20 or so years ago that corner was a barber shop. Maybe even since that old archives photo was taken. My friends and I used to go there because we knew Ken the barber. We suspected Ken got back into hard drugs and sure enough he was fatally stabbed in a notorious drug-related attack at a Wark St. apartment in 2005.
E was Empire later to become Evergreen "38"
I once made up a business card with my phone number as EVergreen 3-9126. It worked if you understood the code.