Striped Cow, 805 Massachusetts Street

Lawrence native David Jess has been a downtown retailer since 1993, when he opened Third Planet in the little building on the 9th Street alley long occupied by the Bourgeois Pig. After moving to 846 Massachusetts Street and being a renter all these years, David wanted to own the building that his latest boutique would occupy. His purchase of the old J.C. Penney building at 805 Massachusetts, which was later occupied by the Ben Franklin store and then The Buckle, has been a preservation success as well as a cultural upgrade for downtown.

Rehab work was more about removal of inappropriate interior buildouts than restoration. When David found the one significant indoor feature that hadn’t been compromised beyond repair, the decorative tin ceiling, he and his crew did a masterful job of restoring and featuring what is now one of the focal points of this beautiful commercial space.

Glazed terra cotta ornamentation on the building’s exterior.

The ceiling had been hidden under not one but two drop-ceilings. The obvious one was installed by the corporate owners of The Buckle, who also built new interior walls in an attempt to duplicate the look and feel of their mall stores. The removal of that revealed the Ben Franklin buildout, with materials mostly from the1950s or 60s. Nine dumpsters in all were filled before the new finishes and look of the Striped Cow could be applied.

The storefront received a light touch, preserving the original glazed terra cotta ornamentation that early LPA architectural historians described in their surveys as making it “the only Sullivanesque or Art-Nouveau-influenced building in this region."

How does the space feel now as opposed to before? “It doesn’t seem like the same building,” David says. But he notes that the project was easier than he thought it would be, and he credits the structure’s good bones. This beautiful downtown space is worth a look—masked and distanced of course!—and LPA is pleased to recognize this positive investment in this city’s downtown.

Striped Cow owner David Jess.