Celebrating a Milestone

610

Red Bank Antique Center’s Turns 50
Story and photos by John Burton
RED BANK – Half a century ago, Guy Johnson’s mother had an idea for selling antiques and it’s still going strong with her son continuing the tradition.
The Antique Center of Red Bank, which operates out of 226 and 195 W. Front St., will be celebrating its 50th anniversary on Saturday, Nov. 22, as the center usually celebrates its anniversary on the Saturday before Thanksgiving.
Johnson, who owns the building, rents the space at the locations to about 100 antiques dealers. The dealers offer customers – from serious collectors and other dealers to the merely curious taking a peek into a world of collectables and memorabilia – remembrances of times past.
“We get a little bit of everything passing through here,” said Johnson as he indicates the length of his cavernous 226 W. Front St. spot, a former clothing factory.
Over time, he has seen coffins and animals prepared by taxidermists – including, once, a full-size brown bear – as well as the more traditional items bought and sold. “We’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly.”
Johnson’s mother, Nan Johnson, started the business in 1957. When the Johnson family bought a home in Lincroft, Johnson said his mother took to visiting auctions and garage sales, seeking to decorate the house with interesting and, hopefully, reasonably inexpensive furnishings.
Enjoying the process, Nan Johnson bought more than she could use. “People started asking her about purchasing some of the items,” so that she started storing some of them in the garage, Johnson recalled. “And she started making money.”
Everything she collected was up for grabs, sometimes going beyond what was in the garage that Nan had initially intended for customers. “When I was a kid, I’d come home and find my bed missing,” Johnson said with a laugh.
Nan eventually rented a store on River Road for $35 in 1961 and met with some success. When the landlord wanted to nearly double the rent a couple of years later, Johnson’s mother sought an alternative, he said.
For a number of years she had participated in the annual Trinity Presbyterian Church’s antique show in Red Bank, where customers would pay an admission to peruse what was available from the various dealers, who also paid to participate. She, along with some friends, decided to open a permanent antique show without a customer admission.
Johnson said Nan originally rented the 217 W. Front St. building in 1964 from the Eisner family. The site had been one of the family’s clothing factories, known to Red Bank old-timers as the “quarter master building. (The family had owned what is now the Galleria on Bridge Avenue and operated it to manufacture military uniforms.)
The center started with 12 dealers.
In 1971-72, Nan expanded to include 195 W. Front St. and then bought the 226 W. Front St. location in 1975 from the Eisners and has operated there ever since.
Johnson had worked most of his life in the business, going into it full time when he graduated high school in 1970.
Initially, he worked in the wholesale end of the business, using a 26-foot moving van to haul any number of dining room and bedroom sets across the country to sell to dealers and auction houses.
When his mother died in 1982, Johnson inherited the business.
Johnson continues to run the operation the same as his mother, no admission for customers and simply charging rent to the dealers, who are obligated to spend some time at the site overseeing their collections, dealing and dickering with customers.
Bargaining over the price continues to be very much part of the process, Johnson said.
He continues to enjoy the work his mother started.
“It’s better than working for a living,” he said. “Every day is a little bit different. You get new stuff in. You get to talk to different and interesting people.”
Those people occasionally include celebrities. Johnson counts Bruce Springsteen and his wife Patti Scialfa among those who occasionally – and unassumingly – wander around the collections. The late Clarence Clemons also visited the center.
Over the years he’s had country music legends Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash stop by when they were performing locally. Carter owned her own antique shop in her home state of Arkansas and was interested in milk glass figures, according to Johnson.
The actor Geoffrey Holder, who died last month, was a visitor as well.
Set designers for theater and movies have come by, looking for their particular needs, sometimes seeking such items as a manual typewriters and rotary telephones. Representatives for an upcoming Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks film, now in preproduction, have come by looking for props, Johnson said.
There are also other dealers from around the country and overseas who find their way to Red Bank to see what there is to offer.
However, most of his customers are the general public who come out of curiosity, interested in the collections of toys, baseball and other collectable cards, and Tiffany and Steuben decorative glass items.
Johnson is not immune to the draw of what’s available, acknowledging he’s accumulated quite a collection over the years of what he called “boy toys” – antique, windup toys such as cars, trucks and robots. “I have boxes and boxes of the stuff,” he said, and may eventually look to sell them, too.
The appeal of collecting these items, as well as looking through the various items that are on hand in his locations, is in part about “bringing back your childhood,” recapturing that time gone by, he believes.
The advent of Internet auction sites, like eBay, has cut into business. “It’s dropped off quite a bit,” he conceded. But there are always the curious who want to shop, to see in person and touch the items. The continuing appeal of garage sales and flea markets make that apparent, he said. Hopefully, that’ll be enough to keep the business going, even when he’s decided to call it quits.
“Maybe one of my grandkids will take it over,” he said.