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Preserving a Hyde Park gem
Chicago Tribune, IL
Nov 25 2004
Its owner's retirement threatened to close a quirky bric-a-brac shop
that is a Hyde Park fixture, but a loyal customer bought it and has
promised to keep it going
By Glenn Jeffers
Tribune staff reporter
He was delicate with the box, careful as he pulled it from the
counter's glass casing and opened it with his fingertips. Inside was
a handcrafted mirror from China, decorated with a painting of a blue
serpent.
Already hunched from a bad back, Richard Boyajian bent in closer and
picked up the mirror by its gemstone handle. He had sold two others
like it that day, he said as strands of gray hair fell over his face.
This was the last one in stock.
"No place else has this," Boyajian said.
At 82, Boyajian was retiring from the international bric-a-brac
business. And for a while, it seemed as if Hyde Park would lose its
home for incense sticks, beads, Kenyan soapstone carvings and other
worldly wares.
But in buying the business this month, longtime customer Alison
Harris Alexander ensured that the quirky and cluttered Boyajian's
Bazaar on East 53rd Street would live on in the eclectic South Side
neighborhood.
"We had to keep it in the neighborhood," said Alexander, 44. "I think
a lot of people would miss it if it went away."
She helped to keep alive a quirky corner of a nationally known
neighborhood that, like many others in Chicago, has also become the
home of coffee-shop chains and other businesses one can find
anywhere.
"We have almost nothing like that anymore," said Jay Mulberry,
program director and vice president of the Hyde Park Historical
Society. "We've been losing places like this for years."
The cozy craft store had developed a loyal clientele since opening 24
years ago, selling atypical knickknacks from such places as Egypt,
Poland, Ghana and the Czech Republic. Shelves lined the walls, filled
with stone and wood carvings, mother-of-pearl and brass candleholders
made only in India, dolls from Africa and crystals from Austria.
Boxes of beads sat in the middle of the store, stewing with the
scents of exotic wood and incense. All the gemstone beads were from
Hong Kong, Boyajian said, joking that he owned 1 percent of the
world's beads.
"My intent is to be international," Boyajian said.
The beads attracted Alexander to Boyajian's store one day in 1984.
She had moved from Albany, Ga., to run Alpha Kappa Alpha Inc., an
African-American sorority based in Hyde Park. As she headed to a
grocery store, Alexander walked past the store.
"I ended up buying beads and coming back year after year," said
Alexander, who uses them to make jewelry and decorate dolls for
friends.
When Alexander heard in September that Boyajian was retiring and the
store could close, Alexander inquired about buying the business from
him.
Boyajian plans to help Alexander understand the business before he
and his wife move in January to a retirement center in Olympia, Wash.
Alexander takes over Wednesday.
Boyajian said he would bring as much of his inventory as he could to
the center and continue selling and fixing jewelry.
"We'll tell them, `Bring what you got here,' and we'll try to fix
it," Boyajian said.
Though Alexander plans to retain the store's name and eccentric fare,
she said she would make a few changes. Gone will be the trademark
cash box and itemized receipt pad that Boyajian used to add up and
record purchases. Instead, Alexander will use a computer and
point-of-sale software.
"Let's just say I plan on automating the inventory," she said.
Boyajian built his store along cottage industry principles he
discovered while studying the beliefs of Mahatma Gandhi during a
teaching mission to New Delhi in the late 1960s. Gandhi had advocated
the home-based goods industry as a non-violent method to stand
against British rule and industrialization.
The concept of peaceful protesting resonated in the Chicago-born
Boyajian. After graduating from high school in the early 1940s,
Boyajian joined the Enlisted Reserve Corps to avoid being drafted.
Nevertheless, Boyajian was called up during World War II and served
for three years. After he returned to Chicago, the self-described
anti-war advocate finished his graduate degree in biochemistry and
became a teacher. He converted to the Quaker faith, which matched his
pacifist beliefs, and he met his future wife, Polly, during a Quaker
meeting.
Boyajian continued teaching at the University of Chicago Lab School
after his trip to India. Retiring in 1980, he was determined to
organize recycling in his neighborhood, work in landscape
architecture, or open a craft store.
He abandoned the recycling program once the city started its own. The
craft store idea finally won over his architect ambitions, he said.
"I was Gandhi in my thinking," said Boyajian. "The world needs help
to get better."
He kept the store as minimalist as possible. He wrote down sales on a
receipt pad and added prices in his head, using a handheld calculator
only to double-check. He didn't advertise, and he didn't accept
credit cards. Usually, pocket change was enough. On a recent day, a
customer making her own earrings bought six earring backings, eight
curved wires and two pins. The total: $2.76.
Boyajian also reused what he could, from cardboard boxes with
different brand names to plastic bags that had contained copies of
The New York Times.
Boyajian donated a portion of his profits to charities, most notably
UNICEF. After selling items at last year's annual meeting of Quakers
in Milwaukee, Boyajian donated almost $3,000 in profits to the
American Friends Service Committee.
"I'm not sure how he became that way," said Boyajian's daughter,
Laurel, 46, an artist living on Vashon Island, Wash. "It's linked to
the Quaker philosophy to look for the good in everyone."
While on her way to a vegetable store one October day, Nancy
Stonor-Sanders and her daughter Olivia took a detour into Boyajian's.
Stonor-Sanders bought a tiny, glass snail for her daughter, who had
earned all A's on an interim report card.
"Remember, the snail is breakable," Boyajian said as he handed the
item to Olivia, 10.
As the two spoke about their shared Armenian heritage, Stonor-Sanders
learned that Boyajian was retiring. She told the shopkeeper she loved
stopping by and perusing the store whenever she was on 53rd Street.
"It reminds me of my childhood," Stonor-Saunders said of the store.
"I always poke in and leave with something I didn't plan on getting."
Chicago Tribune, IL
Nov 25 2004
Its owner's retirement threatened to close a quirky bric-a-brac shop
that is a Hyde Park fixture, but a loyal customer bought it and has
promised to keep it going
By Glenn Jeffers
Tribune staff reporter
He was delicate with the box, careful as he pulled it from the
counter's glass casing and opened it with his fingertips. Inside was
a handcrafted mirror from China, decorated with a painting of a blue
serpent.
Already hunched from a bad back, Richard Boyajian bent in closer and
picked up the mirror by its gemstone handle. He had sold two others
like it that day, he said as strands of gray hair fell over his face.
This was the last one in stock.
"No place else has this," Boyajian said.
At 82, Boyajian was retiring from the international bric-a-brac
business. And for a while, it seemed as if Hyde Park would lose its
home for incense sticks, beads, Kenyan soapstone carvings and other
worldly wares.
But in buying the business this month, longtime customer Alison
Harris Alexander ensured that the quirky and cluttered Boyajian's
Bazaar on East 53rd Street would live on in the eclectic South Side
neighborhood.
"We had to keep it in the neighborhood," said Alexander, 44. "I think
a lot of people would miss it if it went away."
She helped to keep alive a quirky corner of a nationally known
neighborhood that, like many others in Chicago, has also become the
home of coffee-shop chains and other businesses one can find
anywhere.
"We have almost nothing like that anymore," said Jay Mulberry,
program director and vice president of the Hyde Park Historical
Society. "We've been losing places like this for years."
The cozy craft store had developed a loyal clientele since opening 24
years ago, selling atypical knickknacks from such places as Egypt,
Poland, Ghana and the Czech Republic. Shelves lined the walls, filled
with stone and wood carvings, mother-of-pearl and brass candleholders
made only in India, dolls from Africa and crystals from Austria.
Boxes of beads sat in the middle of the store, stewing with the
scents of exotic wood and incense. All the gemstone beads were from
Hong Kong, Boyajian said, joking that he owned 1 percent of the
world's beads.
"My intent is to be international," Boyajian said.
The beads attracted Alexander to Boyajian's store one day in 1984.
She had moved from Albany, Ga., to run Alpha Kappa Alpha Inc., an
African-American sorority based in Hyde Park. As she headed to a
grocery store, Alexander walked past the store.
"I ended up buying beads and coming back year after year," said
Alexander, who uses them to make jewelry and decorate dolls for
friends.
When Alexander heard in September that Boyajian was retiring and the
store could close, Alexander inquired about buying the business from
him.
Boyajian plans to help Alexander understand the business before he
and his wife move in January to a retirement center in Olympia, Wash.
Alexander takes over Wednesday.
Boyajian said he would bring as much of his inventory as he could to
the center and continue selling and fixing jewelry.
"We'll tell them, `Bring what you got here,' and we'll try to fix
it," Boyajian said.
Though Alexander plans to retain the store's name and eccentric fare,
she said she would make a few changes. Gone will be the trademark
cash box and itemized receipt pad that Boyajian used to add up and
record purchases. Instead, Alexander will use a computer and
point-of-sale software.
"Let's just say I plan on automating the inventory," she said.
Boyajian built his store along cottage industry principles he
discovered while studying the beliefs of Mahatma Gandhi during a
teaching mission to New Delhi in the late 1960s. Gandhi had advocated
the home-based goods industry as a non-violent method to stand
against British rule and industrialization.
The concept of peaceful protesting resonated in the Chicago-born
Boyajian. After graduating from high school in the early 1940s,
Boyajian joined the Enlisted Reserve Corps to avoid being drafted.
Nevertheless, Boyajian was called up during World War II and served
for three years. After he returned to Chicago, the self-described
anti-war advocate finished his graduate degree in biochemistry and
became a teacher. He converted to the Quaker faith, which matched his
pacifist beliefs, and he met his future wife, Polly, during a Quaker
meeting.
Boyajian continued teaching at the University of Chicago Lab School
after his trip to India. Retiring in 1980, he was determined to
organize recycling in his neighborhood, work in landscape
architecture, or open a craft store.
He abandoned the recycling program once the city started its own. The
craft store idea finally won over his architect ambitions, he said.
"I was Gandhi in my thinking," said Boyajian. "The world needs help
to get better."
He kept the store as minimalist as possible. He wrote down sales on a
receipt pad and added prices in his head, using a handheld calculator
only to double-check. He didn't advertise, and he didn't accept
credit cards. Usually, pocket change was enough. On a recent day, a
customer making her own earrings bought six earring backings, eight
curved wires and two pins. The total: $2.76.
Boyajian also reused what he could, from cardboard boxes with
different brand names to plastic bags that had contained copies of
The New York Times.
Boyajian donated a portion of his profits to charities, most notably
UNICEF. After selling items at last year's annual meeting of Quakers
in Milwaukee, Boyajian donated almost $3,000 in profits to the
American Friends Service Committee.
"I'm not sure how he became that way," said Boyajian's daughter,
Laurel, 46, an artist living on Vashon Island, Wash. "It's linked to
the Quaker philosophy to look for the good in everyone."
While on her way to a vegetable store one October day, Nancy
Stonor-Sanders and her daughter Olivia took a detour into Boyajian's.
Stonor-Sanders bought a tiny, glass snail for her daughter, who had
earned all A's on an interim report card.
"Remember, the snail is breakable," Boyajian said as he handed the
item to Olivia, 10.
As the two spoke about their shared Armenian heritage, Stonor-Sanders
learned that Boyajian was retiring. She told the shopkeeper she loved
stopping by and perusing the store whenever she was on 53rd Street.
"It reminds me of my childhood," Stonor-Saunders said of the store.
"I always poke in and leave with something I didn't plan on getting."