Black Swan Blossoms Into Showroom For Home Décor, Heating

By Kendra Bobowick

With her head on her husband’s shoulder and his arm around her waist, Carrie and Tom Swan were quiet for a moment as they watched their old shop crumble. Wooden beams popped and splintered apart Friday, June 22, as they collapsed under a bulldozer’s teeth. The roof soon followed the walls at the former Black Swan Hearth & Gift Shop and stove shop at 182 Main Street.

Billowing puffs of sand and dust accompanied the hydraulic sounds of a bulldozer with a bucket repeatedly biting away pieces of the roof, second floor, and, at last, the front wall. With the building razed, a new view appeared. From Main Street drivers can look beyond the old roadside store and see the newer, 8,400-square-foot Black Swan.

From the parking lot outside the new establishment the Swans watched Carl Cole with M & O Construction Co. of New Milford wield the heavy machinery.

“It’s kind of like watching your child go off to kindergarten,” said Ms Swan. Thinking back nearly 20 years when the Black Swan had started, she said, “When the business was young we had to nurture it and now it’s growing on its own.” Considering the time of year and the recent high school graduation ceremonies, she said, “We have graduated from a teeny building and opened a big one.”

As the debris piled up and the former building’s walls were left in shattered heaps in the parking lot, Mr Swan said, “I guess this means it’s for real.”

The former Black Swan — a converted ranch-style house that served as their business since 1988 — had been filled with fireplaces and accessories and enough ornaments and decorations to fill at least some of the new store. Knick-knacks that add to a country décor and once crowded the shelves and floor space at the former shop now are arranged around fireplaces, outdoor tables, and kitchen settings in small vignettes. Perusing the Black Swan now offers a spacious walk through settings of tables and chairs, mantels above fireplaces, dangling chandeliers, and wooden hutches filled with country decorations.

“We’re doing a lot of home décor and selling a lot, but you couldn’t send that message [in the former building],” Ms Swan said. She and her husband now have sufficient space to arrange a variety of both indoor and outdoor settings in the new warehouse and showroom space.

Black Swan provides a showroom for traditional products and the newer Hearth and Home Technologies, manufacturer of Heat & Glo, Heatilator, and Quadrafire lines of innovative heating units. Also offered are open stone-faced fireplace awaiting freshly chopped wood, gas-lit, wall-mounted fireplaces, and other decorative gas-lit pieces.

As guests walk past the antique, cast-iron wood-burning stove outside the entrance, they pass through the new front door, which plays the main role in the Swans’ renovation project.

“It all started with the entryway,” Ms Swan said. “I saw it in a magazine and said, ‘That would make a great entrance for a new store…’” Construction work for the new building began on December 21, 2006. Now open for business, store hours are 9 am to 5:30 pm Monday through Friday, open until 7 pm on Thursdays, Saturdays from 9 am to 4 pm. The store will be closed on Sundays temporarily.