MASON CITY, Neb. (AP) - Driving through Mason City, population 176, people would never expect to see a store specializing in urban eclectic arts, antiques and interiors.
But just off Nebraska Highway 2 in a weathered, white building, that’s exactly what Lisa Moody is offering in her shop, the French Table.
Moody recently renovated a 1907 church in the Custer County village, opening it on the building’s 107th birthday.
Now she hopes to make the shop a destination and to help breathe new life into both the building and the town she has come to love.
“It’s kind of a fun surprise in the middle of nowhere,” she told The Grand Island Independent (https://bit.ly/1smPlw5 ).
Moody grew up in Ord but had settled in Custer County after a few years in Omaha and elsewhere. She always enjoyed driving around and looking at architecture, Moody said, and something about the old church and former Masonic Lodge in the village caught her eye.
Even so, Moody continued her work as a social worker until 2011, when she had an epiphany.
She had always been creative. She had participated in the Junk Jaunt a few times, and people told her she should open a shop.
One night, at 2 a.m., she decided to do it. She soon got a 500-square-foot space in Broken Bow, opening her original store.
Moody named it the French Table, after the area of Custer County where she lives.
“The French Table is such a beautiful place in Custer County, and I thought, ’How appropriate is that?’” she said.
Though things were going well, Moody knew she wanted more space - space she could make her own. When the opportunity to buy the building in Mason City came up last year, she had to do it.
The building had been used as a church until about the 1920s, she said, after which it was a Masonic Lodge and later a privately owned building used for storage. The Masons had installed several podiums and had covered the cathedral ceiling with tin. A drop ceiling had been added under that at some point.
The plaster, too, had been painted the color of calamine lotion, Moody said.
“We just basically took off all the ugliness of her,” she said.
She and a group of friends, volunteers and hired workers helped renovate the place. Some things, she said, needed updates, such as the windows and heating and cooling.
But many others Moody left authentic. They restored the tin ceiling and the bead board, and she only had to add a clear coat to the original floors. They stripped four layers of paint and wallpaper off the walls, leaving the bare original plaster. They even went so far as to patch some holes with plaster from the 1940s from a hardware store in Ansley.
Throughout the project, Moody said, residents of Mason City stopped by, asking whether they could pull weeds, paint and even pave the street outside her entrance.
On June 16, 2014, a year after she started, Moody opened.
“It has its imperfections, but I wanted to keep it authentic,” she said.
Moody applies that same emphasis on originals to the pieces inside the building.
At the store, she has everything from old French lamp shades to a child’s wooden riding horse. Artists, including abstract painter Bruce Burstert and Custer County potters Yukari Lee and Jeff Wieman, have pieces there for sale.
What ties it all together, Moody said, is that she loves every piece.
She wants to show people what they can do with special things in their own homes, and she wants to bring something people in rural Custer County haven’t experienced before.
Moody hopes people from elsewhere will make it a destination, too.
“It’s kind of the entrepreneurial spirit of, ’If you build it, they will come,’” she said.
It seems to be working even in the village itself. When Moody had her ribbon cutting, there was a ribbon cutting for three other businesses in Mason City: a gun repair shop, an electrician and a gun retail shop.
Gail Zoerb, the village clerk, said that has never happened before.
Before the openings, Zoerb said, they were down to about two businesses in town.
“Everything helps,” she said. “We need more business. We’re tickled to get what we’ve got.”
Fixing up an old building, Zoerb said, is even better. And with an empty Catholic church, schoolhouse and grocery store, she said, there’s room for more.
“We’d like to see them all filled if we could,” Zoerb said.
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Information from: The Grand Island Independent, https://www.theindependent.com
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