Granite Hall has been a beloved fixture in Round Pond for 150 years, and the Herndon family has been the driving force behind the counter for the last 40.
As the store prepares to transition to its second generation of family ownership in a world that has become more modern, Granite Hall succeeds by staying true to its roots.
The two-floor meeting house was built in 1873 and since its inception it has functioned as a community center, a dance hall, a fruit and confectionary shop, a concert and graduation venue, an ice cream parlor, and, of course, a general store. Silent movies were shown there. Kids even roller skated on the upstairs floor.
With the Herndons at the helm, it still fills many of those roles. People still gather there to buy a nostalgic sweet from the jars of penny candy that line the shelves or to indulge in an ice cream sundae or a sleeve of hot roasted peanuts.
Sarah and Eric Herndon discovered the building for sale in a Maine real estate magazine in 1983; they bought it immediately with $500 down.
“We were naive,” Sarah Herndon said about the impulsive purchase. However, the couple had long dreamed of owning a general store that would be a throwback to a simpler time, before the age of big-box behemoths and mile-wide malls.
While they may have been naive, the Herndons had a deep understanding of the hard work and the customer focus it takes to succeed as a small business in a small community. Despite being advised to discontinue the penny candy, they doubled down and built the concept into a foundational piece of the business. They knew consistency was important too and while the family rarely, if ever, had a chance to enjoy a summer vacation, Granite Hall thrived.
Eric and Sarah Herndon succeeded in part because they approached their business as a team.
Eric Herndon was known for being unflappable. When an upstairs freezer was accidentally unplugged and gallons of melted ice cream coated everything, he reportedly noted the sticky mess coating the merchandise looked like the marbled endpapers of an old book. He then proceeded to clean it up and get back to business.
He was also gentle, kind, patient, and funny, according to family friend Julia Lane. Those traits enabled him to connect with customers of all ages, but he particularly enjoyed helping the throngs of kids who came all summer long for candy and ice cream.
Sarah Herndon had a knack with customers, too.
“I have hundreds of thousands of people in my brain, because I’ve talked to everybody for 40 years,” she said. She still has the book where she jotted down notes and comments and quotes from customers dating back to the beginning of her tenure at Granite Hall.
That tenure started when the Herndons moved to Maine from New Hampshire in a big blue station wagon with two little girls. Mary was seven at the time and Jane was four.
“We fell into heaven,” Sarah Herndon said of their new home.
Eric and Sarah Herndon spent the next 30 years together living the life they had dreamed about: raising their family, becoming a vital part of the village and the surrounding community, mentoring generations of Round Pond kids through their first jobs, and welcoming customers back every summer.
When Eric Herndon died in 2012, Sarah Herndon kept the Granite Hall tradition going and growing. Her daughters have now joined her in the business, taking on their parents’ legacy; Mary Boothby manages the store’s accounts, while Jane Frost is responsible for ordering product and merchandising the shelves.
Frost has an eye for what Granite Hall’s customers need – and for what they don’t know they need. Utilitarian items like pot scrapers and umbrellas share space with mushroom postcards, hand-forged tailor scissors, collapsible sand buckets, and wallets that look like antique books.
She works hard to stay in stock on all the old favorites that their customers have come to expect, but she also keeps an eye on trends and looks for products that fit into the store’s intentionally old-fashioned themes.
“There’s a lot of tradition involved,” Boothby said of the merchandise that fills every nook and cranny of the store, and of the impressive selection of chocolates, hard candies, and licorices that earned Granite Hall a nod from Maine Magazine as the best candy store in the state in 2022.
Granite Hall almost didn’t make it to this year’s milestone anniversaries. In October 2008, Herndon was helping customers when a neighbor alerted them to smoke pouring from the eaves upstairs.
Sitting across the street waiting for the fire department to arrive, Sarah Herndon wasn’t worried about the loss of merchandise or the threat to her family’s livelihood. It was the potential loss of the history the building represented, “of the ghosts that danced there,” that saddened her.
The fire blew out the upstairs window and firefighters had to cut a hole in the roof to let the smoke out. There was significant water damage and repairs were estimated to cost around $90,000.
The community of Round Pond rallied around the Herndons and the store. A benefit concert at the Little Brown Church raised enough money to cover the insurance deductible.
Granite Hall survived. Repairs were made, merchandise was restocked, the doors reopened, and customers returned.
Today, it is busier than ever.
“It’s the love of the place. That’s the value,” Sarah Herndon said. She loves how Granite Hall is the first place people stop when they come into town in the summer, and how excited the kids are after saving their money all winter to shop for licorice chalks, malted milk balls, root beer barrels, peppermint puffs, wax bottles, rock candy, sour fruit buttons, smooth and melty mints, and chocolate-covered gummi bears.
“They can’t wait to get back to the candy,” she said.
