Antique Shop Waits Until After Holidays for Sales

CROTON-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. – When most people will be busy returning unwanted gifts, there will be a group of people shopping for treasures they could only seek out for themselves. The Old Book Room on Old Post Road North in Croton boats antique maps, books, paintings, photos, postcards and every variety of unlikely collectable.

“What people disregard can be interesting in the future,” said Greg Haber, a Croton resident who is attending school at Cornell, in Ithaca, N.Y. Haber collects Ball jars and other glass antiques.

“Antiques aren’t the classic Christmas gift, people tend to buy things news,” said Amy Cotton. “Mom always said, when she had her partner, that Christmas slow, but the day after Christmas people came and bought what they wanted.”

The Old Book Room, which is now run by Amy Cotton, was formerly run by her mother, Cornelia Cotton. Cornelia Cotton owned the bookroom with her partner, Jane Northshield, the former village historian. Northshield died in 2005, at the age of 88, but Cotton is still a Croton resident, and an active member of the Croton Council on the Arts.

The walls of the book room are covered in antique maps, photos and etchings. Snow globes, jars ashtrays, stuffed animals, shoes, mirrors and pictures frames, countless ceramic knickknacks and all sorts of lighting line the walls.

The shop has been in the village 30 plus years, and although architect Susan Riordan said she didn’t know the former village historian was part owner, she’s not surprised. “The old books are wonderful,” she said.

“As an architect I love the maps,” she said. “A field is now a whole development, and its great to see what has stayed the same through many years.” Riordan said that the process of drawing schematics hasn’t changed that much over the years, and maps that are 50-years-old still use the same methods.

“There aren’t many mom and pop shops where you can go rummage. And we have a lot of local historical information, and that is selling,” said Amy Cotton.

Collectors and rummagers of all types will converge on the shop, and even they don’t, said Cotton, she’s used to long periods of quiet.

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