The Little Village

The building at 237 Main Street spent a century learning new trades. Its oldest rooms predate 1860. Silas McClallen made harnesses there for nearly thirty years, from 1858 until the day he died in his shop in 1887. From 1927, under Nathan Kass, it was Reliable Furniture — a landmark of Main Street for half a century.

Its liveliest chapter began around 1979, when plans were announced to divide the old furniture building into seventeen small shops with a Colonial look — a mini-mall named “The Little Village.” The rental agent was Fiedler Real Estate, two doors down at 227 Main; Broker Dan Fiedler told the paper the plaza would be an opportunity for small operators priced out of the malls. In 1980 the Little Village opened its doors: an ice cream and sandwich shop run by Gary and Lorraine Looft — Gary also spent years as an agent at Fiedler Real Estate — along with Betty’s Wicker Shop, the Blade and Splinter Shop with its collectible knives and wooden gifts, The Christian Book Store, Duda’s Floor Covering, Recycling Mart, and Vacuums-R-Us. A building full of small dreams, filled largely by this firm’s own hand.

On November 9, 1982, a fire began in a candle shop’s oven.

It took the whole village. A photograph kept in Dan Fiedler’s collection — given to him afterward, photographer unrecorded — catches the very moment the village’s front came down toward Main Street: smoke rolling down the block, the storefront collapsing outward, hoses crossing the double yellow line, both of the Hackettstown Fire Department’s tower ladders working above the roof — and, at the edge of the frame, the yellow Fiedler sign and the family’s own front steps at 227.

Dan Fiedler — the broker who had filled those seventeen shops — stood on Main Street that morning and watched. He remembers hiring helpers straight out of the watching crowd, paying people on the spot to carry the office’s filing cabinets out of 227 in case the fire jumped. He remembers the moment the wall caved outward into the street — and that it badly injured one of the firemen fighting the blaze, a man hurt in the service of his town. And he remembers what the firemen told him afterward: that 227 was saved because there was basically no wind that morning. The firemen held their line, at real cost. The fire that took the Little Village took no other building.

A block away on Plane Street, I was five years old that morning. I remember my father, Kevin O’Neill, coming in to tell my mother that everyone was needed at Fiedler’s — the records had to be carried out, in case the fire spread to 227. Even at five, I could feel the urgency. And I was confused: the only records I knew were the ones my parents played music on. Mostly I remember how close the fire was to a building I loved.

A few days later, The Star Gazette printed a letter from my mother:

Grateful to firemen

I’m sure many share my deep feelings of gratitude and pride for our firemen. On Nov. 9, we witnessed them battle an inferno which easily could have destroyed much more than the “Little Village.”

As my family anxiously waited, we marveled at those brave and dedicated individuals who never let up. Their skill and perseverance prevented an even greater catastrophe.

Sometimes we all take so much for granted; and, unfortunately, it takes something like the “Little Village” destruction to awaken our awareness.

I hope, before misfortune strikes others in our community, that all citizens will hold a true appreciation of our fine firemen. We are so very fortunate to have these caring and courageous individuals.

Lenee Fiedler O’Neill, Hackettstown

The lot did not stay empty. By 1987 a new building stood at what is known simply as 229 Main Street, its shops larger and fewer than the seventeen little ones it replaced. The village lives on only in photographs and in the town’s memory of a hard November day. And two doors down stands the building the firemen made sure survived it: 227 Main — the building that raised my mother and her siblings, where my father worked alongside his in-laws, and where I sit writing this today. Forever grateful — for the firemen, and for this place.