REECE'S MARKET: (NOT JUST) A GROCERY STORE

REECE'S MARKET: THE HISTORY

Reece's Market is a heritage community grocery store in the North-Central Ohio village of Caledonia, on the eastern border of Marion County, and on the edge of Morrow County. From 1955-2010, Reece’s Market occupied the ground floor of Caledonia’s iconic Temple Block Building, along East Marion Street on Caledonia’s Public Square. Before that, from the 1930s-1950s, Reece’s Market was located next door in the adjoining Masonic Block Building’s middle storefront, where it operated during the Great Depression to Postwar Years as REECE’S CASH GROCERIES. The beloved local greengrocery & specialty meat market was founded in the 1930's by local dairyman & huckster Warren Reece, who was joined, in the 1950's, by son Jack and wife Velma. Grandsons Teddy and Craig and daughter-in-law Barbara Dickerson Reece joined the grocery in the 1980's. Three generations of Reeces kept the store open.

At its heyday, Reece's supplied almost everything the community of Caledonia needed -- from pantry staples to baked goods and candies to household items. It featured a fully-functioning deli block and butcher station in back, offering hand-ground hamburger, homemade sausage and Amish cheeses sliced to order. Reece’s Market was most famous locally, however, for its secret-recipe loose sausage & bratwurst — made by hand first by Warren Reece, & then by his son, Jack Reece. Reece’s Market originally butchered all their own meat, & even operated a smokehouse in the parking lot behind the store, until local ordnances requires its demolition. Still, Reece’s Markets sausages were so popular that they were found on pizzas & at restaurants across North-Central Ohio: from Dugout Pizza on Caledonia’s Public Square to — somewhat more scandalously, for those in the know — as the featured bratwurst at some stores in nearby Bucyrus, Ohio: the self-proclaimed Bratwurst Capital of Ohio!

With Barbara's employment upon her own childrens’ high school graduation in the 1980s, Reece’s Market also became a monument to the institution of the country store itself. Barbara Reece collected and displayed local and farther-flung historical and cultural artifacts celebrating rural life in Ohio from decades past; & became a community museum of sorts for folk arts contributions from visitors across the country. Throughout the 1980s & 1990s, Reece’s Market also sold a variety of handmade local craft items: from “country craft” snowmen to painted Americana items to pottery, stained glass & even “flubber” — many of the items made by craftspeople & artists in the extended Reece family. To this day, the store displays folk art hammers, local “trick” woodworking, & even a working scale-model trebuchet! The store also displayed family and community memorabilia, from yearbook photos to sports trophies. Reece’s Market was perhaps most fondly, remembered, though, as a local hangout: a stool still sitting by the front register bears the marks of years of Caledonia locals, who would come in to order Jack & Barb Reece’s $1 lunch sandwiches, but would stay for hours: chatting, & watching the television which hung in the back of the store. Reece’s Market was a grocery store; but it — like so many other heritage establishments in Ohio’s small towns & urban neighborhoods — was also a de facto community center.

Reece's Market closed to the public in 2010, following Jack Reece's cancer diagnosis, & following the Village of Caledonia’s declaration of Reece’s Market Day in appreciation of the Reece family’s decades-long service to the Village of Caledonia. Since 2010, Reece’s Market & its surrounding Temple & Masonic Block Buildings — like many of our richly-legacied historic building in Marion County’s seven rural villages — sits empty in downtown Caledonia.

PRESERVATION JUSTICE + THE REECE’S MARKET REVIVAL CAMPAIGN

Raising equity & capital to rehabilitate historic structures — many of whom housed legacy businesses, who were “grandfathered in” to building & commercial codes for the better part of a century — can be a daunting task for working-class building owners in hard-hit communities. But does that mean that it’s only billionaire developers in Ohio’s “three C” big cities who should get to do historic preservation work … & who should get to say what buildings & what histories remain on the landscape? At Caledonia Northern Folk Studios, the answer to those questions is a resonant hell no.

We believe that historic preservation should be for the people — & we’re dedicated to working to making historic preservation technical assistance & capacity building available to working-class Ohioans: starting with our home community of Caledonia; & starting with Jess’s own legacy family buildings: the Temple & Masonic Block Buildings.

Caledonia Northern Folk Studios is working to re-open Reece' Market — and to rehabilitate the 1897 Temple & Masonic Block Building — as a model community project for historic preservation & grassroots downtown revitalization in small communities like ours. Our vision includes a re-opened Reece’s Market that serves as an “indoor farmers’ market,” bulk goods store, & specialty local foods aggregator; & space for a non-profit rural historic preservation, cultural arts, social justice, & community-based economic development capacity-builder center not just for Caledonia & Marion County, but for working-class communities across North-Central Ohio: to teach the listening arts and ecological agriculture as twin modes of community, cultural and ecological resilience for rural Ohio. The revitalization project will both bring back the twinned gem buildings of Caledonia’s Public Square, but will also bring four new commercial storefront spaces to downtown Caledonia. While we have a shortlist of planned uses for some of the storefront spaces, we also anticipate launching a community design charette process, to get the Caledonia community’s feedback on desired uses of the space — to ensure the project fulfills actual urgent shopping & service needs in our town.

The reopened Reece's Market will bring together local folklife, oral history and documentary arts training , historic preservation & local economic development technical assistance & capacity building, and sustainable agriculture and local foods systems training and will host a rural arts- and cultural worker residency & several local non-profits (including Marion County’s Marion Voices Folklife + Oral History Program) in Caledonia's historic Knights of Pythias hall. Downstairs, the working space of Reece's Market will be re-energized as a local foods aggregator for Marion and surrounding counties; and as a community-driven exhibition and performance and gallery space. The project will also involve a full white-boxing of the three historic storefronts of the attached Masonic Block Building — the historic home of Caledonia’s Oliver Lodge #447 of the Masons (upstairs); & Linda’s Country Crafts, Reece’s Cash Grocery, & Murv’s Pizza // Kelly’s Drugs (downstairs) — with residential or short-term rental spaces in a fully rehabilitation upstairs. Together, the planned rehabilitation will bring back four unique historic commercial storefront spaces into functioning use on Caledonia’s Public Square, halving the number of vacant storefronts on Caledonia’s Public Square, & joining efforts across the Village of Caledonia to bring back a vibrant, functioning, & visionary downtown Main Street experience for the people of Caledonia, & visitors from near & far.

We envision Reece's as a regional and national hub for site-specific, place-driven, community-collaborative public art and humanities initiatives, with deep sensitivity to community sovereignty, local history, and memory, & with a strong belief in the power of creative, arts-based livelihoods & people-driven economic development for rural communities like Caledonia. We hope the re-opened Reece’s Market & the rehabilitated Temple & Masonic Block Buildings can be spaces that address and hold space for the changing realities of rural and post-industrial American life while advocating for social justice and transformative healing in rural community; & which can serve as an example for working-class, community-driven historic preservation for Marion County’s other six rural villages: & for similar communities across North-Central Ohio.

We are now in our Rehabilitation Fundraising stage of the Reece’s Market Revival project. The Temple & Masonic Block Buildings were listed to the National Register of Historic Places on March 15th, 2021 — making history as Marion County’s first-ever commercial buildings in one of our seven rural villages to ever be listed to the National Register. In Summer 2021, we are launching a Feasibility Study to track the anticipated economic impact of the anticipated rehabilitation project; & we’ll begin fundraising to make the project a reality. It is our hope that the Temple & Masonic Block Buildings will become the first historic buildings in Marion County, Ohio, to access both Federal & Ohio Historic Preservation // Rehabiliation Tax Credits, & that our process will serve as an open model for how other working-class legacy building owners & communities can come together to save their historic built environment and revitalize sleepy, vacant downtowns. Join us & support the work by reaching out; or send us a donation to kickstart this work!