4 Barrows Store
The Barrows Store was built around 1866 by Eber Barrows. In 1872, Elias L’Hommedieu came from New Jersey and opened a harness shop on the site of the gas station, and present day Metamora General Store. Shortly after, Barrows sold his store south of that corner and Mr. L’Hommedieu moved it to its present location on High St. and established his business there. The harness shop was on the first floor while the family lived upstairs.
Theresa (Moore) Truchot, granddaughter of Elias, writes, “His harness shop was filled with fascinating things concerned with horses, the most interesting to be the ‘horse’ where he sat to sew harness and, best of all, where he let me sit after I was big enough to reach the ‘pedal’…I remember the harness shop as two rooms, one on the right, stove in the middle, with chairs all around it where men sat and smoked their pipes and talked. The second room on the left of the shop was filled with shelves of stacks of horse blankets, A metal circlet filled with many whips hung from the ceiling…back of the shop was a big storeroom where homemade ice cream would be made.
The present building houses a real estate office, RJ Holden & Associates, and retains most of its historical integrity.
