least 50 years old, and that the agency makes a listing decision within 45 days (NPS, How to List a Property). The Grant nomination was signed by the Florida State Historic Preservation Officer of the Division of Historical Resources (nomination, form page 1).

The 1999 boundary is narrow: the South 100 feet of Lot 17, Block A, less than one acre around the store at U.S. 1 and 1st Street, as described in the nomination (nomination, boundary description). The nomination calls the building a very prominent local landmark that remained, decades after the post office left, a gathering place for longtime Grant residents buying groceries (nomination, section 8 page 3).