With 2020 comes a new year, a new decade, and a new Burklee Hill Vineyards tasting room! If you haven’t already heard, we are so excited to open our new Lubbock tasting room in early 2020. The tasting room will serve lunch and dinner, host live music, events, and wine tastings. We will offer a hand-crafted food menu designed specifically for wine pairings. Additionally, the event space will be open for private events. 

Even more exciting, the new tasting room will be located in the historic Kress Building in downtown Lubbock. We are thrilled to be a part of the downtown revitalization effort with this new tasting room. The Kress Department Stores have a long history in the United States, with both artistic and historic relevance. Want to know more? Keep reading and we’ll fill you in. 

A History of the Kress Department Stores

The Kress Department Stores date back to 1896, when Samuel H. Kress opened S.H. Kress Company. He began to build a chain of five and dime retail department stores, beginning in Memphis and eventually spanning to 264 locations across the south of the United States. While S.H. Kress Company operated from 1896 - 1981, many of the stores still stand as repurposed buildings for various purposes.

Samuel Kress loved art, which is evident in his department store creations. The Kress Department Stores were generally located in the downtown areas of the cities they were built in, meant to be both aesthetically pleasing and improve the city’s downtown aesthetic. Characterized by a variety of features, most of the buildings were 5-7 stories high with an art deco style and different flourishes. The Kress Department Stores are more than just pretty buildings, however. In the 1960s, the Kress lunch counters were integral in the civil rights movements, as they were the sites of many of the sit-ins. This was especially prevalent in the stores in Alabama, where the sit-ins continued until they eventually integrated.

Lubbock, Texas is home to one of the beautiful Kress Department Store buildings, located in downtown Lubbock. In 1992, the Lubbock building was put on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). It is now one of the few buildings on the NRHP in Lubbock. The Kress Building in Lubbock was designed by Edward F. Sibbert, the head architect of S.H. Kress Company, and reportedly took four years to build, opening its doors in 1933. The Lubbock Kress building is typical of what one would imagine when thinking of the Kress Department Stores. It is Spanish-Revival/Mission style influenced and accented with plenty of the dominant art deco characteristics seen in most of the Kress Department Stores across the country.

The Burklee Hill Vineyards team has put in an immense amount of work to make this project a reality and we are so excited to share it with you! Make plans to join us to see the renovations of the historic Kress Building in downtown Lubbock soon!