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05/09/2018 08:30 AMThe big, red Retirement Sale sign is hung from the porch and many of the vintage display shelves are bare, heralding the final days of a Madison retail favorite, The Nosey Goose.
This month, owner Betty Lou Morawski closes the doors after 38 years of selling antiques, furniture, home décor, and gifts at the early 1900s home at 33 Wall Street. And she won’t be the only family member saying goodbye.
“My husband Dave says that he’s also retiring, after 38 years as the handyman of The Nosey Goose. He fixes everything here, plants the flowers, hangs things on the wall, vacuums—whatever I need,” Betty Lou says, smiling. “My daughter, Jennifer White, also joined me at the store 12 years ago so we’ve been here a long time.”
For Betty Lou, it’s an emotional farewell to a place that’s been her second home for almost four decades. She says over the years many of her regular customers have become friends, and that the people of Madison have played a large part in the success of The Nosey Goose.
“We have developed a loyal customer base over the years and they have been very supportive. Since we put up the sale sign, we’ve had lots of calls, notes, and good wishes,” she says “We’ve had quite a few people who have shopped here since day one, and we have young women who come in and say they remember coming here with their mothers when they were little.”
A Very Good Choice
Betty Lou grew up in West Haven and lived in North Haven as a girl. She and husband Dave are celebrating 53 years of marriage, but before they settled in their forever home of Madison, they moved south for Dave’s work.
“We spent three horrible years in West Virginia!” Betty Lou says “It was the 1960s and it was backward as all get out! And there was no shopping—if it wasn’t in the Sears catalog, you didn’t get it.”
Fortunately, another job transfer brought the Morawskis back the shoreline.
“We were looking at houses and it was our realtor who showed us Madison. It was good choice,” she adds.
When Betty Lou opened The Nosey Goose in 1980, it wasn’t a big relocation—she simply had to cross Wall Street.
“Before we opened the shop, I worked a couple of days a week at the Bay Window on the other side of Wall Street. It was a gift shop that also sold clothes for children and teenagers, and I worked for $2 an hour, which was minimum wage in the 1970s—until I got to raise to $2.10!” she says.
The Nosey Goose was Betty Lou’s first business venture and she credits her former employer and Bay Window proprietor Shearer Richardson with helping her get started. Remarkably, the goose was almost cooked only a year after it was opened.
“My friend, Laura Jane Stanton, came and asked me if I wanted to open a store with her. When we started, there was one room with her needlepoint and cross stitch, I had one room with antiques, and we had a room together with merchandise we purchased together,” she says.
“After one year, her husband was transferred to a job down south, and so they moved. We had each worked a couple of days [a week], but now I had the store all to myself. I was going to pack it in, but decided to give it a go on my own…and I’m very pleased that I didn’t [close]. I fell into it. It wasn’t anything I planned, but it really was a good choice.”
38 Years on Wall Street
Thriving for 38 years in retail is no small achievement, and Betty Lou recognizes the value of moving with the times, and bringing unique items to her shoreline customers.
“I always say that we were in the right place at the right time,” she says. “When we opened, the country style became popular and we were right there. Over the years, trends change and so we evolved from country and antiques to Victorian to shabby chic.
“When we started out we brought all our merchandise at the New York Gift Show, which we went to twice a year. For the past 20 or 25 years, we’ve gone to Atlanta, which is the oldest, largest gift show in the world. It’s 70 million square feet with everything you could possibly want.”
The Nosey Goose featured prominently in the lives of Betty Lou’s daughters, Susan Morawski, who lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and Jennifer White, who joined her mother in the store 12 years ago.
“Jennifer was painting shabby chic furniture, so she rented out the back rooms and we broke through the wall. She has her own shop now, The Cottage Flair in Old Saybrook. It’s like a mini-Nosey Goose over there,” she says.
With nine rooms filled with furniture, gifts, and home décor, the most popular items at the Nosey Goose may surprise.
“It’s lotions and soaps,” Betty Lou says. “Though the best decision we made was to open the baby room. That was about 15 years ago. It was the stitchery room before that. Now we have lots of people who just come in for baby gifts. You always need a baby gift.”
Having watched the world go by from the same location for 38 years, Betty Lou says that not too much has changed in downtown Madison.
“There’s not as many retail stores on Wall Street as there used to be, which is a shame, and of course, there have been developments, but there are still locally owned businesses here. I have noticed that over the past few years there have been more people coming in at Christmas saying that they are trying to do all their shopping locally. That’s so important, because if you want stores to stay here, you have to support them,” she says.
“Also, I want to thank our landlord, Colin Eastland. I first rented the store from his mother and father, and they helped us stay here for the whole time.”
Without a store to manage six days a week, Betty Lou is looking forward to more of her own time—and so is Dave.
“We’ll do some antiquing and we’ll take some trips. We’ll work on our house together and make plans for our future in Madison,” she says, adding, “And I’m looking forward to my first summer off, so I can go to the beach!”