Now look at that old church. And them old houses.

Did George Washington ever sleep here?

Of course he did. This whole neighborhood just stinks with atmosphere.

–Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

Brooklyn–of all places–“stinks with atmosphere” in Capra’s Arsenic and Old Lace.

The main commercial streets off the central square once held a full complement of businesses you’d find in any town: furniture stores, groceries, pharmacies, hardwares, and clothiers. Now, block after block has been inhabited by more than ninety antique dealers, each space adapted to varied wares. Secondhand culture has colonized the carcasses of failed retail businesses, and a new breed of merchant has created a new bustle on the streets.

–Naton Leslie

Life is too short for just one epigraph.

As Nate Leslie reminds us in That Might Be Useful: Exploring America’s Secondhand Culture, context is key in the used-goods market. Around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, where Leslie routinely trawls resale malls, flea markets, and auctions, context is seemingly around every corner. Dead old brick-faced downtowns have been completely resurrected as charming antiques centers. In these Gilded Age resort towns, the commercial districts are hemmed in by postcard Victorians that have themselves been reincarnated as B+Bs and bungalows refurbished by moneyed refugees from the City. Cultivated customers—in loafers and carrying L.L. Bean totes—stroll leisurely along wide sidewalks under the shade of ancient elms and sugar maples, popping from quaint shop to quaint shop and refreshing themselves at the restored soda fountain or tearoom at the end of the block. The merchandise on offer at shops in these old downtowns almost sells itself.

Washtington was here.

Now Washington did sleep in a few places near my neighborhood, but it is in fact precisely because I do not live in an area particularly well known for the pedigree of its antiques or one that is rife with historic old houses that “just stink with atmosphere” that I am reminded all the time of the power of context to transform borderline junk into décor with potential.

It is a lot easier to “re-” something—restore, refurbish, reincarnate, resurrect, redo—with good old bones than to create something characterful from scratch. Including ambiance. Reproduction, as any good scavenger knows, is not, after all, the point. However, reproduction atmosphere is what is most prevalent here (at least as far as curiosity shops go).

Although I am a firm believer in authentic atmosphere and my first choice is always to scavenge in the narrow, shoeboxy, turn-of-the-century storefronts with penny-tiled entrances, pressed tin ceilings, and worn wide-plank floors, (you know, historic buildings and blocks that “stink with atmosphere”), I rarely get the chance. But all is not lost. I can now appreciate the very genuine ability of a store’s contents to create their own atmosphere. Recent forays into shops tucked into otherwise generic strip malls and former warehouses, next to doggie daycares and down the row from (ahem) gentleman’s clubs, have convinced me. If the modern outside is uninspiring (if not downright discouraging), the inside is usually like stepping into another world—the same (or nearly so) as if the merchandise were in its proper historic context.

Old bottle collection on Front Street in Georgetown, SC.

So I’ve been thinking about how atmosphere happens, and I think it comes down to a few key things. First, how dealers arrange their objects (sometimes according to color, to function, to category, to approximate a real room). Battered kitchen tools, pink glassware, ceramic salt-and-pepper shakers in the shape of Collies. Things I am not typically moved by magically become noteworthy as an effect of their arrangement. Like art. Second, and sometimes more important, sheer volume. Cavernous spaces chock full of objects have a visceral power to seduce a scavenger of any stripe. I’ve never been particularly interested in old soda bottle crates before, or in cloudy and dirty medicinal bottles of various bygone eras, or in the Pyrex mixing bowls my grandmother used to use, but once these items are installed together in stacks and rows, situated in a context of like objects, they are transformed into a legitimate collection. The blue-blooded scavenger must find this cohesion and coherence irresistible. Voila: atmosphere!

So while external context can’t hurt and certainly helps, it’s the content inside that makes a curiosity shop—whether you happen to find it in Cary Grant’s midcentury Brooklyn neighborhood or on a 21^st-century highway frontage road.

(If you haven’t seen Arsenic and Old Lace in a while, and if you haven’t read Leslie’s book, then you really should.)