Water St. upholsterer keeps up appearances
WORCESTER – Third-generation upholsterer Paul Shays, 59, has seen it all from his Water Street shop. Through the years, the stores have put on new faces and façades just like he does for the weathered chairs and sofas he sees coming through his doors at John Shays Custom Upholstery.
“This one here,” Shays said, pointing to a chair in his window awaiting new leather covering. “(The customer’s) mother died and she wanted something to keep for herself so she is doing the chair over so she can have something in her house that she can sit on and remember her mother.
“I’ve done little child’s chairs and now they’re all grown up and they want it for their child.”
Shays, who said most of his business is from repeat customers, held up one of a pair of barstool cushions. “What I’ll end up doing is something like that, then he’ll come down with the whole living room set. Then after that, his neighbor will come in and then his sister will come in. That’s how all of our work comes,” he said.
On Water Street since 1982, Paul took over the business with his father, John, from John’s own father, who originally ran the shop on Lincoln Street when it opened in 1977. “My father learned from his father and I learned from my father. You know what you’re doing after watching somebody for so long. I watched my father cut (upholstery) for 30 years.” John Shays retired 10 years ago.
“I remember this street from so long ago,” Shays said. Pointing to a four-story brick building across the street still bearing a faded partial sign on the top floor. “Remember (Charlie’s Surplus)? He still has the sign up top. You’d go in there and you’d go, ‘I need a pair of size 4 Converse,’ and Charlie (Epstein) would go up somewhere in the building and come back and he’d have that and say, ‘Ten bucks!’
“I’ve seen Lederman’s come and go, Tom’s International Delicatessen, Weintraub’s, Rudolph’s. It’s just everything’s changed. Now it’s reviving differently. Good and bad. The worse thing is that giant building up there and that giant building over here,” Shays said while pointing to an apartment building under construction on Green Street. “All these apartments. No parking. These side streets, there used to be no charge parking but in the past year they put in a sign that you have to pay or you’ll get a ticket.” Shays wanted to know what a customer is supposed to do when they have a chair and have to carry it from the parking garages.
Shays doesn’t expect much business from the new apartment dwellers anyway because he says they tend to buy cheaper furniture. He said business declined when discount furniture stores came to town. “Then people starting getting a dose of throwaway furniture and decided they needed better.”
Looking toward retirement, Shays figured in three years he’ll either rent out or sell the building.