Falls Church Antique Center to Close April 30

Say it ain’t so, Falls Church! 

Having lost Dominion Camera in September and Brown’s Hardware in April – in the heart of downtown Falls Church City – now, just a few doors down, we’ll be losing Falls Church Antique Center (FCAC), aka Falls Church Antique Annex, at 250 W. Broad St. by the close-of-business Wednesday, April 3. 

For nearly half a century, one of the region’s most beloved destinations for antiquing, collectibles shopping, and simply browsing for little affordable treasures, FCAC has served as the “perfect” place “for antique enthusiasts and those searching for something interesting or unique,” Visit Falls Church says. 

“The store is filled with undiscovered treasures with a lot of history behind them. Upon entering, you’ll see a wide collection of vintage glass, dishes and drink ware that’ll catch your eye,” Visit Falls Church says. “As you continue, you’ll come across leather-bound books, typewriters, walls of knick-knacks, photos, coins from around the world, furniture, hats, costume jewelry, toys, and so much more. Browsing through these collections is sure to bring back nostalgic memories. The Falls Church Antique Annex staff are always welcoming and happy to chat about the different pieces. If you’re interested, they can even explain the medical tools from years past.”

The Falls Church Independent stopped by FCAC April 23 to chat with Paul Quinn, one of the co-founders of the shop as well as of Quinn’s Auction Galleries of Falls Church. We also spoke with a few of the antique dealers taking stints serving customers under the store’s co-op business model. We were curious about why the renowned and cherished downtown shop was closing, what this means to the antiques dealers who share the space, and what’s made the store so successful all these years.

Arlington Magazine voted FCAC one of the area’s best shopping destinations for 2025. 

“When Paul Quinn met his wife, Cathy, they discovered a shared love of period furniture and vintage collectibles, and together opened a family business,” Arlington Magazine wrote. “What began as a small booth in an antiques mall is now a longstanding co-op on West Broad Street where vendors come together to sell a diverse array of old-timey goods, from jewelry and housewares to furniture, toys and oddities.” 

“Quinn remains at the helm, dedicated to offering unique finds at fair prices, even after the death of his wife of 53 years in July. Among his most prized finds: a table once owned by George Washington that expands from a modest 36-inch round to a grand oblong banquet piece stretching 14 feet.”  

In 2022, John Kelly of The Washington Post wrote that “within two hours of the announcement of Queen Elizabeth’s death,” FCAC “sold over $700 worth of Royal Family collectibles and memorabilia.” 

With deadpan wit, Quinn seemed to relish parrying my questions. His devotion to the antiques and collectibles trade, the Falls Church community, and his many thousands of customers, however, shone through. 

Hailing from Iowa, Quinn came to Washington in 1962, “working on the Hill and going to college.” But he “quickly discovered” he “did not want to be in politics.” After five years studying for the priesthood, he also knew his was a different calling. He met Cathy – from Pennsylvania – at their church and they were so smitten they “got engaged” on their “first date.” 

Asked if he was the “owner” of FCAC, Quinn said he was “the survivor, the enduring survivor.” Around four decades ago, in the 1980s, he and Cathy, purchased the “130 year-old medical office building” – today’s Zoya’s Atelier at 260 W. Broad St. “I had retired from a real job and we decided to open up an antique shop.” For perhaps eight years, they operated out of what they referred to as the “White House.” FCAC’s current site was simply called the “Annex,” but it later became the store’s primary site. 

I was curious how Quinn came to have a passion for antiquing. “Well, we liked old stuff. Grandparents, the stuff they had. When our children were born – and they were three years apart – we would take them out to the country and we would buy old stuff. And it was entertainment we could afford. And we just did it and it was fun – you know, cheaper than therapy.” [Laughs]. 

Asked if he has a particular niche or area of expertise in the antiques trade, Quinn joked, “I might do whatever it is you’re buying…. The people have everything and the rich have isolated stuff. The rich would not come here.”

So how does Quinn feel about having to shutter the store after over 40 years in operation? His answer: surprisingly stoic. “Everything dies,” he said, with provocatively little affect. “Trees. Plants. Dinosaurs. Human beings. People who are not yet born. The Cycle of Life moves on.”

Notwithstanding Quinn’s apparent fatalism, he expressed a clear love of the antiques trade. Customers often express their joys in the shop. “They come in and they have memories. They have good, positive vibes. ‘We saw it at Grandma’s!’”

Mixing it up with customers has also provided Quinn with years of joy. “Whatever you pick out is fabulous!,” he exclaims. “I’ve been known to say, ‘Oh, if you haven’t gotten me anything for my birthday yet, set it aside.” [Laughs]. He appreciates one regular customer who makes purchases for her ‘Gift Closet,’ so she’s always able to find a gift she likes. “That’s cheaper than therapy too!,” he jokes.

Asked if Quinn has any particular “pricing philosophy” that's been a key to success, he gazed at me quizzically. “Well, would you say you set a reasonable price?,” I prodded. “Doesn’t look like it!,” he joked, gesturing around the shop floor. “Some of this stuff has been here a long time.” But then he acknowledged, “Yes, people buy from us. If they didn’t we’d have been gone a long time ago.”

Mostly, Quinn appreciates serving The Little City. “Falls Church is a great community,” he said. “Three hundred years old. A lot of people cherish being here. People who come here mourn when they leave, because they like the school system, they like, generally, what’s happening.”

But now, it’s closing time. 

“We’re closing the doors and locking up April 30,” Quinn said. “And it’s been wonderful actually closing because we have had more compliments than I could ever have wished for.... And a lot of people say, ‘What’s happening? All of Falls Church is going!’ And I say, ‘Well, not all of them have gone yet.’” [Laughs].

Laurie Trainer, a Vienna, Va. resident, former regulatory lawyer, and one of the store’s co-op antiques dealers working the floor chatted with us as well. “I work here two times a week, because we all take turns,” she said. 

Trainer feels like a relative newbie at FCAC as some of the dealers have been around for “33 years or longer.” In the six years she’s been at FCAC, she’s seen lots of changes. Covid forced the store to close off the upstairs and part of the store was sold off to become today’s Stylish Patina nextdoor. 

Asked if she could explain why exactly the store is closing, Trainer could only say Quinn, the building’s owner, has put the building up for sale, having given the dealers “plenty of notice.” Since the building has yet to sell, however, no one knows what comes next. The dealers are hoping the next owner will rent to them so they can keep an antiques shop in the space, but they’re worried if the rent gets too high for their slim sales margins it won’t be sustainable.

Trainer was nearly in tears describing how much she’s loved antiques dealing at FCAC. “Oh, it’s great!,” she said. “This is my retirement gig…. This is something I always wanted to do when I retired, so I’m happy to be doing it.” 

Trainer also developed a love of antiquing at an early age. “When I was little, my parents loved going antiquing and I’d go with them, so I got the bug way back then,” she said. “And, I’ve been antiquing my whole life and I knew I wanted to do this. But what’s so great about it is with the model here – with all of us working – you learn so much from the other dealers and the customers. The customers come in who collect something and they know more about it than I possibly could. So, you learn a lot from them as well. So that’s been great.”

Trainer describes herself as a “generalist” without any particular specialty or niche in the antiques and collectibles world. “I tend to get the things that I like and the things that are selling. So that’s what you try to pick up…. And in just six years, things have changed…. Shortly before I started, Hollywood Regency – which is not my thing at all, very fancy stuff  – was in. Now it’s all Mid-Century Modern and that’s really big. But I love Primitive, the old country stuff. So I tend to look particularly for Primitive…. the kind of things you would find out in a country home. Lots of hand-made, lots of old buckets, the wood sometimes has a great patina – so, I love that stuff.”

For Trainer, the joys of antiquing are numerous. “I’ve learned so much and you learn history, and then things will happen. I was at a rummage sale and I picked up a metal tin thing [like a license plate] that said ‘Stanley Fire Department’ on it. And it looked cool so I bought it. [Shows picture]. So I went online to try to find out where Stanley was. And there’s a Stanley in just about every town. So, I went on Facebook and I saw that the Stanley, Virginia Fire Department had a Facebook page. So, I sent them a picture of this and asked if they knew if it belonged to their Fire Department and exactly what it is? And [I got back] this picture.” [The plate says: Stanley Fire Department 51.] Turns out, it was an official plate designed to identify the truck and display its number. 

The respondent was overjoyed to see the photo because his father or grandfather had “started the Fire Department.” He offered Trainer any price she asked on the item, given its sentimental value. Literally, he said, "I will pay any price." So, she decided to gift the Fire Department Plate to him instead, whereupon he sent her a Stanley Fire Department t-shirt and a challenge coin. “So, I love these kinds of stories,” she said. 

Trainer was also recently fascinated by an odd-looking Civil War relic a buyer from an Arlington museum purchased. Originally, she had no idea what the curious metal object was. It turned out to be a brass button polishing device for Civil War uniforms, the very same sort that Kevin Costner uses on his uniform in Dances with Wolves. “So, he bought it and said, ‘We’re renovating the Arlington Civil War museum, so come see it! It’ll be in there!’ So, it’s really exciting when things like that happen.”

Over time, Trainer has noticed that shoppers are skewing younger where once they were mostly seniors. She believes their concern for the environment raises their interest in antiquing since it’s all about repurposing and recycling. “People will come in and say, ‘We’re buying nice things for each other for Christmas this year. But, the theme is everything has to be used.’ So they’re buying all their Christmas gifts for all their relatives here. And that’s how they’re exchanging… So, it’s been great. I’m loving it.”

“Our customers are the best,” Trainer said. “And thank-you for all the patronage through the years. We’re going to miss them!”

Finally, we chatted with salesperson Alison Tibbetts – mother of three – as she served customers. The newest dealer at FCAC, Tibbetts only “started in mid-February.” 

“I came in knowing they were going to close,” Tibbetts said. “So this is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time and I had come in asking if they had space for dealers. And they said, ‘Well, we do, but we’re closing real soon, so it’s not really a good time to start.’ And I said, ‘I would still love to have the opportunity to do this just to start the learning curve, even if you’re closing.’ Because, what if I hate it?”

Tibbetts had been selling kids’ used clothing before, and it led her to find all sorts of “beautiful things.” So, her taste for collecting small antiques from around the world began. “I often find very beautiful things,” she said. “So, I was like, ‘Well, I could do this and I would love this.’ But I wasn’t sure.” 

Tibbetts finds antiquing joyful not just for the beauty of the objects she finds, but it’s also “just the hunt… You just never know” what you’ll find. 

Cautious for a beginning antiques collector, Tibbetts decided to only rent a single display case at FCAC rather than an entire booth. “I prefer small beautiful things that fit into bookcases,” she said with a laugh. 

Despite having just a small footprint at FCAC and only being around for a few months, Tibbetts believes she's learned prodigiously from her colleagues and is quite sentimental about her time with them.

“I’ve loved it even more than I thought I would,” Tibbetts said. “It’s both awesome and it’s kind of bittersweet, because it’s the best thing ever and this store is really special because of its co-oping atmosphere, it’s a different type of store. In many antique stores, you set up your booth, you drop off your stuff, but you don’t really talk to other dealers or the customers. Here, you get to talk to the customers and learn about what they know. You get to learn from the other dealers about what they know. And it’s just fun. So, it’s cool. I mean, I've learned a ton in the last almost three months.”

What sorts of things has Tibbetts learned? “Practical things, like how to clean things most effectively to make them look good for presenting,” she said. “How to display things better. I suck at displaying, but it’s been really helpful – I don’t know if you’ve seen, but I have just one shelving unit. I’m very risk averse. I could have rented a whole booth. But, I was like, ‘What if I hate it? What if I’m no good at it?’ So, I got one shelving unit and it's completely maximized. So, what I’ve learned is how to layer it and how to display it. And from them I’ve learned how to price it. I just know that I like it and thought other people would like these things. But, I’ve done really well and maybe could have gone for the whole booth because now I’m doing well.”

As she awaits news of whether FCAC may reopen to antiques dealers in September, allowing her to possibly stay on, Tibbetts is looking forward to monthly flea markets to continue to put her “beautiful things” out for sale. 

“I’m just so hoping we re-open and it’s just so wonderful that everyone’s been so supportive of this business and through its closing process,” Tibbetts said. “Everyone comes in and says, ‘We’re sorry to see it go.’ But, just being the newest, I don’t have the longevity. There are people here in their 80s and 90s. They’ve been here for decades. It’s just a really special community to have gotten a chance to be part of.”

By Christopher Jones