This O’Brien building is nearly 100 years old and holds a unique market inside.

The Olde O’Brien Antique Village, also known as the Village Emporium, is set up inside a nearly 100-year-old building and is chock full of unique gifts, antiques, refurnished and repurposed goods, and many more treasures. The owners of this shop, Harriette Wells and Gefrey Humphries, are driven by more than just business, however. For this married couple of 26 years, running the Emporium is also a way to preserve a piece of North Florida history.

According to Harriette, the original building where the main Village Emporium shop now sits was burned in 1917. The fire blazed through the structure next to it as well, finally stopping at the brick building at the end of the block, the same brick building standing there today.

“That brick store has actually stopped fires in O’Brien three times,” said Harriette.

Harriette and Gefrey are knowledgeable about the local history in the area, with many generations of their families holding deep roots throughout O’Brien and Suwannee County. This love for history led the couple to purchase the Village Emporium property in 2000 and they opened for business in 2012 after years of careful renovation.

“We’ve done a lot of changes but we try to do it all period,” Gefrey said. For example, when the couple worked on the ceiling, they found the original painted wood ceiling behind more modern tiles, and instead of replacing it, they left it as is.

Gefrey runs his own construction business, and his woodworking can be seen throughout the store. He crafted the front counter and shelving behind it with benches from a church dating back to 1888, now known as Grace Baptist Church, and he replaced several windows with older drop-style windows.

“Our main motivation for being here was to save the old buildings,” said Harriette. “If we were located somewhere else, we might have more traffic, more business. But we couldn’t have saved the buildings in O’Brien, and O’Brien has been a major part of our family for a long time.”

On the business end of things, Harriette rents out shelves inside the Emporium to artists and vendors looking to display their merchandise for sale, akin to an indoor flea market. The rooms are filled with eclectic items: handcrafted jewelry, paperback books, candles and soaps, homemade jellies, furniture, and troves of other goods are available for purchase. There are even eggs for sale fresh from Harriette and Gefrey’s own chickens.

The Olde O’Brien Antique Village Emporium is open Fridays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays from 1 to 5 p.m. They are located at 22641 93rd Drive in O’Brien, just off of US 129 South. The Emporium has shelves, showcases, booths, yard space, and tables for rent. For more information, please call 386-935-0389.