The building many refer to today as "Julia's" or "the building next to Taylor's" has a new owner and will have a new name, Lunch, and business in 2023. Its lot at 24 University Avenue has an interesting though incomplete history, beginning in 1869, when a lease was granted to J. M. (Mercer) Cotton for Lot 2. This plot was immediately adjacent and north of Lot 1 (the location today of TAYLOR'S MERCANTILE) which had been claimed by George Fairbanks.
J.M. Cotton was the son-in-law of Bishop William Mercer Green of Mississippi, a Founder of the University and its fourth Vice Chancellor. In February 1872, Cotton's lease was signed over to W.H. Tomlinson and Son which lasted until December of that year when Joseph F. Bork assumed the lease. Bork already had the tin shop next door and by 1875 he relinquished this newer lease to a dentist, C.P. Baird. This case of rapidly changing leaseholders and types of services was at great variance to the history of Lot 1.
The Sanborn map of 1893 shows the narrow rectangular structure, with a front porch stretching into the roadway. A few years later Benny Levolitz, a Jewish merchant, opened his dry goods store there. In 1904 John Powell ran a grocery store there and lived a few doors up the street. The building was still standing in the Sanborn map of 1907, but by the time of the Tennessee Inspection Map of 1922 the lot's building had disappeared and it was a vacant lot in the Sanborn map of 1930 as well. (See American Legion Hall entry.)
The building one sees today between Taylor's Mercantile and American Legion Post 51 was first seen in photographs with Kennedy Food Market above its front door at some point after 1939. Kennedy held the lease until 1954 when he briefly subleased space to Cumberland Electric Supply (electric appliances and repair). Kennedy relinquished the lease on October 1, 1954, and W. Hoyt Baker and his wife Pearl T. Baker acquired it for 25 years.
The Bank of Sewanee subleased from the Bakers (prior to its move to a new building across the street - see Banks of Sewanee), and Mrs. Baker had a dress shop briefly as well, but in 1980, the Bakers gave the lease up to M. Katherine Jenkins whose Headquarters Beauty Shop functioned until 2007.
The leasehold was acquired by Charles Treadway (Sewanee Places LLC) and Julia Stubblebine operated a popular eatery "Julia's" for a number of years before taking over the management of Stirling's Coffee Shop on the University campus. The entry entitled "Lunch" provides information on the new business moving into the space shortlly.