This Stafford Avenue home was formerly a storefront. (Photo by Jay Paul)
What: A circa 1926 neighborhood store
Where: 418 N. Stafford Ave., the Fan District
Why it matters: Creative adaptation transformed a small commercial space into a home.
In the early 1980s, Realtor and designer Carl Lindsey acquired 418 N. Stafford Ave. for about $20,000. Measuring not much more than 1,000 square feet, the building comprised one story with a low attic and was one big room. He installed a second story and a rooftop deck and put in heart-pine flooring salvaged from the main house at Meadow Farm in Hanover County, birthplace of Triple Crown- winning racehorse Secretariat. “It’s a sweet little place,” he says of the Stafford Avenue home.
In 1987, Lindsay sold the property to Sheila Fox, a home decor designer who still resides and bases her business, SheShe, the Home Magician, there.
When Fox moved in, an older couple walked by the house every day. They stopped at her front door to ask, “How much for a pound of butter?” she recalls.
“I thought they were crazy, but later on, I realized they were just making a joke,” she says.
Perhaps they were longtime Fan residents. During its first two decades, the property was the site of a succession of 13 different grocers.
Willard W. Richardson opened shop first, in 1926. The next year brought William T. and Mary V. Dodson, with Billie’s Confectionery. The building was too small for both commerce and home, so most of the store owners lived nearby, like the Dodsons, at 420 Stafford Ave.
After a brief vacancy came a short stint with upholsterer and furniture finisher Thomas L. Lythgoe.
Next came a barber, J. Nathaniel Lewis, who welcomed clients into his chair from 1948 until around 1952. He was an African-American, as the city directories marked Lewis with a “c” by his name — indicating “colored.” Lewis was succeeded by a string of barbers; the shaves and haircuts ended when photographer Russel D. Councill Sr. made it a studio for his commercial and industrial work. Palmer J. Wellhouse, specializing in “industrial advertising, insurance and construction photography” and “publicity portraiture,” took over the studio for less than two years.
A period of vacancy followed until a trio of young people attempted to establish a “head shop” there in the early 1970s. Toni Craddock, then a Meadowbrook High School student who now lives in New York, recalls a winter spent painting the place black with mushrooms all the way around the room framing the windows. “You had to walk up to the windows to look inside ... like peering into a fairy circle,” she says. No merchandise materialized, however, and the project failed, yet some in the neighborhood still remember the signage.
By 1972, Frances M. Brown started The Dilettante, a clothing boutique, at first living at 3006 Monument, until closing the shop in 1975 to make 418 her home. She left Stafford Avenue around 1980.
Steve and Stella Dikos, who in 1981 retired from the Village Café but not restaurants, became interested in 418 as a café. Renovations began until Fan parking rules halted the effort. The first Stella’s instead opened on Harrison Street, where Edo’s Squid is today.
