Inside The Lady Next Door’s New Digs Next Door

Christine Stulik, owner of The Lady Next Door in Warren, inside her spacious new store. Photography by Christopher Field

The Lady Next Door has been a Warren landmark for forty-two years.

But there was a time last spring when Christine Stulik, who took over the business in 2020, was sure she’d have to close.

The owners of her Water Street building weren’t renewing her lease, and she found herself with a store full of eclectic vintage treasures and nowhere to go. Maybe she could find something in nearby Massachusetts, she thought; perhaps New Bedford, or she could set up shop inside a converted garage at her Fall River home. Or maybe online.

Stunned, she turned to social media for help.

Colorful serving ware and pottery. Photography by Christopher Field

“Time is precious,” she wrote. “It’s a reminder that our small businesses that we cherish and love are not a given; they require a constant fight not only from us as the purveyors but from the community that defines itself around the places that make it special.”

Customers who had been shopping at the store for decades visited, in tears. “This has been my home for thirty years,” they pleaded. “I can’t imagine Warren without this store. It has to stay here,” they said. “It has to be on Water Street.”

After a few stressful months of looking at spaces and hearing from neighborhood residents and business owners eager to help, Stulik learned the former Bakeshop spot was available. After a little negotiation and a lot of elbow grease — Stulik, her father, husband and stepson painted tiles and ripped up linoleum to turn the bakery into a vintage store — The Lady Next Door moved down the street to 277 Water, just in time to open for last year’s holiday season.

An unexpected bright side to all of this? The two-story space is filled with light and triple the size of the old store, which original proprietor Sandy Nathanson owned for thirty-six years.

“This place is so much brighter and open and spacious,” Stulik says. “Now, you can approach the things versus the things kind of coming at you.”

She’s whittled down the collection during the move as well. Some things that had been sitting around for four decades got the heave-ho. And she’s making more space for fine and estate jewelry, sourcing midcentury pottery and stocking the entire second floor with vintage clothing, bags, shoes and accessories. The jewel box of a space is like an antique toy store for adults, with colorful beads and baubles everywhere you look. In one corner, a Tiffany lamp shares space with a black velvet frock shot through with gold embroidery; in another, Hardy Boys books and a vintage tome about folk songs rub shoulders.

Pastel McCoy vases line a sunny window,
while a pastry case that once held Bakeshop’s fresh boules and chocolate chip cookies overflows with fine baubles and gold rings Stulik’s determined to save from the melt refinery.

Slowly, steadily, Stulik is molding the store into her vision. The pieces are more carefully curated, a little more colorful, a little more … her.

Stulik’s pup, Poppy, explores outside the shop. Photography by Christopher Field

“This is a chance to define the store for what I want it to be, which has been really great,” she says. “Sandy will always be a part of it — that’s how it all started. But I’m actually making it my own.”

And one thing is certain: If she has her way, she’ll never again have to think about leaving her beloved quirky, artsy East Bay town near the sea.

“I tried to move,” she says with a laugh, “and they pulled me right back. The people coming in and telling me how much the store meant to them here made me double down on Warren. I credit the community 100 percent for keeping the store here.”