Down the Rabbit Hole: Peoria Emporium

A recent visitor to the newest Peoria Emporium store, around the corner from ABC Home & Carpet in Manhattan, described the decor as "falling down the rabbit hole," to the delight of Elena Patterson and Patricia Stevens, co-owners of the three Peoria Emporium stores in Bronxville, Tannersville and now Manhattan's East 20^th Street.

"The concept is retail within the confines of a full-scale art installation," said Stevens of the store that sells clothing, accessories, children's items, art and furniture.

Shoppers encounter a whimsical and intensely hued environment, conceptualized and created by Bronxville's Elena Patterson, an artist native to Cape Town, South Africa who uses familiar and un-precious objects and materials in her art. Some merchandise is handmade by South African cooperatives, including handbags made from recycled plastic bags.  And the store's primitive but appealing paintings for sale are "outsider art" by untrained artists.

"I'm thrilled they're in the neighborhood," said William Kelley, director of economic development for the Union Square Partnership. "They're great people and they have a great store. We absolutely look to attract and retain unique retailers to the district. It's really important for stores like Peoria Emporium to come and invest in the neighborhood."

The origins of Peoria Emporium go back to the "Paint Project," which Patterson started in Tannersville, N.Y. in 2001. The original idea was to paint the run-down buildings in the town, using paint schemes reminiscent of the Victorian-era "Painted Ladies." The project transformed the community and was extensively covered by the press, including The New York Times, the Today show and Ladies' Home Journal.

"Once that happened, we realized that there's nothing for people to do who come up there to look at what they've been reading about," Patterson said. "There were no shops, a few places to eat, but there was nothing for them to do."

Patterson decided to open a clothing store with a partner but, since neither knew anything about retail, Patterson approached Stevens who, at the time, owned the Bronxville clothing store Iris.

"So we opened July 2005 in Tannersville; the store was named The Clothesline and people thought it was a Laundromat," Patterson said with a laugh. 

A year later, the two partners renamed the Tannersville and Bronxville stores Peoria Emporium.

"I used to live in the Midwest, and I always liked the name Peoria," Stevens said.  "There's a saying, 'If it plays in Peoria, it will play anywhere,' which is an old vaudeville saying. We discussed it and we liked 'Peoria Emporium' because it's alliterative and it was very descriptive of the range of merchandise we carried.  We thought, Peoria, the emporium that plays anywhere."

In March, the partners opened their third store, located at 25 East 20^th Street, after testing the Manhattan market by participating in the holiday fair at Bryant Park. They took possession of the space, which had housed a photocopy store for 14 years, on January 1 and opened two months later.

"Elena did the entire renovation," Stevens said.

The owners plan to stage more book readings at the store to attract customers. On a recent evening, local author John Wareham read from his book, Sonnets for Sinners:  Everything One Needs to Know About Illicit Love. Bronxville's Michael Gates Gill, author of How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else, is scheduled for September. Patterson and Stevens will also visit concierges at area hotels and introduce them to the store by handing out business cards with copies of the Weird New York travel guide series.

When this reporter noted that they were brave to open a new store in the midst of a recession, Patterson laughed and said, "It's the only way we could afford it, otherwise we would have had to pay more in rent!"