Tinsmith Shop (Colon Store) #23

The Colon Store, also known as the Tinsmith’s Shop, is on the north side of Center Street between St. Patrick’s Place and Court Place. Built ca. 1840-1850, the store originally stood on Woodrow Road in Woodrow. Around 1913 it was relocated to Bloomingdale Road in Pleasant Plains. It was moved to Historic Richmond Town in 1969.

The Colon Store is a two-story wood frame building with clapboard siding and a small front porch. Its unusual trapezoidal plan reflects the shape of its original building lot. This is a very simple rural structure built for commercial purposes. It has Greek Revival molding around the bottom panels of the front doors.

Its exact date of construction is not known, but the store appears in its location on Woodrow Road on the 1850 Dripps Map of Staten Island. The original owner was Mary Ann Winant (1808-1896), a widow who in 1859 married James Colon Jr. (1807-1898), a chairmaker and carpenter. They were proprietors of the store probably until the 1890s.

From 1897-1912 the building was owned by William and Catharine Goetschius who ran it as a grocery store according to Trow’s Directory. Sometime after 1913 the building was moved to the farm of Frank Hauber, on Bloomingdale Road north of Amboy Road in Pleasant Plains, where it was used as an outbuilding.

In 1968 New York City acquired the Hauber property. The significance of the building was brought to the attention of Historic Richmond Town by May Brougham, who recognized it as a store where she had shopped as a child in the 1930s. The City gave the building to the Staten Island Historical Society, and it was moved to Historic Richmond Town in 1969. Restoration of the building was completed in 1971, and it has been interpreted as a tinsmith’s shop since 1978.