Portland
Country Market
by Doris
Sherrow, October 1999
In the late
1700s, quarry owner Timothy Russell built himself a large,
comfortable colonial-style house on the lot where Portland Country Market
now stands. Russell's property included a profitable indenture with an
early quarry company - an 1819 lease gave him $10 for each square rod
of property quarried behind the house. When he died in 1840, the house
descended to his son, Daniel.
In 1862, Civil War troops were sent off
from the Russells' place. Rev. Samuel Emory of Trinity Church recorded
in his diary for August 25: "Officiated as chaplain in front of Mr.
Russell's for the company raised here, about to leave for New Haven…
Presented swords to the volunteer company at the picnic in Mr. Russell's
grounds, and made a speech with fear and trembling."
When Daniel Russell died in 1869,
his occupation was listed as "care of his own finances," which
entailed some $300,000 in land, buildings and quarry stocks, equivalent
to over $20,000,000 today. The house passed to his son Frederick, who
had been living there with his young family for several years.
Frederick eventually moved out of town, and the house became quarry housing.
Toward the end of its days, it was a boarding house called the "Portland
House." In 1929, fire raged through the building, gutting the interior.
Soon after, Timothy Russell's grand house was razed.
At this point, the property was acquired
by Morris Joseloff and his associates. Joseloff had emigrated from
Russia in 1900. With his brothers, he founded Economy Grocery,
which merged with First National Stores in the early 1900s. He
made tremendous profits, which he plowed back into his adopted country.
He donated millions to Brandeis University, Yale School of Medicine,
Wadsworth Athenium, and the Joseloff Gallery of Art at the
University of Hartford.
In various towns around Connecticut, Joseloff
and company typically bought up a parcel of land in the town center and
set up a supermarket on the site. The vacant lot at 272 Main was ideal.
A deed from April 14, 1931, mentions "a one-story building"
on the lot - the new supermarket.
From 1931 until 1957, First National Stores
operated from this site, although in its first decades, it shared the
building with at least two other businesses. Wannerstrom's appliance
store occupied the 30 feet at the end closest to the bridge, and the Conklin
Pharmacy occupied the northernmost 20 or 30 feet. The grocery store
had made the middle section. A tavern and a dry cleaners also occupied
various corners of the building at one time or another.
In 1957, First National moved to Marlborough
Street, to what we identify today as the Tri-Town Plaza. For a year or
so, the building at 272 Main stood vacant, until Don Demar, a 26
year old who was running a small market in Hartford, contacted Joseloff's
company. Demar had little capital to sink into the store, but Joseloff
seems to have liked his style, and offered him generous terms. Don started
up the Portland Supermarket on July 17, 1957. He fondly remembers Joseloff's
combination of extraordinary business sense and rare generosity.
Until 1961, Fire Company #1's second
firehouse, a small gamble-roofed house-like structure built in 1923, stood
neatly between what was long Brownstone Pharmacy and the supermarket.
People had fewer cars, and more people walked to the grocery store, so
the front spaces were enough in the 1940s and 50s! In 1961, the town took
down the firehouse, and parking behind the store was opened up. (A 1980s
beautification effort threatened to make those front spaces into three
slots of parallel parking; the will of the people prevailed, however,
and kept this supermarket as wonderfully convenient as it is!)
Don admits to putting up the unique tower/bird
condo on the south side of the front. "It was a 60s thing…"
he says, somewhat ruefully. Recently I watched Katie, a young neighbor,
showing her toddler the cute birdies up in their many nests in the tower.
Almost certainly, her own mother, Mary Ann, must have shown little
Katie the cute birdies up in their nests, some twenty or thirty bird-generations
ago! Of such stuff are traditions made!
In 1983, Don sold the supermarket to Warren
Carlson, the current owner. Carlson's son, Warren Jr. ("J.R."),
came home from vacation that year to discover that he was no longer running
his dad's store in Meriden. He'd been switched to the new one in Portland!
Sixteen years later, he's still at it, coordinating the millions of demands
and needs and mix-ups involved in feeding much of Portland. About the
business, standing like David amidst the Super-Goliaths, he says: "It
gets harder every year…"
Down cellar on the plywoond walls are hundreds
of signatures. Kids who worked in the store over the decades signed their
names, and usually a date. And somehow, that sums it up. This little supermarket
is about people, about a more human scale of life. Not some site-leveling
behemoth, controlled by out-of-state or even foreign interests. It's about
seeing your neighbor when you run down for a loaf of bread. Saying "hi"
to your son's friend as she works the register.
The birds in the condo hope we keep it that
way.
