A firefighter looks on as the Putney General Store is destroyed by a fire late Sunday night. ZACHARY P. STEPHENS / BRATTLEBORO REFORMER / ASSOCIATED PRESS Visit the Photo Place

Second fire at general store has Vermonters crying again

Date published: 11/3/2009

BY JOHN CURRAN

ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

PUTNEY, Vt.

The creaky wooden building where locals arrived for coffee, hardware and gossip, and where tourists ducked in to buy maple syrup by the gallon meant that much to them.

Now, they're crying again.

A suspicious fire swept through the 21/2-story structure late Sunday, destroying the vacant post-and-beam structure and with it a piece of the past.

"This place used to have the coffee, the delicatessen, videos, hardware, just about anything you need," said Craig Stead, 65, a local historian. "So it was a true general store. You always had a certain number of people from around Putney sitting around the tables, chatting business over their coffees.

"You had a lot of tourist trade here, because of your Vermont products--maple syrup, maple sugar. It was just sort of a hub that everything revolved around. And now it's gone."

When owner Erhan Oge couldn't rebuild after the first fire, the town's historical society bought it, hoping to raise enough money to rebuild and find another operator--anything to keep the store.

Nearly $700,000 was raised, and renovation work on what was once considered the state's longest continually operating general store was nearly complete.

The building, which dates to the late 1700s or early 1800s, has been a general store since around 1830, serving as a hub to the small business district of the southern Vermont town, which is home to about 3,000 people.

In May 2008, a fire of unknown origin damaged the attic of the building, but the general store's interior was left intact, as was an adjoining building that houses apartments and shops.

After Oge--the previous owner--decided not to rebuild, the Putney Historical Society bought it for $105,000 and spearheaded a private fundraising effort to cover the $880,000 cost of renovating it and finding a new store operator. A community block grant for $200,000 was obtained, and a $100,000 Village Revitalization Grant. Individual donations raised $70,000, and an estimated $18,000 worth of in-kind services were donated.

The work it paid for was nearly completed, and a new operator had signed on.

Then came fire--again.

More than 100 firefighters from Vermont and New Hampshire battled the latest fire, which was reported about 10:30 p.m. Sunday.

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Date published: 11/3/2009