The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
‘We lost everything:’ New Hartford businesses decimated by fire
NEW HARTFORD — For more than two years, Paul Rossman and his wife, Cheryl Clay, had a twominute commute to their store, Cool Stones Hot Rocks, which was located inside the New Hartford House on Bridge Street.
Early Tuesday, the building burned in a three-alarm fire. A Burlington firefighter was critically injured in the blaze, and a second firefighter also was injured, according to fire officials.
“Our power went out in the middle of the night. I saw fire engines back and forth on (Route) 44,” Rossman said. “A friend who helped out in the store texted my wife Cheri around 6:30. We then left to go to the scene.”
By the afternoon, Rossman learned of the complete devasta
tion that had become his store.
“We lost everything,” he said. “We have nothing. We have zero income right now.”
While about 85 percent of the business operates online, everything listed on the website was in the store.
“There is nothing that can be salvaged,” Rossman said. “We can’t even make jewelry because the tools and silversmithing stuff was in the store.”
The couple lost their entire jewelry inventory, “probably 300 pieces,” he said. Other items lost include a cabochon-making machine and a large piece of dinosaur bone.
Two decades
Clay was in the jewelrymaking business for 20 years.
“She just started very simply and she got better and better,” Rossman said.
The couple operated out of the Enfield Square mall for 20 years and The Shoppes at Buckland Hills in Manchester for a few years.
When the rent became too high, they left and came back home “without a plan,” Rossman said.
“We live two minutes down the road from the building, in Pine Meadow,” he said. He saw the lease sign in the window, contacted the owner, and moved in, in December 2018.
“We have been here ever since,” he said. “It was the best thing we’ve ever done.”
The couple worked out of the shop seven days a week, making jewelry.
They even survived COVID-19.
“We were closed from March to part of August last year and we were just starting to see recovery on the retail end but thank God for the internet business because our internet business just went zoom,” he said, adding they had another two years and five months left on their lease.
Moving forward
Rossman said he has contacted his insurance company and may start a fundraising page to help replace everything that was lost.
He added he’s “95 percent certain” he’s not going to have another retail store since it would be hard to find one that matched his prior commute. He’s hoping to convert an attachment to his garage into a working studio.
“But nothing is going to happen until we get money,” he said.
Rossman said he’s trying to be positive and knows the shop will eventually rebound.
“We will rise from the ashes like the Phoenix,” he said.
Alanna Sartirana , owner of the New Hartford Barber Co., which was also located inside the New Hartford House and had opened in November 2020, said she’s “truly at a loss for words.”
“The town of New Hartford has lost such a huge staple to the center and a place that I’ve called ‘home’ for my business for the last nine months,” Sartirana said. “So many memories were made here in the short nine months I had in this space that I’ll forever be grateful for.”
History
The New Hartford House, as it has become known in town, had been a hotel in that location since the late 1700s, according to town historian Anne Hall.
Despite what others may say, it’s not the oldest building in town, but, rather an “iconic” building, Hall said, because many people have visited the businesses located inside it.
“It became a stagecoach stop around 1799 when the Greenwoods Turnpike, which is the precursor to Route 44, was created,” Hall said. “So it’s always been a stopping point in town.”
Elias Howe, who helped invent the sewing machine, stayed at the hotel in the mid-1800s while working for the Greenwoods Co., which made canvas cloth, according to Hall.
The building that burned down Tuesday was a rebuild in 1897 or 1898, according to Hall. The original structure from the 1700s had burned in a prior fire, and the brick building “was actually two buildings that were put together,” Hall said.
“The part with the tower and the arched windows is the New Hartford Hotel,” she said.
Aside from a hotel, the building was a tavern, and also an apartment building since the 1950s.
“It was known as the pink hotel in the ‘60s and ‘70s because it was painted pink at the time,” she said. “It was returned to its brick in 1981.”
The building is so well known, according to Hall, that in all images or postcards of New Hartford, “chances are it’s going to be on it,” she said.