The Rainbow Confectionery

Built in the early-to-mid 1870s and first known as the Bunnell building, this Main Street property served for most of its years as a confectionery, ice cream, and variety shop. By 1877, Leslie Bunnell sold his business, which offered fine French chocolates, nuts, tobacco, and cigars, to Franklin P. Bunnell, who soon expanded into variety merchandise and called it F P. Bunnell's Variety Store. Originally a single storefront, the building was divided into two storefronts by the 1890s, with the left devoted to confections and ice cream and the right to variety goods. Clark Jones took over the left storefront in 1904, making ice cream on site and selling soups in winter. About 1918, Robert and George "Sparky" Mitchell assumed the confection business until a fire damaged part of the building in February 1928. After repairs, Fred and Ethel Buehler opened The Rainbow Confectionery in June 1928. Fred Buehler specialized in horehound cough drops supplied locally to Branigan's Pharmacy as a medicinal product, and he became best known for handmade candies such as stick candy, hard candy, clear toys, and Christmas candy canes, making more than fifty thousand candy canes in one year for local churches and wholesale sale, while Ethel Buehler managed the soda fountain. After more than thirty years, The Rainbow Confectionery closed in September 1961, reflecting the decline of the era of Main Street ice cream shops and soda fountains. In the right storefront, F.P. Bunnell continued the variety store, later joined by his son George as F.P. Bunnell and Son, selling men's furnishings, ladies' accessories, and groceries. In 1927, George Bunnell partnered with Andrew Brugler in Bunnell and Brugler, which added appliance sales and repair. In 1945, after more than sixty-five years of Bunnell family involvement in a Main Street variety store, the business was sold to J.D. and Mabel Jacobus and renamed Jacobus Variety Store. In 1960, Milton and Gertrude "Trudy" Readett bought the shop and continued the variety trade until it closed in 1970, ending more than ninety years of variety business on Main Street.

Blairstown, New Jersey · United States