Downstate jeweler closes after 50 years
MOWEAQUA, Ill. — A diamond is forever, and ever.
But diamond experts and their iconic businesses, not so much. All good things come to an end, and so we’re now in the last days of Hall Jewelers & Gifts, which has sparkled in Moweaqua for more than half a century.
The closing down sale has been running since November, and it’ll stop when there is nothing left to sell. Make a decent offer, and you can even walk away with the shelving. Owner Bill Hall, however, is not a man parted so easily from all that glitters. A registered jeweler with the American Gem Society and still shining with flawless knowledge about what he sells, he plans to continue retailing diamonds on a small scale to customers who know him, even without a store counter to lean on.
Hall says fading into the sunset totally wouldn’t be fair to clients up and down the country who have come to count on him when they need a spectacular rock to adorn a loved one.
“They trust me because I sell nothing but the finest diamonds that you can buy,” he says, voice rising, his neatly combed white hair swaying loose as he leans in to a visitor to drive home the diamond-tipped points of his words.
“I don’t sell any trash.”
How people all over the country come to know and trust this expert in a village with a name few outsiders even know how to pronounce is the story of the U.S. 51 highway that was. The busy north-south route cut through the heart of Moweaqua and funneled business right by the front doors of the extraordinary store Hall and his wife and faithful business partner, Randy, built in 1973. The building was their act of faith in the future of the little community where they had earlier set up shop in rented premises after moving there in 1960 in search of business opportunity.
Hall designed the store, with an apartment for his family upstairs, and framed it with a giant brown roof that slopes almost to the ground at either end. The white front is offset with a full-length balcony and half-timbered decoration, and the place looks like someone took a giant Alpine chalet and airdropped it into the middle of Central Illinois.
“I think one reason a lot of people stopped by was the building,” Hall says. “It’s interesting.”
Once inside, Hall’s knowledge and his wife’s efficient sense of customer service dazzled customers as much as the merchandise: a full range of gold and diamond jewelry and shelves stocked with gift and decorative items bearing names such as Hummel, Waterford, Swarovski, Fenton and on and on.
“We had people from Wisconsin and Minnesota, they’d stop every year on their way to Florida in the fall,” says Hall, looking out the window and seeing something different from the quiet street that lies there today. “But, after the road went by the other way, nobody does that now.”
The U.S. 51 bypass was completed in 2003 and sent the road curving around the east side of the village a full mile away. The Halls just knew it would be bad news for trade. “People who are not in business don’t realize this, but when you stop traffic, you stop business,” Hall says. “Traffic means business.”
It wasn’t game over because the Halls had too much of an established clientele for that, and yet it wasn’t the same, either. Too late in the day and too expensive for them to move, the couple hung on as best they could. But there is only so much you can do for so long, and now with ill health becoming an issue for Randy, and her husband passing through his eighth decade, it’s time to ring up the final sales for that eye-catching Alpine store.
For customers such as Leann Crawford, who lives in Moweaqua and stopped by to have a ring repaired, it’s like losing a friend. “I am going to really miss it,” says Crawford, 26. “You just don’t see many stores like this.”
The Halls’ only child, Timi Kaufman, had stood on a stool to serve customers at the age of 4 and is a certified gemologist herself. She caught fire with the family entrepreneurial flair but took it on the road instead and now runs her own successful travel company, Timi’s Tours. She’s based in Moweaqua and says location doesn’t matter anymore when you are selling trips to somewhere else. Bricks and mortar family shops, however, are a different story.
“The era of the mom and pop stores is slowly going away,” says Kaufman, 55. “And it’s just kind of sad.”
Back at the store, her dad is swapping jokes with customers and is still full of sparkle behind his counter as he watches everything go away. He’s got an endless treasure trove of diamond stories and even tells how, once, he got to hold the spectacular 45.52-carat Hope Diamond, the biggest blue rock ever found and now the pride of the Smithsonian Institution’s collection.
And yet for all his jewel-studded knowledge, one thing continues to elude Hall: Exactly why do we like love dressing ourselves up in shiny bits of pressure-cooked carbon? “I really don’t know; it beats me,” he says. “But I love this business.”