by JEANETTE FLECK
WSU Intern
There’s another place in downtown Westfield many of us probably stopped noticing before it went back into use: the Columbus Building at 93-99 Elm Street, right next door from the Rinnova Building, across from Westfield Gas and Electric. Impossible to place into any formal style of architecture, the block has simply looked “commercial” – an appropriate description for what was originally, and remained for at least 78 years, a furniture store.
John J. Hearn and his partner, Philip O’Meara, needed more space for their business, “Hearn & Company Complete House Furnishers and Undertakers” (the two services were commonly combined back then), and they moved from their old premises on School Street into the newly built Columbus Building in 1912. The new premises were right across Thomas Street from Lambson Furniture, who offered the same services. Both companies would remain in business for a long time, regardless of the nearby competition.
The large building – four stories high, encompassing several street numbers even then – was shared with a women’s clothing store and several other, smaller businesses from the beginning. By 1922, most of the offices upstairs were occupied by doctors. Number 99, the closest address to the Rinnova Building, was a branch of the Wornoco Savings Bank until 1952. In the 1940’s, a beauty shop opened somewhere on the premises, and incidentally, there’s one currently in the shop that was once the bank branch.
The biggest story, though, revolves around the storefront at number 93, the original location of the furniture gallery. Born around 1869, John J. Hearn is a relatively obscure figure, aside from possibly writing the United States government to ask them to ask the British to release his brother, another U.S. citizen, who had been taken as a POW in South Africa around 1900. It is unlikely that another John J. Hearn lived in Westfield at the time, yet the possibility can’t be ruled out, so it’s unclear if this report is really about the furniture salesman.
The business, on the other hand, remained in Hearn’s family for the entirety of his life, though O’Meara left in the ‘30s to start his own funeral service. Certain of Hearn’s family members were his employees, and when Hearn died in 1951, at 82 years of age, Mary M. Hearn took it over. At that time, the furniture shop was occupying the second floor instead of the storefront, but it moved back down before the late 1970’s, when the upper floors were being converted to market rate apartments.
Mary retired from the family’s business early in the 1960’s, selling the company to a family in Springfield, who incorporated the business in 1961. It’s clear that the furniture shop remained in business at least until 1990. In recent years, the storefront has held a gift shop and possibly the Westfield branch of Thom Infant Toddler Services. As of last year, the Columbus Building holds Clemenza’s pizza parlor.
