NEWBURYPORT - The Super Bowl wasn’t the only loss that stung me Sunday. My coffee shop closed.
I don’t mean I owned Fowle’s, but I’ve outlasted a handful of proprietors and spent enough money there that I feel like a minority partner. I’ve been drinking coffee and reading my morning papers at the counter since before that seemed a laughably archaic way of starting the day. Fowle’s had Wi-Fi, and I brought in my iPad to read the Globe online a couple of times, but it never felt quite right.
The 17 State St. restaurant will reopen eventually under new ownership, and everyone is waiting to see if they will preserve the name, the faded art deco facade, and the landmark neon sign over the door. Many see that transition as a bellwether for future development of Newburyport’s downtown under real estate magnate Stephen R. Karp.
I moved back to New England in 1998 to take a job at the Boston Herald. My wife stayed behind in Chicago to sell our house and pack our belongings. After a decade in the Midwest, we wanted to be near the ocean. Following a few weeks staying with friends and family, I took an apartment in downtown Newburyport. I moved in with a futon, a portable TV, and not much else. On my first morning in town, looking for a paper, caffeine, and, to be honest, someone to talk to, I wandered into Fowle’s and took a stool at the counter.
Fowle’s opened in the 19th century and thrived over the decades as a newsstand and soda fountain at its present location. The funky coffee shop I entered was a relatively new iteration, a hopeful debut in a revitalized downtown. That first morning, or maybe the next, I struck up a conversation with the guy on the next stool. I asked him where to get my hair cut, and he told me somewhat cryptically to “Go see Esther.’’ Not long after that, he and I helped the then-owners open a balky coffee roaster with a pipe wrench and a tire iron. Some 13 years later, Will and I are still talking sports and politics and everything else at the counter. Or we were, until this week.
Fowle’s became my third place, the one that’s not home or work, the one where everybody knows your name. When I got laid off from the Herald and started writing for the Globe from my home office, that little community became even more important in my day.
As my other friend Rob notes, what made Fowle’s work was complicated, a function of location, decor, and more. There are lots of other coffee places downtown, but as when Fowle’s closed for renovations before, we’ve scouted potential replacements without finding one that quite fits the bill.
Fowle’s was a social crossroads, where the guy who jump-starts my cars waited in the same line as the software company owner with the yellow Porsche. My running joke was that I could find a Globe North story idea without getting off my stool. Many features I’ve written in these pages started with an introduction or a chance conversation at Fowle’s. When I started writing mysteries about a place I called Libertyport, no surprise that the plots tended to run through a coffee shop I called Foley’s.
One of Karp’s companies owns the building now, along with much of the rest of the downtown, including the big boatyard at the water’s edge. Fowle’s coffee shop is closed, and the even more venerable newsstand that occupies the other half of the historic storefront will follow in a few weeks. Word is that the new proprietor will be another local restaurateur, not a chain as some feared, and will take over the entire space. But Karp seems as close-lipped as Bill Belichick when it comes to his plans.
Maybe the new people taking over will figure out how to fix the stool we call the Widowmaker.
Joel Brown can be reached at jbnbpt@gmail.com.