“The ABCs of Newtown” is a series tying each letter of the alphabet to something in Newtown. This week we continue with a look at one of the town’s oldest businesses, a popular Main Street mainstay.
NOTE: The caption for the photo of the four men shown inside Newtown General Store in the 1920s has been updated from the print edition of February 18, 2022, which did not have the names of any of the men. Our thanks to Alan Shepard, great-nephew of former business co-owner Rodney P. Shepard, for sharing his knowledge with us.
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Newtown had several general stores throughout the 19th Century.
One of the first is generally accepted to have opened in 1800, at the corner of Main and West streets, by David Curtis — but the only one that continues in operation today is at 43 Main Street.
The Newtown General Store was opened by David H. Johnson in 1847. To put that into perspective, it predates the start of American Civil War by 14 years.
Johnson was a prosperous merchant; he also built the elaborate Italianate house that stands at 50 Main Street, just north of The Matthew Curtiss House.
According to Mosaic of Newtown by the late Town Historian Dan Cruson, Johnson operated the store for just about two decades. The building was then “extensively renovated” in 1868 for L.B. Booth, who then operated the business until his death in 1896. Cruson’s Images of America noted the building “has changed little” since that time.
The next operator of the business at 43 Main Street was Edgar F. Hawley, a former partner of Henry Sanford, himself the former owner of the earlier referenced store at the corner of Main and West.
Hawley continued The Newtown General Store until 1900, when he went into bankruptcy. The store’s assets were sold off.
The general store did not stay closed for long. Another store “was quickly opened in the building and this was run by Henry Rupf for about 14 years,” Cruson notes in Mosaic of Newtown.
Chain Competition
Rodney P. Shepard then took over the business in 1914. He was joined a few months later by Levi C. Morris.
When the first electrical feed arrived in town that year, Newtown General Store was the first building in Newtown to be wired for electricity.
It was during the years of Morris and Shepard that the store began “to feel the ill effects of chain competition,” Cruson wrote in Mosaic of Newtown. With multiple general stores already operating in town, the arrival of large grocery chains made sustaining an independent general store even more challenging.
By the mid 1930s Morris and Shepard’s business joined Fairlawn Store System, which had 900 stores along the East Coast and a large warehouse facility in Danbury.
Shepard became president of the “local board of control while continuing to successfully manage the store with his partner until their deaths,” according to Cruson. Shepard and Morris died within months of each other in 1941 and 1942, respectively.
Albert Knapp, a former employee of Morris and Shepard, purchased the business in 1942. Knapp’s business partner was George Trull.
Following Trull’s death in 1949, the business became Knapp and Meyers. It remained so until 1956 when Knapp sold his interest to another party.
Three Decades
Earl Meyers became the sole proprietor two years later. Meyers also became the owner of the building at some point. He owned the building until January 1990, when it was purchased by Newtown native Robert Hall.
Hall has operated his attorney business from the office space on the northern portion of the building since that time. He has also been the lease holder for Newtown General Store since 1980.
Meyers owned and operated Newtown General Store for 31 years, his wife working alongside him for many of those years.
Hall recalls the store during those days of its operation.
“Earl had a little bit of everything,” he said in January. “It was really a traditional general store.
“He was a character ... a really nice guy,” he added.
The Meyerses threw a 30th anniversary celebration of their ownership in 1979, “with an in-house celebration, souvenirs and congratulations of townspeople,” The Bee noted that year.
The lifelong residents retired in 1980.
A September 19, 1980 feature in The Newtown Bee introduced readers to the new owners of the business, Newtown residents Grace and Earl Rudnick. The couple planned “to continue the general store tradition but they will be adding some features of their own.”
A photo with that story shows the new owners and Hall on one corner of the large counter that meets customers when they enter through the old-fashioned double doors that still hang at the entrance. Grace and Earl Meyers are standing on the adjacent corner, with Mrs Meyers sporting a huge smile.
Multiple Owners
The Rudnicks owned the business for just a few months, however. The Closed sign went up in January 1981, and the business was dark for the first half of that year.
Newtown residents Carol and Joe Mahoney began investigating the potential of the business in March of that year. They signed a contract at the end of June, and Newtown General Store reopened in July 1981.
“They were very good operators,” Hall recalled. “They had a very good business.”
Despite the intentions of their predecessors, the Mahoneys were the ones who began to transform the general store into a delicatessen with some general store offerings.
“They really created a general store with food,” Hall said.
The Mahoneys owned and operated the business for three years.
Robert and Martha Gold of Brookfield then owned the business during some or all of the period between 1984, when the Mahoneys sold, and 1992, when the store reopened under new partners. The Golds sold the rights to the store in April that year to Donna Spaner of Roxbury and her partners, Don and Jeri Guth of Brookfield.
The trio began renovations that month, when they painted the interior off-white with hunter green trim around the windows, and featured Tiffany-style lights, antiques, and old photographs and recipes on the walls. Very familiar additions were also added at that time: Two tables just inside the entrance and two outside to provide patrons with a place to eat lunch.
The store reopened at 5:30 am Wednesday, May 28, 1992, offering groceries and fresh homemade ice-cream, and an expanded deli menu.
“She had a broad variety of merchandise,” Hall said of Spaner, who was the public face of the partnership. Spaner also installed an upright piano inside her business.
“She would often play that at the end of the day, and the music would carry right into my office,” Hall recalled, laughing.
By the mid-1990s, however, the business changed hands once more, this time to the Nimer family. The Nimers were already familiar with the deli business, having already owned and successfully operated Hawleyville Deli and The Hi-Way Market in Brookfield.
“That’s when the business really began to operate as a deli,” said Hall. “I think they did pretty well.”
Hall said the Nimer family patriarch was “an experienced deli owner. He had a five-year lease, and then decided to sell at the end of that.”
In Mosaic of Newtown, Dan Cruson ties the change of Newtown General Store from its origins to its current deli-focused entity to the development in the late 1980s of Sand Hill Plaza and the arrival of a major supermarket as an anchor store there.
20 Years And Counting
Peter Leone has owned Newtown General Store for 20 years. Leone bought the business in November 1999. He took over the business in January 2000, picking right up when the Nimers’s lease concluded.
The former route salesman for Pepsi’s Frito-Lay division was already well versed in the deli business, having owned For Pete’s Sake in Bethel for six years.
Leone’s initial plans were to return the building to its “nostalgic 19th Century theme,” he told The Newtown Bee in December 2000. The store has expanded its menu, kept it regularly updated, and remains a popular destination for residents and travelers alike.
One of the latest customer conveniences in recent years was the addition of several picnic tables to the grassy area on the northern side of the building, available during the warmer months.
While Leone has kept the front counters filled with traditional jars filled with candy, and the interior still has the feel of a traditional general store — right down to the wood floors and a trio of large framed photos near the ceiling of the store’s northern wall featuring early proprietors — Newtown General Store is also very contemporary. It not only has a website, but the business has also been on Facebook since at least September 2010.
The store has remained open through the COVID-19 pandemic, and even returned to its general store roots in April 2020. That month the store highlighted offerings of paper towels, toilet paper, disposable gloves, napkins, disinfectant cleaners, and more, all of which were of course available for curbside pickup.
Did You Know…
*The building has been featured in The New York Times and Reader’s Digest.
*Minor accidents in front of, and occasional appliance fires have happened over the years at the building. One of the most significant, however, occurred in June 1938. Two men in a vehicle passing the store around 1:30 am Sunday, June 5, saw flames through a northern window. Firefighters were quick to respond, but it still took nearly 30 minutes to extinguish the fire.
Among those responding that morning was “Ace Fireman Rev Paul Cullens,” as noted under a front page photo that week. Cullens was a member of Hook & Ladder company as well as a longstanding pastor of Newtown Congregational Church.
The fire was thought to have been started by an overheated incinerator in the cellar. It had worked its way up along the chimney, “burned and charred several pieces of studding, besides destroying all of the articles on a stand against the wall.”
There was very little damage in the main room of the building, “but water flowing into the back room caused damage to cases of goods on the floor. Some of the ceiling paint was blistered and the glass in one show case was cracked by the heat,” The Bee reported.
Total damage was less than $1,000, and repair work began later that day.
*On a Sunday morning in 1965, patrons entering the store were surprised to find more than the regular staff.
Anyone entering Newtown General Store on September 26 was thrust into the center of a Hollywood set. Lights, cameras, and action filled the store at 5 am, when more than 30 people arrived on location for the production of three, one-minute Rheingold commercials.
Parked outside was an MGM truck, a bus for wardrobe changes, a monitor showing the happenings within the store, and a sizeable crowd of onlookers.
“The store churned with activity, in sharp contrast to the lazy country store atmosphere that characterized the finished commercials,” The Bee noted in its October 1, 1965 pages.
*Floyd Patterson visited the store in September 1975. The former world’s heavyweight boxing champion, according to The Newtown Bee that week, reportedly asked “to be reminded to his old friends in Newtown.”
The champ was living in New Paltz, N.Y., at the time but used to train in Newtown while an active fighter.
*Newtown artist Pat Kaufman was the first person to have their art formally featured at the general store. In March 1983, “Kaufman hung selected pieces of her own artwork in a newly cleared corner of the old general store. Ms Kaufman’s show is the first of a series being planned,” according to that week’s newspaper.
*In 1991, the local landmark was honored by Newtown Woman’s Club by becoming the featured illustration on that year’s pewter holiday ornament.
The club has been selecting a building or other landmark in town since 1988, and Woodbury Pewter produces a limited edition of that design.
*In November 2004, longtime resident Paul S. Lux sent a Letter to the Editor containing his suggestions of the best things to do in town. Ten years later, Mr Lux updated that list. Among the January 2014 suggestions were: “Have a sandwich on the front porch of the Newtown General Store in the sun.”
*Newtown Bee then-Associate Editor John Voket was completely surprised one afternoon in August 2008 to find movie star Kirsten Dunst nonchalantly enjoying her lunch at one of the store’s outside tables. Dunst was in town very briefly, shooting scenes for All Good Things with costar Ryan Gosling.
*Sherman resident and award-winning artist Ben Palagonia spent time creating a series of paintings depicting general stores in western Connecticut during the early 2000s. One of those paintings featured Newtown General Store, and in February 2007 Mr Palagonia donated the first print of his artist’s proofs to Newtown Historical Society.
*In October 2012, Sharon Small and Christopher Timmel returned to their hometown for the weekend. The couple had met for the first time when both were in Mrs Howard’s class at Sandy Hook School.
When the natives returned ten years ago, Chris surprised Sharon with a scavenger hunt with stops around town at all of their favorite spots, including the general store.
(Happy footnote: When they reached their final destination, McLaughlin Vineyards in Sandy Hook, Chris proposed to Sharon, using his grandmother’s engagement ring.)
*In December 2012, in the wake of 12/14, many customers were surprised with gestures of kindness. One morning, a resident told the store’s employees to bill him at the end of the day for everyone’s coffee. The following day another person stepped in with a similar offer, reportedly this time to cover the costs of many customers’ sandwiches. The following day’s coffee and breakfast sandwiches were taken care of by at least two different anonymous callers, one of whom was reportedly from Mississippi.
*The Newtown General Store has been a longstanding location where readers can purchase copies of The Newtown Bee. (“The Bee” is also a specialty sandwich at 43 Main Street. It features a chicken cutlet with melted Swiss cheese, honey mustard, and lettuce on a hard roll).
The store has for decades also been a supporter of local sports teams, a host location for countless fundraiser ticket sales, and sponsor of Scouting and other special events.
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Associate Editor Shannon Hicks can be reached at shannon@thebee.com.
“The ABCs of Newtown” is a series tying each letter of the alphabet to something in Newtown. This week we continue with a look at one of the town’s oldest businesses, a popular Main Street mainstay.
A customer exits Newtown General Store on February 15. The building at 43 Main Street has been home to a general store business since 1847. —Bee Photo, Hicks
L.B. Booth’s store before its renovations in 1869, as photographed by Henry Cook and reproduced in Images of America by Dan Cruson.
Lexi Morris (left), Rodney P. Shepard, an unidentified man and Albert Knapp stand inside the general store during the 1920s, when it was operated as Morris & Shepard.
Earl Meyers stands outside Newtown General Store in October 1980, shortly before his retirement later that month. Notes on the back of this photo note, “Was very sad to witness. After taking inventory of store, preparing to sell business, [the accountant] asked for all keys … Dad … walked out quietly, turned around and said, ‘Oh I’ll be back for visits little store.’” —photo courtesy June Meyers Hanna
In March 2007 Sherman resident and award-winning artist Ben Palagoina, rightt, donated the first print of his artist’s proofs featuring Newtown General Store to Newtown Historical Society. Lincoln Sander, who was president of the historical society at that time, accepted the gift on behalf of the local historical society. —Bee file photo
Close-up of artist Ben Palagoina's donated artist’s proof of Newtown General Store, donated to Newtown Historical Society. —Bee file photo
The Ryan Gosling-Kirsten Dunst 2010 film "All Good Things" has a small part in the history of Newtown General Store.
Eighteen-year-old Amaury Bargioni pauses in front of Newtown General Store on Thursday, December 11, 2014. The young Parisian was biking around the world, and in passing through Newtown, was drawn to the historic building, which doubled as the perfect lunch stop. —Bee file photo
A 1979 illustration by Tilson Albright, depicting “Newtown General Store, Civil War Era,” hangs inside the store today.
Tiffany style lamps have hung inside Newtown General Store since spring 1992. —Bee Photo, Hicks
—Bee Photo, Hicks
A customer approached the back counter, where sandwich orders are put up in minutes. Among the updates made by current owner Peter Leone are the digital menus overhead. The store continues to celebrate its hometown with ten sandwiches named for local landmarks and regions, from The Flagpole, The Borough and The Sandy Hook to The Hawleyville, The Botsford and The Dodgingtown, among others. —Bee Photo, HIcks
While the current focus of Newtown General Store is its deli counter and related snacks and drinks, the store also offers gift and sundry items including mugs celebrating the store’s origins. —Bee Photo, Hicks
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