If you’re into vintage stuff and antiques, or just looking for that special item which will transform your house into your own private castle—be it beautifully crafted French doors, crocks for the kitchen, a century-old landscape painting or a sleek mid century coffee table—Kingston’s the place to be, with several outstanding antiques places attracting customers from miles away.
Zaborski Emporium is the king of the vintage/antiques stores, judging by the sheer epic variety and amount of items it stocks. Occupying four floors of a former shirt factory at 27 Hoffman Street, the Emporium attracts movie set people (the film industry represents 10 percent of its business), New Yorkers seeking to decorate their lofts and even celebrities with homes in the area. Restaurants and other businesses come to Stan’s for vintage lights and other fixtures, while the used radiators are a popular item among home owners. Roaming amid the dusty corridors stacked with stuff spanning a century of American material culture–tables, claw-footed bathtubs, mirrors, dressers, columns, signs, doors, Victorian bird cages, rugs, chairs, trunks, vending machines, door knobs—is a trip down Memory Lane. In the basement is an entire room filled with doors.
Stan Zaborski started the business in 1976 and bought the building 13 years ago. The company has four employees and will delivery almost everywhere, for a fee. His prices range from 50 cents to $25,000, for a suite of bedroom furniture that once belonged to Robin Williams and was shipped east in a chartered plane.
“I love Kingston,” said Zaborski, who gets help from his partner, Sandy Balla, who also works as a cruise boat tour guide. “I’ve seen it in its boom times and I’ve seen it depressed. I really enjoy it here.” He is going to put a few tables outside with “really cheap merchandise” for the yard sale. (Stan remembers the first book about yard sales, published in the 1960s, which featured his father, who was a “‘used item business” pioneer.)
Other Kingston businesses that sell antiques are Velsani Arts and Antiques, on Wall Street, and On the Hill Antiques at the Skillypot Antique Center, which features multiple vendors, Mezzanine Antiques Center, and At Home Antiques, all on lower Broadway in the Rondout. Larry Zalinsky, who owns Mezzanine with his wife, B.C. Gee, said his store specializes in “smalls”—vintage items that can at least fit into the back of a Subaru SUV. They include Victorian jewelry, a variety of paintings and prints, and mid-century furniture.
Just up the block, At Home Antiques is the latest entrant, opening six months ago in a capacious, warehouse-like space in a building owned by Judith and James Milne. The Milnes have been in the antiques business for 40 years—they operated a shop on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for many years—and they have an eye, stocking items you’ll see nowhere else, including a coffee table inset with a geometric pattern of linoleum, painted screens from a Parisian café, a deco-painted bedroom set, sturdy farm tables, and a wonderful selection of metal porch chairs, each like a character out of a Gorey cartoon.
Judith said the couple bought the building in 2004 and opened the store after they lost their tenant. “We love Kingston and didn’t want it to have another empty storefront,” she said. “We wanted to help the business community. Kingston needs to become more of a destination.”
