One corner of the history of Jamestown furniture exhibit which will be the main feature of Lafayette Corners’s dedication event at the beginning of May is pictured. Submitted photo

Furniture store, Lafayette Corners, will be celebrating 50 years of doing business in downtown Jamestown with a special dedication event at the beginning of May.

The business was originally started by Tim Carlson in 1973. It originally stood on Fairmount before moving to its current location at 215 West Fourth Street. Current owners, David Pelow and his wife Pam, took over the business four years ago, in that time doing maintenance work such as painting and putting up new awnings and fixing the roof. During the past 50 years, the store has remained the largest furniture store in Jamestown, getting the name from its location on the corner of Fourth Street and Lafayette Corners.

This May will mark 50 years since the store first opened, and Pelow said while looking for ideas of a way to commemorate the milestone, they came up with the idea to have an exhibit in the store that looked at the history of furniture in Jamestown.

“We acquired old furniture that was made in Jamestown and are putting them in a room together,” Pelow said. “I used to live in Olean growing up and my parents came to Jamestown and bought furniture in 1948. I grew up with this furniture and put it in the basement at Lafayette Corners. It sat there for a while and I wanted to do something with it.”

During a Jamestown Renaissance Corporation workshop last summer, the idea was floated around to make an exhibit if they could find museum quality pieces. Pelow and his wife traveled to find more older furniture built in Jamestown to add to their exhibit. The Jamestown Renaissance Corporation helped with the early stages of figuring out ideas, and the Fenton History Center helped them to create signs.

Pelow has been in the furniture business for 30 years, but said he did not know much about the history of furniture in Jamestown — which was once known as the second largest furniture maker in the United States.

“We’ve had people come in who used to work here or their parents did,” Pelow said. “We had this idea to enhance the conversation about the history of Jamestown furniture and to connect people with the appropriate pieces.”

The dedication event for the exhibit will take place on May 5 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Along with the 50th anniversary sale, the event will also offer a meet and greet with some other business owners, and invites both past customers and potential future customers to come see the store and exhibit. There will also be light refreshments, and what Pelow said he hoped would be “good conversation”.

Reaching this milestone would not have happened without community support.

“It says a lot about what can happen to a city retail store in Jamestown to be able to be here that long,” Pelow said. “With community support a business can thrive. It means a lot.”

Pelow credited the success of the business’s past 50 years to the store’s employees.

“The success of the past 50 years comes down to the employees that work there,” Pelow said. “Some of them have been there for 40 or 45 of those 50 years. Without them I don’t know how successful we would’ve been. Customers know what to expect in the store and they know the employees. It goes without saying that they are what has made us successful.”