We are the Window Fashions Experts in Stoneham, MA and the surrounding area. When it comes to window fashion, Curtain Time is an “Alice in Wonderland” experience. Inside, you can browse through hundreds of styles on display, with a pampering design staff ready to put together a personalized creation just for you – ready made or full custom. There is also in-house expertise to help you choose just the right shade from Hunter Douglas to add function to beauty. Equally impressive is an amazing hardware selection along with a solution for every design challenge. Check it out for yourself. Call for an in-home consult! Take a look around, and then contact us to get started! See all our Products. Meet the Owner of Curtain Time, Ilya Kohen Design Your Own Window Treatments Upload a photo of your window and view your favorite Hunter Douglas window treatments up close in any color, fabric or material. Monday:9:30 AM - 5:00 PM Tuesday:9:30 AM - 5:00 PM Wednesday:9:30 AM - 5:00 PM

Thursday:9:30 AM - 7:00 PM Friday:9:30 AM - 5:00 PM Saturday:9:30 AM - 5:00 PM For a combined 175 years, the four women had walked the creaking wooden floors together, selling notions and lingerie, keeping the books and watching generations of customers progress from ''infant and toddlers'' to ''preteen'' and ''prep'' to ''ready-to-wear.'' But when the women, Lillian Williams, Hazel King, Doris Robitaille and Toni LaPointe, returned for a recent visit to Bugbee's Department Store here, they needed a key to get inside. On the main floor, once crammed with clothing of all sizes and descriptions, only a few dismembered mannequins remained. Bugbee's, for nearly a century a fixture in this small northeastern Connecticut mill town, had closed its doors. ''I feel as though I've lost my home,'' Mrs. LaPointe said as she surveyed the scene. ''Emotionally, it's a big blow.'' The blight that killed Bugbee's, like the Dutch elm disease that ravaged southern New England in years past, has played hopscotch from one town to another, bringing down institutions that had once appeared invincible.

The targets of this second scourge, however, were not trees but businesses - specifically, the mighty department stores that anchored many a Main Street. Strong Hands on Helm In the last few years, it felled many of the venerable enterprises in the surrounding area: Denholm & McKay in Worcester, Mass.; Forbes & Wallace in Springfield, Mass.; the Outlet in Providence, R.I.; Murray's in Willimantic, and Keech's in Danielson. Bugbee's had lasted longer, in part because of particulary strong hands on its helm. But now it, too, had passed on. Most people are not especially sentimental or sad about Bugbee's demise. Some thought it simply preordained; some were inured because of the closings of Montgomery Ward, Benny's Auto and other fixtures of the once-prosperous downtown. Some had simply stopped thinking about the store once they began patronizing the discount stores and shopping malls that helped kill it. There were those, however, who quietly mourned the passing of an eastern Connecticut landmark and what it represented.

It may have been the amenities that only a small family-run business can offer, such as the free gift-wrapping and boxes the store continued to supply even after it started losing money or being able to try on clothing at home and bring it back if it didn't fit.soko kuu curtains For others, though, the death symbolized something larger: the continuing fragmentation of communal life in small towns such as Putnam, towns once largely self-sufficient that have been transformed into satellites of larger cities. casual curtains southington ctMore than a source of clothing, Bugbee's was a vanishing institution in towns like this: a place of shared experiences and rituals. fieldcrest classic shower curtain khaki

'Awful Feeling of Sadness' ''Bugbee's was Putnam,'' said John N. Dempsey, who was Mayor in the 1950's, before becoming Governor of Connecticut. ''It was a family store, where people went not only to purchase goods, but also to meet each other, to chat. the tortilla curtain bibliographyWhen you hear about it closing, it gives you an awful feeling of sadness in your heart.''john frusciante curtains vinyl buy From the moment in 1888 when Byron D. Bugbee arrived from Webster, Mass., to open a store for ''dry and fancy goods'' at the corner of Main and Front Streets, Bugbee's exemplified the egalitarianism and interdependence of rural life.swish supreme curtain track spares The squirearchy from the neighboring towns, the Lorillards and Freedleys and Grosvenors of Pomfret, the Holts of Woodstock, the Reams of Thompson, patronized the place.

So, too, did chicken farmers from Danielson and mill hands from such plants as Putnam Woolen, Wellington Curtain and Belding Heminway, who would stop by during their lunch breaks. Many workers were from Quebec, and for them Bugbee's took care to have clerks on hand who spoke French. When Mr. Bugbee decided to retire in 1948 at the age of 84, he turned over the store to an equally indomitable character, Eva Furman. For 35 years, Mrs. Furman had run a department store in Springfield, Vt. For the next 30 years, Bugbee's prospered, taking over much of the old Windham County Superior Court building next door. Mrs. Furman died at the age of 85, in 1978, the day after a buying trip to Providence. The store she loved died more slowly and painfully. The domestics department was the first to go, followed by accessories, the gift shop, foundations and lingerie. Three years ago, Bugbee's filed for bankruptcy, and when it reopened, it was still called Bugbee's, but it had been become a ''minimall,'' with separate entrepreneurs offering handicrafts, textiles and bridal gowns.

Mrs. Furman's daughter and son- in-law, Betty and Glenn Mauer, said they plowed $250,000 into the operation, to no avail. Last month, four years shy of its centennial, Bugbee's closed. The store had been done in, principally, by such nearby discount houses as K Mart, Ames, Barkers and Fisher's Big Wheel, but there were other factors, too. Main St. a 'Toothless Grin' Bugbee's lost its exclusivity for some brand-name labels. Sophisticated shopping declined, particularly among the young. And Route 52, the highway that was to have been the region's economic savior, provided a convenient escape for shoppers lured by lower sales taxes in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The fortunes of the town waned over the years. A hurricane, a flood and countless fires turned Main Street into a toothless grin, the textile mills moved South, and the trains quit stopping at Union Station. But throughout it all, Bugbee's windows remained bright, a step ahead of the changing seasons. There were displays for Easter and Thanksgiving and, most memorably, Christmas, when wooden latticework was installed and festooned with artificial snow.

Then there was the dreaded ''Back to School'' display, which appeared early every August, when summer vacation seemed to have barely begun. For many a child, visits to Bugbee's were as much a seasonal rite as the Woodstock Fair. Each year around Labor Day, boys could be seen struggling with corduroy pants that seemed especially bulky and oppressive after summers spent in swim trunks. To Mrs. Furman, a sprightly woman with white hair in a flamboyant bouffant who could usually be seen bobbing between the aisles, few sights were more discomforting than an unaccompanied customer. ''A looker is a buyer,'' she would tell her clerks, who were mostly older women. Some employees, such as Mrs. King, came to the store as young women and stayed until retirement. Bugbee's windows are empty now, save for a few bridal gowns that are to be removed soon. Mrs. Mauer, who said she has received only one letter of condolence since the store closed, said she was thankful that her mother didn't live to see it happen.