Putnam, CT

Putnam, Conn., Restored by Antiques

A decade ago it was a dying town, and some thought it was already dead. The malls had drawn off business from downtown retail stores, and the old industries had left or gone out of business. Putnam, in northeast Connecticut, was an antique—until antiques turned it into a bustling town again.

The catalyst was an antique dealer named Jerry Cohen who moved to New England from California after the birth of his first son to be near his and his wife’s families. He sold his store in California and wanted to reinvest the money in a similar business, so he bought a failed department store at the main intersection of Putnam. After the closing of the sale, a bank official said to him, “I only have one question for you. Why would you want to buy a building in a ghost town?”

Now that old department store, thoroughly renovated with gleaming carpentry and glass-front cases, has more than 300 display areas for more than 250 antique dealers. Other antique stores have opened in the compact downtown area of Putnam, which has a population of about 9,000, and restaurants and other stores have opened to serve the thousands of visitors that stream into town to “go antiquing.” What’s more, the renewed vibrancy of the town has attracted businesses to Putnam’s industrial park.

“We’re doing very well,” says Putnam Mayor Daniel S. Rovero. “The kinds of stores that previously were downtown are on the outskirts of town now. The antique shops and a few specialty stores and restaurants are all downtown. Luckily, we have the best of both worlds.”

Cohen, who cheerfully admits he makes most of his money from the direct-to-dealers antique business he runs out of his nearby home, bought the store in 1990, and after reopening it as an antique mall, he expected the then-capacity of 180 spaces to take a year to fill. They were full in 90 days.

“I spent $15,000 to rent a huge billboard on the interstate highway in Worcester,” Cohen says. The billboard touted not just the store, but the glories of Putnam. Not only did visitors immediately start flooding to town, local pride swelled as well. “It had an amazing effect on the psyche of Putnam,” he says.

The key to the success of his Antiques Marketplace, Cohen says, was that “I didn’t need immediate profits. I saw it as an opportunity for creating a dream and a vision rather than making a viable business enterprise. I studied the antique market here in New England and created my own dream shop in terms of presentations, policies, and standards, and I had the freedom to do it just exactly the way I wanted.”

Other antique malls tended to be dusty, utilitarian spaces such as abandoned warehouses, Cohen says. “I put in lights and heat and decided to show off the old pressed tin ceiling, the hardwood floors, and so forth,” he says. “I had carpenters put in new cabinets. We set it up as a clean and friendly, welcoming place where you’d want to go and browse.”

Cohen firmly believes the success of his store is based on its small-town location with lower rents. “That means dealers who sell moderately priced goods can survive and thrive here. Putnam’s location in the rolling hills of northeast Connecticut, not far from several state parks, has helped as well.

“On almost all counts, it’s a tremendous success story,” he notes with justifiable pride. “The only thing that’s less than a success is if you look for a high return on your investment. This isn’t it. It’s far from wildly profitable, but I didn’t set it up that way.”

For Putnam, however, the success story doesn’t even need that cautionary footnote. “Downtown vacancies do not last,” Cohen says. “It’s a very desirable location.”

For a small town that was bypassed and consigned to history only a decade ago, that’s a success story indeed.

Laurence Michie is a freelance writer and editor based in Massachusetts.

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