The zinc letters — each about as tall as a professional basketball player — spell out the word “Magic.”
It’s a tease for what’s to come when you step into Architectural Artifacts Inc., where an 1890s English telescope lies disassembled on an old leather vaulting horse from the Czech Republic. In another room, hundreds of keys — the kind that might open secret doors if they weren’t quite so rusty — lie scattered on a heavy plank table. A few feet away, there’s a copper “cheese-making” tub filled with paper-mache masks from the Bavarian State Opera.
Stuart Grannen’s “magic” is hard won. He estimates he’s literally traveled millions of airplane miles during the last three-plus decades seeking out the antiques and oddities that fill his 35,000-square-foot space.
Grannen, 66, hasn’t lost any of his derring-do. But he says he’s ready for something new. After 37 years in Chicago, he’s closing up shop and heading to Round Top, Texas, the “new capital of antiques in America,” he says.
A few years back, he and a buddy were trying to pluck a 40-foot-tall altar from inside a church that had partially collapsed. A 2-foot-long decorative “finial” came loose.
“It was like a missile coming straight down, and it split my head wide open. All I could do was duct-tape it closed,” said Grannen.
He’d like to sell everything before he leaves April 1.
“We’ll be making spectacular deals for people who want to buy. Everything else will go to Texas after that,” he says.
Maybe a vintage seltzer bottle from Argentina for $100?
Or a six-tier vaulting box from France for $1,200?
No?
Then perhaps a wrought-iron coat of arms from Italy for $1,200?
Many of Grannen’s treasures come from Italy. He doesn’t speak a word of Italian, he says. He relies on common sense, respect and his best buddy, Guillermo Castro, to help negotiate.
Grannen’s cellphone rings “several hundred” times a day, including a dozen or so times during a 30-minute chat with a Chicago Sun-Times reporter. His customers include collectors, local theaters that need props for shows, even movie productions — including “Groundhog Day” and “Road to Perdition,” Grannen says.
Asked which of his thousands of finds is his favorite, he replies: “My most thrilling find is my next find.”
On a recent visit, the space is mostly empty and church quiet. But if you imagine, you can perhaps hear a child laughing as she clings to the neck of the Italian midcentury carousel horse that has a $3,200 price tag. Or maybe you’ll wince at the imagined meat clever cracking bone on a leather-covered butcher’s block from France.
At one point, Sean Bisceglia strolls in with his daughter, Ellie Bisceglia. The father, 58, has bought many things from Grannen’s warehouse, including several wrought-iron gates.
“I don’t think there is anything quite like this in America,” says Bisceglia, who lives in north suburban Kenilworth and is an entrepreneur.
He recently bought a huge iron bowl, originally from India and used for cooking rice.
“It’s going to be a huge loss to the city,” Bisceglia says. “I will definitely miss it. I guess I will have to fly to Texas and rent a truck.”
GALLERY: More from inside Architectural Artifacts
