Union Supply getting an exterior refresh

TEXARKANA, Ark. — The Union Supply Grocery Store building on Broad Street downtown has a new coat of paint with the help of Main Street Texarkana, via a matching funds grant. The project kicked off recently, according to owner Tom Morrissey.

“I’ve owned Union Supply for about 15 years,” Morrissey said. “Before that, it was a grocery store up until around the mid-’90s.”

Morrissey said he and a crew of two did some pointing of the brick joints, scraping and chalking before spraying 28 gallons of beige paint on the building. They left alone the large sign that runs along the top of the building and identifies it.

Initially he thought he would just paint over it. But after consulting with Main Street, and then preservationists in Little Rock, he thought better. Signs such as this are called “ghost signs” because they have faded so badly, but they are still historically significant.

He plans to have it restored later.

Morrissey is retired after a career in academia, but is hardly sitting still in retirement.

“I use the building for my own personal business, which is sculpting as well as building guitars,” he said. “With the guitar project, I work with vets.”

The focus of this project was to paint it in order to preserve the exterior of the building as well as blend in with the other renovation efforts going on downtown, many of them just down the street.

Eventually, Morrissey would like to restore the interior.

“I envisioned this place as an artist’s residency project,” he said. “I haven’t given up

on that, but COVID, among other things, caused delays.”

In the meantime, he carries on with his work as an artist as well as teaching part-time and working with veterans on various art projects.

(Union Supply is located at 418 E. Broad St.)

Staff photo by Junius Stone ■ Tom Morrissey, owner of the Union Supply building on Broad Street, recently began a project to refurbish the building’s exterior. He will get help from Main Street Texarkana to do so.