Tornado aids shop’s overhead

David Hadidi has owned Hadidi Rug Gallery at 8116 Cantrell Road in Little Rock for about 40 years, but it wasn’t until the March 31 tornado that he discovered what had been above his head all that time.

Hadidi was at the gallery on the afternoon that the tornado raged through west Little Rock.

“I started to hear that train noise and I said, ‘Man, this is it,’” Hadidi tells us during a recent visit to the store. “I went to stand in that hallway and, suddenly, the glass [in the windows] started popping out and the door was going crazy.”

Rocks and other debris were flying through the building and through the cars in the parking lot.

“The cars looked like they had bullet holes in them,” Hadidi says.

The gallery’s sign was also destroyed.

The business was closed for about a month and even after that there was still a lot of cleanup to be done, but there was a bright side. Damage to the building’s roof revealed a beautiful, beamed cathedral ceiling made of thick pine boards that had been hidden for decades.

“When we saw the nice beams and everything, we were surprised,” Hadidi says.

Part of it had blown away, though.

“This whole section was gone,” says Hadidi’s partner, Debi Barnes, pointing to the east end of the ceiling. “All you could see was sky.”

Luckily it was found nearby and workers were able to piece the tongue-in-groove ceiling back together.

“I draw the analogy to people who came into old houses with hardwood floors and then covered them up with shag carpet,” Barnes says. “Now everybody is saying, let’s get rid of that nasty shag carpet and have hardwood floors.”

(On that note, the old carpet that had been in Hadidi’s showroom area was ruined in the storm. In its place is a highly polished concrete floor that had been beneath the carpet for years.)

When Hadidi bought the building it had been the Golden China Restaurant. Before that it was a steakhouse; an old sign for a steakhouse that had been covered over by other signs was found in the tornado rubble. The initial thought was that it had been Charlie Brown’s Cow Shed restaurant. But Jim Bain, who has owned Sullivant’s Liquor Store next door at 8122 Cantrell Road since 1976, believes it may have been Buff’s Steakhouse.

The ceiling, along with a stone fireplace which is also original, seems appropriate for a steakhouse.

Now the gallery is taking full advantage of its new look. While there are still drop ceilings in part of the store, the showroom with the refurbished ceiling is open and airy.

“We’re going to put a seating area in front of the fireplace and really show off this part of the showroom,” Barnes says.

To see photos of the ceiling, visit arkansasonline.com/625hadidi/.