Wednesday, February 4, 2026

Ohio Furniture Fair Ad – Feb. 3, 1966

Seeing this full-page ad (love the clip art) for Ohio Furniture Fair from the Feb. 3, 1966 Journal got me wondering – do people still shop for a particular style of furniture, like Early American?

As I've noted before, French Provincial was Mom's choice for the Brady household, which I always thought was odd, since she was of German heritage. But that's what she liked, and she kept those pieces (the dining room table & chairs, end tables, and a hutch cabinet) from the 1950s her entire life. 

But in the early 1980s, Mom decided it was time for a new look in her living room and bedrooms. She and Dad made a shopping trip of sorts down to (I think) Thomasville, North Carolina. The idea was that you selected and bought the furniture directly from the manufacturer and had it shipped to you, thus eliminating the middle man. My older brother and I were conveniently living at home at the time (remember the recession?), and we unloaded the truck when it arrived. I couldn't tell you what the style was, but she liked it.

Anyway, Ohio Furniture Fair opened its doors in early June 1962. Here's the Grand Opening ad from June 9, 1962. It was located at 453 Broadway, right next door to Lorain National Bank.
June 9, 1962
Lorainites sure had a lot of choices back then for furniture shopping: besides Ohio Furniture Fair, there was Bear Furniture, Delis Bros. Furniture, Grasso Furniture & Appliance, Harmon-Nielsen, Lee Furniture, Mars Furniture, T N Molas & Sons, Reidy-Scanlan, and Stillman - Deutsch Furniture & Appliance.

Perhaps because of all of the competition, Ohio Furniture Fair ended up closing its doors in late 1971.

October 5, 1971
October 6, 1971
Dec. 21, 1971

4 comments:

  1. Your mom kept a beautiful house!

    We're in the "process" of replacing a small couch and can't decide if we want another or, perhaps, a couple small recliners. We've visited a whole bunch of stores, mostly to be overwhelmed. I'm the one who most often sits in the space, so I suppose it's up to me, which means it'll take until sometime toward the end of the 2030s before it happens.

    We're not shopping for any particular type of furniture. It's more butt-feel than style in this house.

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  2. The Hopewell household got all of our furniture on "time" from Delis Bros. ; I think that we were still paying on some of the stuff when Papa went into the nursing home in '67.
    There was a furniture store on Broadway that deserves its own entry, if only for sheer kitchiness; the infamous Eppy's, across from the Journal.

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  3. The biggest shocker in the ad is mattresses for $39!

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  4. I don't know about the furniture... but my parents had that exact same blue carpet... everywhere! That must be a staple of the 80's lol

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