Friends of Algiers Village, Inc.

This place mattered in 1817 when Guilford was the most populated town in Vermont. 

Algiers (now a village in Guilford) was a district, named jokingly for card players who gathered at the crossroads in the Broad Brook House to hold competitions against neighboring towns. When they repeatedly won, they were dubbed "pirates from Algiers". Broad Brook House, over the course of its long lifetime was a hotel, a tavern, a livery stable and store. Today, at a time when towns are losing their local stores and along with them, their personalities, it would be easy for Algiers to be erased from memory.

When an offer from a national chain was proposed to the previous owner, it was feared that this would be the obvious future for the historic Broad Brook House, which contains the Guilford Country Store. The owner reached out to her community for some alternative solution. She was no longer able to manage the store on her own after the death of her husband but didn't want to see it become just another anonymous chain store. Vermonters value their villages and their communities. In response to the owner, neighbors banded together and agreed that saving the failing store was the route to saving Algiers and maintaining a gathering place for Guilford. These neighbors call themselves the Friends of Algiers Village.  Their mission in acquiring the store is simple yet profound:  to keep it "local," to ensure that our connection to our rich past is never severed from our future, that our community has a gathering place - a place that matters - to pay respect to those who came before us and to offer a perpetual gift to those who will follow us.

The Friends managed to scrape together enough money through community donations, grants, and a loan from a locally-minded bank to purchase the store which was badly deteriorating - both in its physical condition and in its business.  Time has been unkind to this aged but beautiful structure; the work required to restore it is great in scope and cost.  Volunteers have been recruited. Neighbors are sitting down to kitchen tables, deciding how they can help.  We are fortunate in that we are a community of talents - everyone has something to share.   Even though we have our differences, our goal is the same: we all want a sense of place in our Guilford Country Store.

This place matters. It is our community nucleus.  It is where we go to laugh, cry, share, learn, be kind, courteous, respectful, humble and sometimes boast about our kids or our gardens.  It is where we catch up and get caught up.  All of these things enjoyed around the universal unifiers - food and drink! Let us pause in our busy days, share a cup of coffee, a snack, the news of our lives.  There is no other store or gathering place anywhere in Guilford. It is our one-and-only, very historical Guilford Country Store.  It is OUR place and this place matters.

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