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It all began in
October, 1937, when Melvin F. Westrich founded Westrich Furniture
and Appliances, at 122 North Main Street. Shortly after, the store
was moved to 207 North Main. In October, 1940 Dee and Mel were
married and Dee joined the company. Larger quarters were soon needed
and the store was moved to 203-205 North Main, the present location
of the Westrich Main Store. The old Kroger Store, 238 North Main,
then became the warehouse and customers were serviced from the Main
Store.
In June, 1973, Jack J. Westrich
joined the firm and his first assignment was to get the Kroger Store
ready for a permanent furniture sales room. Dee and Jack opened this
new sales room and named it the Westrich Annex. In 1975, the old
Capitol Theater was purchased and renovation began. It was then used
as a sales-warehouse operation until 1985 when complete renovation
began for what is now the Broyhill Gallery. It took nine months to
complete and September 18, 1985, the Annex Gallery was formally
opened for business.
Also at this time, land was
purchased and a new warehouse was built at 1105 Elida Avenue. Many
additions were being made to the warehouse, including renovation into
many additional showroom areas. It stood as the largest
location of the business and serves the dual purpose of the Eastside
Showroom, as well as, warehouse storage. This location would would
be the future of the store.
Once again in 2003, a historic
moment took place for the Westrich family as they closed the Main
Store location for convenience purposes. The appliances and
dining room that had remained at the Main Store had been moved the
Eastside Showroom to consolidate down to only two locations for
their customers.
For 20 years Jack had a vision of
what the warehouse location would become. In the fall of 2005,
that vision came to life. A total of six spacious showrooms,
50 thousand square feet full of displayed furniture, appliances and
accessories and another 110 thousand of warehouse made up this
reality.
Now, Westrich Furniture is Sixty-Five plus years strong and still
working to serve you!
*
Material for this article taken from the March 25th 1987
issue of the Delphos Herald. |
