New owners plan to bring closed store back to life

When it closed earlier this year, there was much mourning over The Brick Store, the New Hampshire landmark that claims to be one of the oldest continuously operating general stores in the country.

No more fudge, penny candy, or smoked meats. No more ambiance of a time gone by. But, a few months after they bought the store at auction, Becky and Scott Mitchell are gearing up for its reopening. They’ve had a few setbacks this fall, but vow to open soon. “To us it was just part of the lineage up here,” Becky Mitchell said. “We didn’t realize how people would stop all summer long, the tour buses, would come from just all over.”

The store in the northern town of Bath, a few miles from the Vermont border, is thought to have been built in the early 1800s and rebuilt after a fire in 1824. It’s served as a post office, gathering place and presidential campaign stop. The late singer Patti Page, who lived part of the year in Bath, sold bottles of maple syrup at the store that when you uncapped the bottle, one of her songs played. In 1985, the store was named to the National Register of Historic Places.

But early this year, its longtime owners said on Facebook, “We have nothing left to give ... financially, emotionally, or physically.” The Mitchells felt they had to save it when it went up for auction in July. — AP