Community Corner

Keeler Stove Shop Comes Down (Video)

The historic building on South Main Street is razed after decades of neglect.

After being neglected for decades, it was the roof collapse last winter that hastened the decline of the Keeler Stove Shop. The historic 1860 building on South Main Street was dismantled Friday.

“It’s very sad it came to this,” said Jeanné Chesanow, chairwoman of the Cheshire Historic District Commission. The stove shop, which was located in the downtown historic district, was condemned by the town’s Building Department in mid-December, even before the roof collapsed. 

 “It was like watching a dear relative get sicker and sicker. It almost seemed like an agonizing thing,” Chesanow said of the building's decline.

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At the demolition site on Friday, contractor Paul Bowman said the dismantling project would be finished in a couple days.  A crane began removing the rear portion of the building on Thursday. By Friday afternoon, little more than the outer walls remained. The three-story wooden building sat close to the frontage line of the property on the narrow, deep lot.

 Bowman has a contract with property owner, Earl Conti of Woodbridge, to develop the former stove shop parcel and renovate the historic George Keeler home next door at 166 So. Main Street. Bowman has told the historic commission, which regulates buildings in the district, that he plans to build a replica of the stove shop on the original site.

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Conti could not be reached for comment.

It will be about a month , Bowman said, before he submits plans for the new shop building to the town's land use commissions. Both the historic commission and the Planning and Zoning Commission review such plans.

The Keeler family home, also built around 1860, is architecturally significant for its Italianate style, according to records of the Cheshire Historical Society. Bowman said the renovations for the home will follow an "as built"  plan that details architectural designs in buildings. 

During the demolition of the stove shop, Bowman said the crew saved a section of an original wall that contains an inscription written in 1893 by R.W. Smith, a friend and neighbor of the Keeler's. The crew also salvaged a large wooden pulley wheel that was used to hoist heavy items to the third floor of the shop. A receipt book from 1945 for the Cheshire Furniture business that operated in the building was also found on Friday.

One of the entries in the receipt book shows that a customer was charged $4.25 for “floor sanding.” Another entry details a furniture delivery made to the old Lassen dairy farm on Boulder Road.

As the crane took down sections of the building on Friday, paper and other items spilled from the attic and upper floors. A crew member said unsafe flooring in the shop kept workers from accessing the upper stories to clear the items. A crew chief stood behind the building, watching for items to pull from the pile of wood. At one point, he set aside a pair of glass lampshades to be saved.

“Luckily, I saw inside two years ago,” Chesanow said. At that time, she said Conti knew the building was no longer structurally sound. “He said, ‘You can’t go in [certain rooms], the floors are dangerous,’” Cheasnow said. “He knew what parts were falling in. It looked remarkably sound, but you could see outside through the wall,” she added.

Chesanow said the commission members asked Conti to repair the building and he said he wouldn’t. “He never did a thing, not even to throw a patch over the roof. He had pleasant memories of the property, but evidentially, not enough,” she said.

“People didn’t know what to do; the building looked terrible and they were appalled at how it looked,” Chesanow said.

However, the commission couldn’t compel Conti to repair the property.

“People feel like (the commission) has magic powers to make people repair things, but we don’t,” she said.

Information about the Keeler Stove Shop, the Keeler home and a family timeline are available on the Cheshire Historical Society website. Information about the Cheshire Historic District Commission can be found by clicking here.


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