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By Root 951 0

in Culpeper – 73-year-old Dorothy Inskeep James, an employee in Clarke’s Hardware. She wanted to make sure I included her maiden name – Inskeep is a very old name in these parts, but just how old, she couldn’t quite say. She also wanted me to know that the vitality of Culpeper’s downtown, Davis and Main streets, isn’t just a recent phenomenon. When she was a girl, Davis Street was just as busy with shoppers as it is now. There were three hardware stores (she worked at one for 21 years, and when it closed, she came to Clarke’s), and everyone knew everyone.

Today, eclectic shops, art galleries and cafés blend fairly well with older businesses that have been become local institutions: the 100-year-old Clarke’s Hardware, Gayheart’s Drug Store, where patrons have been meeting at the soda fountain for half a century, and Knakal’s Bakery, where creamy confections have been satisfying generations of sweet tooths.

Some might call the recent gentrification of Culpepper a bit “artsy-fartsy,” but downtown is still a place where folks can get a haircut, get their shoes repaired, or buy the right size wrench for a plumbing job. And no one can complain about what Culpeper Renaissance, Inc., through Virginia’s Main Street program, has done for the heart of the city that had suffered a period of long decline and neglect that began in the 1970s. Where drug dealers and prostitutes loitered on street corners only a half dozen years ago, now tourists and local shoppers patronize businesses and eat in sidewalk cafés. The renovated historic train station houses the visitor center, and is still the stop for two daily Amtrak trains – it’s just 2½ hours to Washington DC’s Union Station.

Culpeper’s location has a lot to do with its recent resurgence. At the junction of Routes 29 and 3, it’s on the way for folks traveling between DC and Charlottesville. Artists Rich and Kris Schluter of Fredericks­burg found Davis Street a successful location for their Thistle­tree Forge gallery. They even expanded the gallery in 2002, taking advantage of the large, open spaces of a former hardware store to display their metal work along with pottery, candles, and pieces by other local artists. The gallery is open Thursday-Saturday. (tel. 540-829-8440)

DON’T MISS: Ace Books & Antiques, with more than 250,000 used books, is believed to be the largest used bookseller on the east coast (120 W. Culpeper Street, tel. 540-825-8973).

Across the street, another former hardware store houses the Wine & Cheese Shop and the acclaimed Hazel River Inn, where an Austrian chef does his magic in the oldest commercial building downtown, which was once used as a Civil War jail. The original rear of the building is circa 1790, while the 1835 painted brick front still proclaims “Yowell Hardware Co. – Stoves & Ranges – Electrical and Plumbing Supplies.” It’s definitely part of Culpeper’s charm that such vestiges of its past remain. Lerner’s Department Store is no longer, but the large sign remains atop the building that now houses a portrait and photography studio, hair salon, driving school and other businesses.

A barrel full of rakes and shovels, a line of tomato and herb plants, bright red Radio Flyer tricycles and wagons, and shiny metal trash cans crowd the sidewalk outside the Corinthian-columned Masonic Building. The Masons still meet upstairs, but Clarke’s Hardware has been the downstairs tenant since 1970. When Claude Minnich bought the hardware store from Mrs. Clarke 22 years ago, he vowed not to change a thing, not the sign, the name, or the commitment to personal service the store had been known for since the turn of the century. (tel. 540-825-9178)

“I give good service, so people have kept coming all along, even when this end of the street was basically a slum. The Wal-Mart opening didn’t bother me at all,” says Minnich. He adds that business has picked up in the last five or six years as other shops have opened and tourists have come. While they might not be in the market for a mop or a blender while visiting town, tourists love “old-time” hardware stores like Clarke