Milford History Online

If you happened to be walking around the Oval during the first sixty odd years of the 20th century, you would likely have run into Mr. Fred E. Powers, the Milford shop owner in the suit and bow tie on his way to work. Between 1902 and 1966, Powers made this daily trek, returning home for lunch to his Summer Street home, and then heading on back to his store in the Stickney Building. Powers began as a clerk at E. Armstrong and Company, but by 1911, he had bought out the business and set up shop as Powers Men’s Store, featuring “quality clothing at small town prices.” He lost his wife in the 1918 flu epidemic and lost the store in 1924, but after selling it to Irving Webb, he remained on as a clerk and actually bought the place back four years later. The Powers shop would remain as “the store for men” in Milford until his death in 1966. 

This Stickney Building location would continue on as a clothing store after the death of Mr. Powers, as Wright Fashions moved into the space in 1966. Jane Bourn Wright, the former elementary school art teacher and sometime local fashion show producer, offered clothes for women and girls in a shop remodeled towards '60s sensibilities with a royal blue and light turquoise paint job. The versatile Mrs. Wright also authored a small column in the Milford Cabinet called “Wright’s Fashion Forecasts.” A sample of some advice offered to the Milford ladies of the time: “Keep in mind that the darker the color, the slimmer your figure will look. Wear dark where you are the heaviest.” By the late 1970s, a yellow and orange décor greeted clothing hunters here at Teri-Anne’s, a casualwear shop run by Theresa Sliney and Anna Doucet who combined their nicknames to create the store's moniker. 

Today, a very “21st century” digital dentistry office does business where folks found the latest fashions for most of the previous century.