Peter Lilienthal sees potential where others see none left.
“I hate to see good things go in the garbage,” he said.
Now 68 and the proprietor of Good as Old Antiques Repair & Art Gallery in Sheffield, Lilienthal’s most recently refurbished the broken clock that has adorned the facade of 57 Park St. in Lee since 1991. It turns out that he was helping a fellow lover of preserving old objects: Richard LaVigné, the co-owner of Knollwood Antiques, which opened at the site on Monday.
Lilienthal has been in the business of repairing objects for 35 years. After he helped a friend who owned an import business repair merchandise damaged during shipment, he developed a reputation as a good repairman. Word of mouth kept bringing him business.
He says he was born with the ability to fix things. At 4 years old, when he fixed his family’s vacuum cleaner, his family knew he had a talent.
“I always just knew" how to fixthings, he said. "And if I didn’t know it, I knew how to look it up.”
He previously did repairs — mostly for antique shops— out of his home. In 2016, he opened a store and began doing more repairs for individual customers.
LaVigné and his husband, Stephen Concannon, who co-owns Knollwood Antiques, recently became two of those customers. They began their antique and interior design business in 1984 in Boston, and today, they have a total of five galleries in both New York City and Florida.
The couple moved to Lee a year ago, drawn out of the city after an antiquing business opportunity didn’t pan out. Instead, they fell in love with the space at 57 Park St. and decided to open another gallery. The space now has furniture, fabric, pottery and other antique items from 30 vendors who rent spaces.
“We have somuch beauty, usually handcrafted, and you don’t see it a lot anymore,” LaVigné said. “We have all these things we throw away. Why can't we reuse one of those things and make a unique space?”
Like Lilienthal, LaVigné found his love for finding beauty in old objects at a young age. At 7, while running his paper route in his hometown of Marlborough, in eastern Massachusetts, he drew inspiration from his neighbors’ interior design.
One couple replaced a wall in theirColonial-style home with colored panes of glass and put old glass bottles on shelves in front of the window that had a view out at Mount Wachusett.LaVigné thought it was beautiful.
“I was fascinated — hooked,” LaVigné said.
LaVigné andConcannon got the keys to the building on Park Street on March 1, and began renovating. The owner of the building, Paul Aronofsky, asked what they would do with the broken clock.
“Well, why don’t we get it restored?” LaVigné said.
Aronofskyagreed.
“[Paul] believed as I believe that it is part of the history of the town,” LaVigné said.
Lilienthal and Crystal Lehmann — who worked with Lilienthal since 2016 doing restoration work herself and managing the business' operations — took on the project.
“I love what I do,” Lehmann said. “We take things every day and make them beautiful.”
The inner molding ofthe clock was rotted or missing, and some of the nails that held it together were gone. The one remaining hand on the clock didn’t tick, and LaVigné found the missing hand on a shelf in the building’s back office.
Lilienthal and Lehmann transformed the clock so it still looks old but shows no signs of rust or decay. They hope it will remain on the building for decades to come.
The building was constructed in 1935 and housed a series of various businesses. When John Elling leased the building in 1991 and opened Elling Hardware, he and his brothers, Ray and Steve, did some renovations that included building the clock and its surrounding archway.
Ray Elling painted the numbers on the clock and included the the names "Franklin & Holmes" in gold lettering because that's what the brothers had considered naming the hardware store, though these names had no significance in their family.
"We added the clock because it was an icon on Main Street," John Elling said. "It was good to have the clock because it was useful."
Carr Hardware moved into the building in 2003, but relocated to a building on Main Street in 2022, leaving 57 Park St. vacant until the Knollwood Antiques moved in.
David King haslived in Lee on and off since 1989, and worked at Carr Hardware since January 2006. During his time working in the building, the clock was a central element of its storefront.
“You look at it when you go by and it’s iconic," King said.
Lilienthal also appreciates the clock’s prominent position in Lee.
“Anybody coming down Route 20 going south is looking at this clock on that building, Lilienthal said. "It's sort of a touchstone for travelers.”
Although the clock has long been displayed, it’s been broken more often than it’s been working. King remembers that Carr Hardware hired someone to fix the clock around 2010, but it stopped working again after a few years.
Lilienthal and Lehmann didn’t have too much trouble restoring the clock — they’ve faced far greater and labor-intensive challenges restoring old high chairs, porcelain and grandfather clocks— but Lilienthal says that some objects are mysteriously challenging to fix.
“There are some things I’ve worked with that just don’t want to be fixed, and you could almost sense that they were fighting with you,”Lilienthal said. “Some things don't want to be fixed. Some things do want to be fixed. And there are some things that just act like normal things, which is what you would expect.”
Time will tell if the clock will decide to keep diligently ticking, or if it'll require one more repair.
