Started furniture store more than 70 years ago
By The Emporia Gazette (Contact)
Monday, February 23, 2009
The business founded by Benjamin Franklin Winter more than 70 years ago will survive him, but not by much.
Winter founded the furniture store in the 700 block of Commercial Street that bears the family name. He died Saturday at Newman Regional Health at the age of 101. His son Richard Winter announced earlier this month that the store will close next week, a victim of the weak economy.
With the death of Ben Winter and the closing of the furniture store, an era in Emporia business comes to an end.
Winter Furniture began in 1933 when Ben Winter and his wife, Eva, were running a service station, lunch room and kennel west of Emporia on Old U.S. Highway 50. An itinerant cabinetmaker stopped by, and the Winters had him make a piece of furniture for them.
Winter then began to buy used furniture at farm sales and he and the cabinetmaker would recondition them for sale. They also built new furniture. They converted a dairy barn on the property into a furniture store.
In 1940, they moved the store into town to a buliding on Sixth Avenue between Commercial and Merchant streets. In 1944, it was moved again, this time to 509 Commercial St.
The store stayed in that spot, with some expansion, until 1974, when the Winters bought the former Montgomery Ward building at 709-711 Commercial St., where it has been in business since.
Ben Winter retired March 1, 1985, leaving the store to be run by two of this three sons, Robert and Richard. Robert Winter later went into the furniture business in Topeka, and Richard has continued the family business in Emporia.
Ben Winter’s funeral will be Friday.
A complete obituary is published on Page 2 today.