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Century House celebrates 60 years with expansive new showroom

Jane Burns  —  10/07/2008 7:51 am

The Century House is still a house, and it's still a furniture store. It just happens to have a close relative now living up the street.

The Scandinavian furniture store and gift shop business has two things to celebrate this month: its 60th anniversary, and the grand opening of a new 10,000 square-foot showroom across University Avenue, previously occupied by Famous Footwear. Century House Gifts & Furniture is at 3029 University Ave.; Century House Home & Office is at 3420 University Ave.

When the sign went up for the new store, many loyal customers got worried that the business was leaving behind its cozy location, which has evolved from a pottery studio to a gift shop to a furniture store over six decades.

"There was a lot of concern about that," said Jacob Harlow, Century House's general manager. "People were coming into our store and demanding what we were doing leaving the old store. It's kind of a Madison institution."

The old house, built in 1836 and a former tavern, is still very much part of the business. The new store just gives Century House a chance to showcase more of its merchandise, particularly the Scandinavian furniture it has been selling since the 1960s.

"To some degree, it's more of the same, but there are new items and new product lines," Harlow said. "There's always a million more options; it doesn't matter how much space we have.

"It's a very different showroom. It's a big open space with natural light. The other building has a lot of cozy corners and meandering spaces."

The Century House business began in 1948 as a potter's studio owned by Jane Scalbom, who lived upstairs. She married another potter, Max Howell, and the couple raised their four children in the house while making and selling pottery downstairs.

Max Howell initially purchased Danish furniture to display the pottery, but customers became just as interested in the furniture, and the Century House took a new direction.

In the 1970s, Max Howell bought the structure next to the old house for storage. Eventually that became the furniture showroom, and that space slowly grew, too, adjusting as University Avenue widened. The old house, which still has fixtures such as a sink and kitchen appliances upstairs, is the gift shop.

Jane Howell died in 1994. Max Howell died last week at age 89. Jane and Max's son, Kirby, now owns Century House.

The new showroom helps Century House customers see more merchandise the store has to offer. Customers could always order things that weren't on the floor, but now there are more items to view.

In particular, the business is showcasing more leather furniture, not just the Scandinavian brands but also furniture made by American Leather, as well as items from Italy and Brazil.

The Norwegian company Ekornes, known for its Stressless line of leather sofas and recliners, has been sold at Century House for 25 years. The store started carrying the whole line six years ago, Harlow said.

"Now we can show even more of it," Harlow said.

Growth allows Century House to show more home office furniture, too.

"This is an area that has been growing as a trend nationwide as more people work at home," Harlow said. "It's something we've done but never had the space to offer as much as we would like.

"Scandinavians do home office very well. They're very much in tune with efficiency, storage, ergonomics."

Harlow said the products also illustrate sustainability in the true sense. Much of the furniture might be more expensive at Century House than other places, but it lasts.

"People are realizing our disposable culture isn't always economically sound," Harlow said. "You might buy cheaper furniture, but if you have to get a new sofa every four years, the math won't work out in your favor.

"Max used to say, 'That's the curse. Once you have a sofa from Scandinavia, you're not going to have to buy another for a long time.'"

That sort of sustainability might not bring in new sofa customers, Harlow said, but Century House can still help the customer in the future.

"If you bought it here 35 years ago, we can fix it because we still have the parts," he said. "We might even have the same piece of furniture. They still make them the same way, at the same small factory in Denmark, by the same guy."

Harlow said a former customer recently visited Madison and left a note at the store for Max Howell.

"It said that 40 years ago they bought a sofa here, and they just wanted him to know it was doing fine," Harlow said. "That's just fabulous."

After all this time, Harlow said, Century House's mission has remained the same. Its customer base is interested in a certain aesthetic: clean, contemporary and Modern with a capital M (as in the Modern movement from the 1950s). Harlow and the staff try to combine that with customer service, an approach that must work if former customers still write them notes 40 years later.

Harlow said Century House had considered the new space in the past but didn't want to move too quickly. The new move feels "organic," Harlow said, just part of a natural process in the life of the business.

"We've had our business over 60 years of quality products and service and slow steps. Very slow," he said. "There's something to be said for that."

Jane Burns  —  10/07/2008 7:51 am