L. Greenberg Company, Inc.

Around 1904, Louis Greenberg (1881-1965) immigrated to the United States from Russia. According to his descendants, Louis initially lived with his cousins in Connecticut before moving to Florence, South Carolia around 1906. There, he worked first as a traveling salesman and then took an interest in hide tanning. In 1908, he married fellow Russian immigrant Fannie Horowitz (1885-1945) in Philadelphia and welcomed their eldest son, Samuel (1911-1944), there in 1911. Shortly after that, the young family of three moved to Florence where Louis established his tannery on North Dargan Street around 1914 and Fannie gave birth to two more children, Stephen Abraham (1915-1987) and Judith (1917-2013).

Over the years, Louis placed advertisements in local newspapers seeking everything from wool, hides, and beeswax to scrap metal, batteries, and rubber. In turn, he sold drainage pipes, structural steel, concrete, and a host of other building materials from his office at 216 North Dargan Street. After Samuel graduated from the University of South Carolina, he joined his father in the family business, and in 1939, Louis and Samuel incorporated L. Greenberg Company as Florence Iron & Metal Company, Inc. Still frequently referred to as the L. Greenberg Company, Louis and Samuel’s business flourished during World War II (1939-1945). In 1943, they received the War Production board’s merit award for their scrap metal drives and the sheer volume of resources they funneled to the United States government. During a single month in 1943, L. Greenberg Company processed and shipped 196 tons of scrap materials that were quickly utilized in the war effort. Sadly, Samuel did not live to see the end of the war, and instead suffered a fatal heart attack just over a week before his thirty-third birthday. 

As life slowly returned to its new post-war normalcy in the late 1940s, Louis redoubled his efforts to invest in local real estate. While he already owned and rented out 150 West Evans Street, one of the most desirable buildings in town, he went on to buy at least five storefronts near his office, including 145, 163, 165, 167, and 218 North Dargan Street. It seems that he also took a step back from L. Greenberg Company around this time. When the company announced its dissolution and subsequent merger in 1949, Louis and Fannie’s surviving children, Judith—by then a certified member of the South Carolina bar—and surgeon Stephen Abraham, were acting as company president and secretary-treasurer respectively. However, by 1951 Louis returned to the scrap metal industry with a warehouse on Shop Road. While Louis’s tannery no longer lives on, his legacy of investing in and developing real estate in the Pee Dee region continues three generations later.