Everyone’s Westport is different.
Our image of the town — what it is, and should be — is formed by our first experiences here.
Mine dates back to the 1960s, when I was in elementary and junior high school.
Those who arrived later — by birth, as kids or teenagers, or adults — have a different idea of “Westport.”
A woman recently lamented how much has changed. She misses the mom-and-pop shops on Main Street, and the small-town vibe.
She moved here in 2010.
That was a dozen years after the New York Times published a story headlined “Is Heart and Soul Gone From Main Street?”
In 1998, the New York Times had a stand-alone Connecticut section. This Page 1 photo shows Main Street, with Oscar’s Deli (center) and then-closed Remarkable Book Shop (right). The inset is Klein’s.
Nearly 3 decades ago — on December 27, 1998 — Leslie Chess Feller explored the changing nature of our town. She began:
Little shops, once the backbone of Main Street in Westport, have almost disappeared. One of the last is Klein’s, founded by a Hungarian-born entrepreneur named Henry Klein who took pride in greeting every customer by name, which has for 61 years sold books, stationery and office supplies. Mr. Klein worked until the day before his death in 1990, at the age of 90.
But in January the store will be subletting ground-floor retail space to the Banana Republic chain, one of many that have displaced family-owned Mom-and-Pop stores by being willing to pay higher rents.
Spoiler alert: Banana Republic is gone now too. So is Oka, the furniture store that took its place. The upper part of Klein’s — where you could buy office supplies and typewriters (kids: ask your parents what those were) — has been repurposed as Sushi Jin.
Banana Republic replaced Klein’s.
Robert Hertzel — vice president of Klein’s, and president of what was then called the Downtown Merchants Association — said, ‘We have turned into a regional shopping center. But that’s not a bad thing.”
Klein’s, in the 1962 Staples High School yearbook.
The piece continues:
Another holdover is Jack Swezey’s jewelry store, currently run by his son David. ”We opened here in 1956 when everybody knew everybody and each store was one of a kind,” said Mr. Swezey. ”Business is good, but sometimes I feel like a loner,” he added, looking out his shop’s window, now facing Williams-Sonoma, Brooks Brothers and Crabtree & Evelyn. ‘
‘Today’s Main Street has become an outdoor mall,” he said. ”I’m one of the few individual merchants left and that’s because we own the building.”
Swezey — where an enormous model train set entertained passersby every Christmas — is today the site of Brochu Walker.
Swezey Jewelers
Williams-Sonoma is still here, but in a location (Bedford Square) that did not exist in 1998. Brooks Brothers is still here — though next year, Sephora takes over. Crabtree & Evelyn sold its last loofah in 2009.
Plumed Serpent owner Fred Tow talked about his move to Playhouse Square, after 25 years on Main Street. (The bridal gown boutique has since moved again, across the Post Road.)
”When I opened in 1971, Ann Taylor was the only corporate store,” Mr. Tow said, ”and my monthly rent was $325.” By 1996, the chain stores had moved in and his rent jumped to $5,700 a month. Mr. Tow said that customers now have to go to Kent and New Preston for the look of old-fashioned Connecticut.
”In terms of both merchandise and decor,” he said, ”unless they see the sign, shoppers can’t tell whether they’re in J. Crew or the Gap. It all seems the same. There’s this corporate coldness, a lack of personal connection. People don’t realize what’s been lost.”
The 3-story Gap replaced a failed vertical mall — which was built on the site of a furniture store that burned down in the mid-1970s.
The piece continued with reminiscences from Howard Munce. The artist — then 83 years old, who first came to town in 1935 (and died 10 years ago, at 100), remembered Greenberg’s (“where you could buy anything from buttons and thread to underwear and Girl Scout uniforms,”) Charles Market, and the Ben Franklin 5-and-10 (kids: ask your grandparents).
In Howard Munce’s day, Welch’s was one of 3 hardware stores on Main Street. Traffic was 2-way all the way to the Post Road, too.
Feller continue:
In the last three decades, however, Main Street has morphed into a sort of Rodeo Drive East. Dubbed the ”Golden Half Mile” by the newspaper columnist John Capsis, who died in 1997, Main Street’s chain stores and boutiques are staffed by people who commute from other towns. As they talk on cell phones, the drivers of S.U.V.’s, BMW’s, Jeeps and Jaguars fight for parking spots. Tourists clutch shopping bags sporting logos while undercover police officers pursue what they say are organized gangs of shoplifters.
The story continues, bopping down Main Street’s favorite side road, Memory Lane.
Feller writes about the Remarkable Book Shop, which closed in 1994. Remarkably, after Talbots it was replaced by Westport Local Market, now Eleish Van Breems — both local, one of which even had the word in its name.
The Remarkable Book Shop. Too bad this does not show its vibrant pink color.
Leann Enos, an actress and theatrical director who moved to Main Street when she was a child, and whose father owned Walker’s Frame Shop, said, ”To me, it feels as if Main Street has lost its heart and soul. Now everything is about spending money.”
Anne Rowlands — a Westport native, and vice president of the Westport Chamber of Commerce — said she could no longer afford to shop on Main Street.
”It’s gotten so expensive and, to be honest, it feels kind of faceless to me,” she explained — not exactly a Chamber of Commerce-type comment. “It’s rare to find someone you know.”
Downtown shopper Linda Stern said, ”At first, I missed the mom-and-pop stores. But now it’s very exciting; there’s an energy to the street.”
Meanwhile, Predrag Vicvara, a Fairfield resident who had lived in Croatia, said, ”You find different nationalities here. It seems a little bit European to me. I like it. It’s nicer than the mall.”
Main Street: a bit of Europe?
Sharon Rosen — who moved to Westport 5 years earlier, and “considers Main Street an asset despite the chain stores” — had the last word.
”It’s convenient,” she said. ”I understand it was very quaint and lovely here once.”
That was the view 28 years ago — near the end of the 20th century.
Folks rued the demise of mom-and-pop stores then. They still do, 30 years later — even if they arrived after 1998, and believe there were plenty of quaint mom-and-pops when they came.
Downtown Westport was evolving 3 decades ago. It was when my parents moved here in 1956. It continues to evolve today.
What’s “your” Westport? When did you come to town? What’s changed? What hasn’t?
And how will your comment look when we look back on it 28 years from now, in 2054?
(“06880” often explores the changing face of Westport. If you enjoy stories like this — or anything else on our hyper-local blog — please click here to support our work. Thanks! PS: See you on Main Street!)
