Marjorie Land and Joan Miller weren’t trying to cash in, in 1952. When the two women decided to open a shop featuring fabrics, decorations and gifts, “Old Town” Alexandria was just old.
There was nothing chic or quaint about this seaport town, nuzzled up to the rather polluted Potomac River at that time. It was just decrepit, and neglected by developers who wanted nothing to do with "old." But Land and Miller decided to push ahead with their dream, opening up the Market Square Shop. On Thursday night, their dream celebrated its 50th anniversary.
The store has been located at 202 King St. for 46 of its 50 years. It originally opened at 313 Cameron St, but was such an entrepreneurial success that the Cameron Street storefront soon became too small to hold the growing business
In 1956, Marjorie Land and her husband, Henry Carter Land, Jr., bought the property at 202-204 King St., known as the Chequire House.
It had been built by a French merchant in 1797, and restored by Thomas Waggaman, a 19th Century Washington land speculator. In a previous incarnation it had served as a tenement.
BRUCE SCHAFER, an architect and native of Raleigh, N.C., bought out Miller's interest in the shop in 1987, and consolidated ownership by purchasing Land’s interest in 1995.
In his words, "I am simply taking the shop from one intersection to another." He has meticulously kept the shop as it has always been, to the delight of Market Square’s clientele.
"Nothing has changed and they love it," he said. More than 200 clients, patrons, and friends of the shop, and of Schafer and Land, swarmed into the first and second floors last week to celebrate the 50-year anniversary.
Standing at the open door to the shop, Schafer greeted the shop’s devotees to the anniversary celebration. He attributed the shop’s success, and its committed customers, to Land and Miller’s ingenuity.
"Those two ladies… were intellectually smitten with the world and decided to share their knowledge,” he said. “They were very bright."
The future of the shop depends on Schafer continuing the two founders’ devotion. "The market place is constantly changing and I have to stay on the cutting edge. But, I am not changing anything,” he said. “I simply help people translate into three dimensions how they would really like to live. This is where they can achieve it."
He also views the new competition, such as Artcraft and Rugs to Riches, as having "only helped us. We welcome new neighbors. It's all a plus."
In addition to maintaining Market Square’s attention to customers, Schafer has maintained their business model. "We handle all the elite products, both for home decorating and as gifts. Plus, we still serve our clients in the old-fashioned way. We send out monthly bills, maintain client gift records, and still have nearly 75 house accounts," Schafer said.
THE STAFF HAS always been small, the same as the shop itself. "Joan and I did it all at first. But, over the years there have been a lot of people in Alexandria who have worked at the shop," Land said.
Schafer now has one full-time and three part-time employees, who operate the shop seven days a week. "I'm at the store five days a week and always on Sundays," he explained. "I also still do some architectural design work."
One of those employees is Dianna Krevtz who has worked at the shop for the past 12 years. She started working for Land, and has remained with Schafer. "It's been a lot of fun and that's the way it should be," she said, as she joined others at the celebration.
Krevtz, whose husband is career military, came to Alexandria in 1990, and applied to work in the shop. "I was an art major in college at the University of Maryland and I love helping people decorate their homes. We have a lot of long time clients," she said.
NOT ONLY DID the ground floor of the building house the Market Square Shop, but the second, third and fourth were home to Land and her family. "It was a lot of stairs but it was good for everyone," said Land, now an 88-year-old surrounded by friends and former clients, as she sat in the living room of the home.
Land and her husband Henry sold the house to Morgan Delany and Osborne Mackie, and the two kept the shop when they moved into Goodwin House. Delany, an Alexandria native, and Mackie, have not only maintained the 201-year old structure but have enhanced its historical significance since the time it was both residence and business to the Lands and their two sons, Carter and Charles.
What serves as Delany and Mackie’s dining room served as the Lands’ living room, Marjorie Land said.
It was not a disruption to family life, her son said. "It was a pretty normal existence," said Charles, known as "Chip," now a lawyer in Norfolk. "But we never lived in the living room. It was used by the shop for inventory and was rented to an architect and lawyer at different times."
Delany and Mackie have restored the massive room to its former grandeur, with its 13-foot ceiling, 18-inch french cornice coveted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and random width floors. The dining room is once again just that.
THE TOWN AROUND the homes has also been restored. Carter verified that Old Town in the 50s and 60s was not as it is today. "When we grew up here it was slum. We were urban rats," he said. "But, it was very interesting.”
His mother recalled that when a friend from Richmond came to visit a cab driver cautioned her about going to the 200 block of King Street. "After dark it was scary at this end of town," Carter said. But it still held Alexandria’s primary businesses.
Marjorie Land did her part to keep a business atmosphere in those environs, her sons said. "When my brother and our friends were playing on the third floor she could hear us in the shop and would call up for us to be quiet," Chip recalled. "Dad worked for a commercial credit company." Henry Land died in May 1998, at age 90, just two months before he and his wife were slated to move to Goodwin House.
As he surveyed the crowd celebrating the consistency and longevity of both the shop and it's founder, Schafer observed, "The one thing all these people have in common is their love for this store. Sometimes you have to look back and reminisce so that it doesn't all blend together. Nothing has changed. That's what they really love."