As the years passed and the face of Charlottesville changed, there was always one place that remained the same, Inge's Store at 333 West Main Street. Beginning in 1891, the actual store has changed hands only once. George P. Inge passed the store on to his youngest son, Thomas Ferguson Inge in 1946.

When it closed its doors in 1978 for the final time after 87 years, the Inge's Grocery was one of the oldest black businesses in Charlottesville. It supplied the best hotels, like the Clemont and the Gleason boarding houses, the Madison Hospital, and the University of Virginia for many years. The Inge's store was the only fresh retailer in the city then. It did not take long for it to establish a regular clientele of city fathers, University professors, and anyone else who could pay prices like seven cents for a quart of milk!

However, unlike commercial grocery stores of today, the Inge's store offered much more then bread and fish. The Inge's store was the hub of Charlottesville's activity and conservation. Charlottesville society, the "good livers" as Thomas Inge called them, kept no secrets from the storeowners. City benefactor Paul Goodloe McIntire, for instance, told Inge of his plans to make gifts of land, statuary, and buildings to Charlottesville long before they became public knowledge.

His trade kept Geprge Inge abreast of what city folks fancied. The stores acount books showed that the University of Virginia's first president, Edwin Anderson Alderman, was partial to a nice, warm meal of rabbit. George Inge would buy rabbit from "country people" for a quarter a piece. Dr. William A. Lambeth a professor of physical training, kept up his strength eating Inge's fresh trout. The Inge's record book for 1911 show he purchased two and a half pounds of trout for 42 cents!

In the days of Jim Crow Charlottesville, African Americans did not have any place to stay when visiting the city. They were refused at hotels, boarding houses, and public inns. They could only enter these places if they worked there as an employee, and even then they had to use the back door to enter and leave. Thus, Inge's store served as a successful grogercy business and a place for African Americans to rest their heads at night. George Inge had many distinguished African American visitors to Charlottesville share his residence above the store. Among the Inge's guests were George's good friend and school mate Booker T. Washington, T.C. Walker, a noted lawyer from Gloucester County Dr. Robert R. Martin, and many other guests and black politicians.