From Shoestrings to Starched Shirts
The New York Store, Main Street, Sheridan — circa 1908
Harvey Fryberger showed up to his kid's graduation party carrying a folder of newspaper clippings. The party was at the New York Store Suite — the building his family built in 1908 — and the clippings were about the woman who built it. His great-great-grandmother. Emma Stevens. He handed them across like it was nothing. Like this was just something you carried around.
It took a moment to understand what was in the folder. And then it took considerably longer to put it down.
Look up sometime when you're across the street from 35 North Main. The name is still there.
1908
Today
The garden spot of the West
In the spring of 1895, Emma Stevens was nineteen and boarded a train out of Montfort, Wisconsin for a town she'd been promised was "the coming city." Her brother Henry had gone west to Sheridan and opened a dry goods store, and he wanted her to come help run it.
What met her was twenty-five saloons going full blast, a restricted district across the street with the Bucket of Blood saloon on the corner, and a man called Rattle Snake Jack who reached into his coat, took out his pet snake, and laid it on the counter while she waited on him.
She was scared stiff. She stayed anyway.
The name goes into the brick
Four years in, Emma struck out on her own — a New York Store in Buffalo, run profitably and alone, until she returned to Sheridan in 1902 to marry Harvey Fryberger, who had by then become a partner in the Stevens operation. In 1908 the family built their own building at 35 North Main.
It became the largest department store in northern Wyoming, renowned for the top fashions of the day. The name went into the brickwork at the very top. It's still there.
A century later, still standing
The store ran nearly a hundred years. Emma was active in the firm until 1961 and lived three blocks away on Loucks Street until she died in 1966, at ninety. Her obituary in the Sheridan Press ran on page one.
The building is a residence now — the one we host as the New York Store Suite. Each owner since has added something. The basement has never been touched. The name in the stone never came down.
Harvey Fryberger's kid graduated this spring. The party was at the Suite — in the building Emma put up 118 years ago. Harvey arrived with a folder of clippings under his arm, handed them across, and said here, you should know this story. He was right.
Three blocks west on Loucks Street, the house where Emma lived until 1966 is quietly in the process of coming back to the family. The store passed out of their hands thirty years ago. The house is another matter.
Some things take a century to come full circle.
"The name went into the brickwork in 1908. It hasn't come down."
The New York Store Suite is available for stays, events, and private gatherings. Four bedrooms, 9,000 square feet on Main Street in downtown Sheridan. The forty-foot bar has hosted everything from family reunions to corporate retreats. It never feels like a venue. It feels like yours.
