Between 1900 and 1920, St. Petersburg's population soared from 1,575 to more than 14,000, and this store opened in the Mound Park neighborhood to serve blossoming nearby communities like Roser Park. Shoppers came because the small store offered groceries, clothing, and other necessities in one place. From 1915 to 1955, the building had different owners and names and thrived for most of those years. Known in its early years as H.C. Smith's Grocery, it was also called South Side Grocery, Sixth Avenue Food Shop, and Bill's Grocery. The smaller portion of the building sometimes held a separate butcher shop and bakery and at other times housed those who ran the grocery store. Fourth Street, one block east, became the main north-south roadway after the opening of Gandy Bridge between St. Petersburg and Tampa in 1924, and the increased traffic likely brought plenty of business; when Charles Preston bought the building in 1935 for $3,000, that was a sizeable sum at the height of the Great Depression. By the mid-1950s, however, small neighborhood groceries like this one had outlived their time as shoppers turned to downtown stores, air conditioned shopping centers, later mega malls, new suburban developments, and changing shopping patterns. Competition from Webb's City also hurt such merchants after James Earl 'Doc' Webb's small downtown pharmacy from the early 1920s expanded by 1945 into the "World's Most Unusual Drugstore," occupying multiple city blocks.