BRJPaperturnReduced - Flipbook - Page 21
(Stacey Roessler)
(Lauren Kearns)
Left: Children race to slide down the Rabbit Hole at The Magic Shop. Above: A menagerie of furry
friends waiting to greet customers. Below: Diane Maravel (left) , Georgie Schley.
The late Lib Schley and her sister, Mayor
Watts Hitchcock, were born at a time when
the fairies of the late-Victorian and Edwardian eras still danced in the woods and rollicked with 8lost boys9 and princesses on the
pages of children9s literature. Inspired by
Wonderland and Neverland, and the dream
of never growing up, they opened the
Magic Shop in 1947, in a rambling building
on the former John Henry Miller farm in
Oldwick, New Jersey. The store was a creative playhouse for Lib and Mayor to recapture the enchantment of their childhood,
and they employed Freddie Foster, a local
veteran and skilled craftsmen, to build and
fashion any design that they dreamed up,
from toys and music boxes to fanciful
cuckoo clocks.