Did you know that May is Preservation Month?  The Wheeling Young Preservationists (WYP) decided to kick off the celebration one day early by hosting an “Afternoon in Centre Market” on Saturday.  It’s exactly like it sounds: we spent an afternoon in Centre Market.

It was so much fun.  Centre Market is such a brilliant pocket in Wheeling that represents what the rest of the city could be.  It hosts a ton of thriving businesses that are working inside of rehabbed, historic properties.  WYP wanted to highlight the Market and show appreciation for this small part of our city.

We started our day with a visit to the Centre Cup Coffee shop for some iced coffees (and a strawberry smoothie for Louis).

Next, we talked about and toured two of the storefronts that are owned by Frank Calabrese.  The history of the buildings was fun to learn, as well as hear about the things they did to strive and keep a historical aspect of the spaces themselves.

There was a small break in the action and Louis lead us over to the Smart Centre Market, to spend some money on a scientific toy…because he had some cash he’d earned from doing some chores just BURNING a hole in his pocket.

We took a quick stop in front of the Artworks Around Town, to hear Bennett give a rundown of the history of the Market itself.  

Right outside of Artworks, a violinist was playing and they had a chalkboard set up to write what you were grateful for.  Be still my heart.  Louis walks right up and writes “I love you” on the board.  This boy…

I failed to photograph our stop at one of the best restaurants in town: Later Alligator.  That was probably because I was stuffing my face full of food and drinking the delicious “Wheeling Young Preservationists’ New Old Fashioned”.  So much win.

Our last stop was at Casa di Vino for some wine tasting.  I’m not exactly the world’s biggest fan of wines (hello beer drinker!) but I do enjoy getting to sample some from time to time.  They had a list of sweets and a list of drys to sip from.  I stuck to the dry side and actually liked all of them.  Plus, we always love our time at Casa.

We would have spent about 23094823098 more hours down there but we had guests coming over for dinner.  However, the few hours that we were in Centre Market was time well spent.  Have I mentioned before how much I love our small town?   Well…I love it a whole lot!