Steve VanderVeen: Jas A. Brouwer and Meyer Music

Brouwer and Meyer are historic Holland retail names. They share a common history.

Both men were carpenters. Brouwer, as a teenager, learned the trade from a man named Sakkers, an artistic cabinet maker, whom the Brouwer family had lived with after losing their home in the Great Holland Fire of 1871.

After the fire, furniture stores blossomed. In 1872, Hannes Meyer and James Brouwer opened a showroom on N. River Avenue to display pianos, organs, sewing machines, furniture and caskets. While Meyer focused on musical instruments and sewing machines, Brouwer focused on furniture and caskets.

Selling caskets wasn't unusual for furniture dealers in those days. In 1876, Meyer and Brouwer advertised having “the finest coffins and caskets ever exhibited in this city at reasonable prices.”

Hannes Meyer’s son, Albert, started working for his father as a teenager. Albert officially joined the partnership in 1877, when the business took the name Meyer-Brouwer Company. In the 1880s, the partners moved the business south into a new two-story frame building at 212-214 River Ave.

In 1890, the Meyers and James Brouwer dissolved their partnership and formed two separate businesses. Brouwer razed his two-story frame structure and replaced it with a three-story brick building. Meanwhile, the Meyers opened a music store across the street. As part of the dissolution, they sold their undertaking business to Koos Nibbelink, who combined it with his livery business at 22 E. Ninth St.

After his father's death in 1899, Albert renamed the business A.H. Meyer. In 1903, Albert moved his namesake business to 17 E. Eighth St. and changed the name to Meyer Music House.

Brouwer kept innovating. He was one of Holland’s first retail merchants to offer credit, enticing young newlyweds to purchase furniture and carpeting without cash. He also provided customers with the “Home-Trade Price-Maker,” a 250-page catalog rivaling Sears Roebuck.

Brouwer also expanded his storefront. In 1914, he purchased the adjacent three-story building on the corner of River Avenue and Ninth Street, with its curved corner façade. That gave the Jas. A. Brouwer Furniture Company a two-building storefront, which he elegantly covered with an 85-foot copper canopy. In 1928, Brouwer’s open house drew 4,500 visitors, equivalent to 33% of Holland’s population.

Meyer Music House also expanded. Albert son Harris, having worked with his father since 1917, opened a similar business in Kalamazoo in 1923. In 1926, Albert’s son Frederick joined Albert at the Holland store. Similarly, in 1918, James Brouwer’s son William joined the Jas. A. Brouwer Furniture Company.

Former employees of the Brouwer and Meyer businesses made an impact on downtown Holland. After being in business together for 10 years, Milo DeVries, a former salesman for Brouwer Furniture, and Cornelius Doornbos, a former salesman at Meyer Music, built, in 1925, the five-story DeVries and Doornbos Furniture Emporium (present-day Riverview Building, home of Butch’s).

There, through large windows on every floor, they displayed their furniture in natural light.

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In 1926, in reaction to John Van Vyven purchasing the Goodyke Music House, Albert acquired the building adjacent to Meyer Music House and doubled his floor plan.

Reflecting their success, both Albert and James Brouwer lived in a prestigious district: Albert occupied his father’s Queen Ann-style home at 4 W. 12th St. and James lived at 54 E. 12th St.

James, who served on Holland’s Board of Education for 30 years, also had a passion for electric automobiles. He bought his first electric car in 1912; his sixth in 1934. Still, he spent his life at his store, working until his death in 1950, the year he turned 96.

Albert died in 1952.

Richard VandeBunte purchased Meyer Music House in 1984. The Christian Music Center, founded by John Scripps in 1953, purchased the business in 1989, renaming it Meyer Christian Music Center, and later, Meyer Music. In 2001, the Holland store retained the Meyer name and relocated to 675 Lakewood Boulevard.

Aesthetically, the Jas A. Brouwer Furniture Company is also still with us: Resthaven’s The River Place sits on the site and reflects the building’s curved corner façade.

Information comes from The Holland Evening Sentinel, The Holland City News, Robert Swierenga’s "Holland, Michigan," and correspondence with Meyer Music.

— Steve VanderVeen is a resident of Holland. You may reach him at skvveen@gmail.com. His book, "The Holland Area's First Entrepreneurs," is available at Reader’s World.

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Holland History: Jas A. Brouwer and Meyer Music