Among the most dramatic transformations downtown, this delightful store takes advantage of two commercial structures with “nooks& crannies” that provide a unique set. ting for traditional and contemporary furniture and design accessories. To rehabilitate their buildings, Judy Saunders and Alma Sparks battled years of neglect, the aftermath of an earlier fire, and the rigors of adapting modern building codes to historic structures- Judging from the ‘oohs and aahs” of visitors and customers, the result---highlighted by a skylit two-story atrium---was well worth the owners’ perseverance. Thus far, the proprietors also have refurbished the exterior of the storefront at 310 Main Street, with plans eventually to remove the aluminum “slipcover” from the adjoining building, 312 Main. 

Both buildings were constructed shortly after August 1892, the date of a memorandum of agreement establishing the dimensions of a common wall between the structures that J. A. Davis and W. H. Rice were about to build. The commercial structure at 312 Main, built for J. A. Davis, was used variously in its earlier years as the Virginia Cafe, one of Danville’s first motion picture houses, and as a clothing store. Next door, 310 Main first housed a bakery and confectioners shop built and operated by William H. Rice. In 1900, Mr. Rice devised the property to E. C. Moore- field, I-Ic and L. D. Moorefield continued to operate the bakery until World War I when it was sold and became W. P. Hodnett’s clothing store.

In 1922, it was conveyed to Sol, Benjamin, and Adolph Kingoff. who for about a decade operated here one of Danville’s leading jewelry stores. To this day the Kingoff name survives in the metal parapet, which tops the third floor; although, most Danvillians now best remember Kingoff's at the corner in the Dudley Building, where it was located from about 1934 through the 1970’s- Prior to the Atrium, 310 Main housed for many years the Advance Store, as well as Lea-Lewis Furniture Company, which moved here from lower Main Street when the city’s early 19th Century canal was filled and adjacent buildings were razed to build a street in the early 1970’s. Crossing the Dan River on the Main Street Bridge, this gateway building with the city’s recent landscaping welcomes visitors and locals to a renewed interest in the old commercial district.