[B]RATTLEBORO — Since its founding in 1925, the local Baker’s newsstand has delivered one seemingly improbable headline after another, from Charles Lindbergh flying solo across the Atlantic to current plans for a U.S. Space Force.
Yet as another year comes to a close, the store is about to make its own news by shutting down after nearly a century.
When sixth-generation Vermonter James Baker decided to forgo college and borrow $250 from his father to start the newspaper, magazine and stationery store, the 19-year-old’s hometown had yet to host a radio station (the first in the state launched in Burlington in 1924) let alone conceive of such coming attractions as talking pictures, television or the internet.
Baker, working with a horse-drawn wagon, moved his store from a Flat Street basement to Main Street storefront the same year as Lindbergh’s 1927 flight. Three decades later, an open house for an expanded facility drew 4,500 people. By the 1970s, Baker’s not only sold periodicals but also delivered them to 200 other retailers in a 7,000-square-mile region in southern Vermont and neighboring New Hampshire.
As the founder gave way to two sons and one grandson, the business remained small-town enough to leave papers outside the store when it was closed for holidays, with a sign inviting customers to take one today and pay for it tomorrow. But big-box stores like the nearby Staples began to offer an airplane hangar of cut-rate goods, while personal computers and cellphones broadcast the news hours before presses roll.
At first, Baker’s figured if you can’t beat them, join them. It pulled out of downtown in 2011, consolidated operations at a Putney Road shopping center and promoted itself on Facebook. But this Christmas, clerks noticed some people were shopping on Hallmark’s website for cards and using the store simply as a place for pickup.
“We’re not trying to point any fingers,” Debbie Baker, wife of Dennis Baker, the founder’s sole living son, said of the current retail climate. “It’s just time for us to retire.”
The store will hold a sale to liquidate its inventory before closing when its lease ends next month.
“We very much appreciate the support of the community and our many loyal customers,” Debbie Baker said.
The community feels similarly about the store. Corwin Elwell, former town manager and father of current municipal head Peter Elwell, was born two years after Baker’s founding but estimates his time as a patron as “forever.”
“We buy newspapers and cards and office supplies and all kinds of miscellaneous stuff,” the 91-year-old said. “It’s an integral part of our lives.”
“The people who work there are just great,” added his wife, Betty Elwell. “It truly, truly is a loss.”
