Picture East Windsor - Then And Now

EAST WINDSOR, CT — The latest installment of our new periodic informal series highlighting businesses from East Windsor's past, and what those locations look like today, brings us back more than four decades, to page 135 of the 1979 edition of the East Windsor High School yearbook, the Archive. Among the class sponsors that year was a business which had been supporting the high school classes since the 1960s: Kelly-Fradet Lumber.

Clarence “Red” Weeks and Lloyd Fradet began the Kelly-Fradet legacy by purchasing the Carmel Lumber Company in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts in 1951. Over the years, the business expanded, eventually operating at more than a half-dozen locations. Today, the company owns stores in East Longmeadow, Ellington and two sites in Enfield.

For many years, the store had a location at 56 Depot Street in the Broad Brook section of East Windsor. Formerly the Broad Brook Lumber and Coal Co., town land records show the property became Kelly-Fradet in 1964 and remained so until being sold in 2001. The site currently houses Fahrenheit Mechanical Services and Stauffer Sheet Metal.

Here is a contemporary look at the location, taken by yours truly about two weeks ago.

Do you have a photo of an old East Windsor business which no longer exists, to which you own the copyright and which we could feature in this column? Email tim.jensen@patch.com.

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