If you've spent much time in downtown Wilmington over the past couple of decades, you've almost certainly stopped by The Village Market, which is located in a historic building at Second and Dock streets. The Market sells a lot of beer and cigarettes, but you can also get a few kitchen staples, and even some fresh produce. (I just bought an onion there the other day.)

Basically, it's a convenience store, but it's also one of just a few remaining "corner stores" in downtown Wilmington, which used to have dozens of independently owned grocery stores and even butcher shops spread throughout its neighborhoods. 

Those stores, which thrived during the 19th century and on into the latter part of the 20th century, were a far cry from modern-day convenience and grocery stores. Still, aside from being much smaller, one could get most items needed to sustain a family, from canned goods, fruits, vegetables, and cured and salted meats to kitchen staples, candy and other items.

"There was a time when grocers could be found in nearly every neighborhood in town," writes historian Beverly Tetterton in her 2005 book "Wilmington: Lost But Not Forgotten." "Many merchants began in business by renting a market stall or a simple stand on a busy corner. When businesses prospered they were able to lease out a storefront."

Often, Tetterton writes, merchants would live above their stores or in another part of the same building. 

"My grandmother ran a little store on the corner of Wooster and Front in the late '40s through the mid '60s," said Kathie Robinson, of Leland. "It was called Stephenson Grocery."

The property was seized via eminent domain, and the store demolished, to make way for the construction of the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge, which was finished in 1967.

Tom Marshburn, of Wilmington, recalls that his grandfather, Paul A. Marshburn, bought a small corner grocery on the corner of Sixth and Chestnut streets in 1914.

"My father, Paul T. Marshburn, joined him around 1928 to form P.A. Marshburn & Son Grocery," he said.

In 1932, they constructed a new building "with all modern refrigeration and even an electric slicing machine, according to the notice of the grand opening."

Marshburn's grandfather died in 1942 and his father operated the store until 1977, when he sold it shortly before he died. 

The 1932 building burned in 1964, Marshburn said, and was replaced by a concrete block building that's still there and operates as a convenience store to this day. 

"The store never sold alcohol when my family owned it," Marshburn said, but it did, at least in its later years, sell musical instruments.

The well-known Carolina Treet barbecue sauce even traces its origins to an old Wilmington corner store, this one at Fourth and Chestnut streets, in 1952.

More:The warm, orange glow of Carolina Treet Wilmingtonians love

The 1988 book "Memories Yesteryear," by the late doctor and historian Robert Martin Fales, is a treasure trove of Wilmington memories dating back to the early years of the 20th century.

Fales writes that wholesalers were generally located on Water and Nutt streets, but that grocery stores were scattered throughout most every neighborhood "except in the elite residential areas" where the rich white people lived. 

Since many of these stores did not have refrigeration or even electricity in those days, "If persons desired red meat (steak) or pork and could afford it, they went to a meat market or a butcher."

Fales notes that the first "chain" store didn't open downtown until 1910, with S.H. Kress on Front Street, in the Masonic Temple building whose ground floor is now home to the Port City Java coffee shop. 

By combing through old city directories, Fales found 182 retail grocers in Wilmington in 1902. He found a high of 222 retail grocers in the 1914 city directory, and throughout most years of the 21st century he found between 150 and 200 retail grocers.

By 1980, however, there were only about 100, and by 1985 only 64 such stores were independently owned and operated, having been replaced by such grocery chains as A&P, which arrived in the 1950s, followed by Winn-Dixie in the '60s.

Other larger grocery stores like Parker's and Wilson's began to pop up in the 1960s and 1970s, as did convenience store chains like 7-Eleven, Zip Mart, Fast Fare and Scotchman.

Fales attributed the decline in small, mom-and-pop stores to advances in the processing, packaging and shipping of foods, a revolution that took place nationwide. Also playing a part, Fales wrote, was the gradual diffusion of the population out of the city center. 

Even so, the corner persisted for decades.

J.S. Ingram, who grew up in Wilmington in the late '70s and early '80s, remembers the tiny "Joye" grocery on Castle Street between Second and Third, which continued to operate into the 1990s.

"When we were kids, we would take empty soda bottles in and get a cold Pepsi and candy," Ingram said. 

There was another small grocery store, on the northeast corner of Third and Castle, that Ingram said "sold meats and hoop cheese."

Even today, you can get a taste of what those old corner stores were like. 

Ronnie's Crab Shack at Zora's, a seafood market, is in the same 14th and Castle Street location as the original Zora's, which first opened in 1956. 

Howard's Seafood & Convenience Store at Fifth and Castle streets is of a more recent vintage than Zora's. But they've got a regular clientele of people who walk or drive up to purchase fresh seafood, which might be the closest thing in downtown Wilmington to the vibe of people hitting up one of dozens of corner stores downtown back in the day. 

Contact John Staton at 910-343-2343 or John.Staton@StarNewsOnline.com.