Linda Lepper sent me the following notice (click here) of a discussion on what happened to country stores. Think I’ll attend and invite Ms. Laura Trieschmann down to Buzzy’s Country Store to check out an un-abandoned one that’s still alive and kicking.
Why Are Country Stores Abandoned?The Calvert Marine Museum PEM Talks: Lost Landmark Series will feature Laura Trieschmann discussing the role of country stores in rural life on Thursday, December 15 at 7:00 p.m. FREE to the public in the museum auditorium.
One of the key community establishments, along with the church and school, the general store provided the goods necessary to support a rural community. To quote Richard Dodds in the Forward to his book Islands in a River, “In a time when most people did not travel far from their place of birth, most everything could be found within the community.” The store was an essential part of the fabric of rural society. Ms. Trieschmann, who directed a survey of public meeting places in Calvert County in 2002, will discuss how the country store has been a part of our social landscape for generations, serving as a public meeting place and seamlessly melding with the domestic environment. With the arrival of the supermarket, department store, and gas station, the country store was abandoned and our sense of place disturbed.
Laura Trieschmann is senior architectural historian and principal at EHT Traceries, a consulting firm of architectural historians and historic preservations based in Washington, D.C. As Director of Survey and Documentation, she oversees and performs architectural surveys and investigations, documentation efforts, historic context studies, and prepares National Register nominations for resources dating from the early 18th to the late 20th centuries.
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