By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
The Sample Shop in 1939.
Over the last handful of years, Hertel Avenue might have finally been redefined as the home of cosmopolitan and trendy boutiques, food and drink.
But from the time the neighborhoods surrounding Hertel were being built and the 60 years that followed, North Buffalo’s main drag was dominated and defined by The Sample Shop.
The Sample on Hertel in 1990.
Anne Bunis started The Sample Shop in the front parlor of her Hertel Avenue ground floor flat in 1929, selling sample dresses from large New York City designers. Soon after, her husband, Louis, had the idea to have “living mannequins” in the front window. What had been static displays had become fashion shows for passersby on Hertel.
That one house grew into a string of five houses within a decade, all combined into a single 61-foot block tile frontage along Hertel Avenue. What started as a business with just Anne Bunis as buyer, shopkeeper and seamstress, had grown to 61 employees.
Louis and Anne Bunis inside The Sample in the 1980s.
In 1947, most of the houses were torn down and the larger, long familiar Sample store was built – although pieces of the old homes remained a familiar sight deep in the bowels of the store.
As The Sample celebrated 60 years in 1989, 88-year-old Anne Bunis watched her company open a store in the Walden Galleria – although the end of The Sample (and local retailing in general) was clearly in sight.
The 11-store chain dwindled to three, and those remaining Sample stores were ordered closed by a bankruptcy judge in 1990.
In 1993, the flagship store on Hertel Avenue was razed to make room for a senior apartment complex.
As noted in a 1990 editorial, the loss of the Sample on Hertel was as big a blow to the neighborhood as the loss of Sattler’s was to Broadway-Fillmore. News Columnist Donn Esmonde wrote about The Sample in the store’s final days, when it had “70% off” signs plastered in all the windows in 1991.
“What happened? Tastes diversified. The Sample wasn’t big enough to offer something for everyone. Specialization meant the Sample was no longer a one-stop destination. Branches opened in the malls, but rent was high and the stores were small,” wrote Esmonde.
“The big place on Hertel sat in the middle of a residential neighborhood, both serving it and defining it. The clothes were unpretentious yet refined. For a long time, it worked.
“In the end, it was another victim of the ’80s illusion of never-ending prosperity. Maybe, as time went on, it didn’t do enough things for enough people. Which doesn’t mean that it didn’t use to, or that it stopped trying.
“The world changed and, like so many other local retail outlets, the Sample lost its way. And this week, the people to whom it meant the most will leave it for the last time.”
