When Drex Wright was growing up in Hardwick, it was still the “armpit of Vermont.” Halloween meant gang fights on Main Street and the occasional flaming feline. It was the sort of town that might support a county jail — not something called the Renaissance Cafe, where patrons sip cappuccino and admire the art.

“Hardwick has always had a reputation as a lawless kind of gunslinging town,” says Wright, a former social worker employed as a mechanic at his family’s auto shop. But lately Hardwickians have been promoting their businesses as diligently as their “art park” — where the X-rated theater once stood. There is new spirit in town, as evidenced by the abundance of yellow “I Love Hardwick” bumper stickers distributed by an enterprising local car dealer last summer at the Vermont Reggae Festival.

Hardwick’s first bonafide coffeehouse is symbolic of this new boosterism. “The cafe offers an aspect of culture I wasn’t aware of in Hardwick before,” says Wright. And it’s significant that the place is named for a medieval era of revival: the Renaissance. Cafe founder Linda Fox doesn’t usually serve iced coffee this late in the year, but Wright likes it, so she not only keeps up the supply, she stocks his preferred brew.

Run entirely by volunteers, the Renaissance Cafe operates as a coffeehouse — and art
gallery — by day. Area lawmakers stop by in the early hours, for “legislative breakfasts.” But at night, the calico-curtained meeting house attracts a broader cross-section of “cafe society,” from Weight Watchers and loggers to the Hardwick Area Business Group. Other nights, poetry and music are offered up along with steaming mugs of java or herbal brews.

The cafe has “proven that new things can happen — and succeed — in Hardwick,” says Fox.

Tucked between a deli and a flower shop in a once-grand hotel now known as Centennial
House, the Renaissance Cafe invites local artists to hang their work, encourages customers to sit awhile, and even opens its restroom to the public. And like many Hardwick businesses, it keeps a running tab for those customers who need one.

Mental health worker Ken Bridges finds the Renaissance is a welcoming place to bring his mentally disabled clients. In fact, they’ve started volunteering on Friday afternoons. While Bridges runs the cash register, Gary Brice washes dishes and keeps the tables in order.

For 10-year-old Courtney Benway and her 13-year-old cousin, Corey Chaffee, “There’s nowhere else in town where we can come in and not pay much.” On their latest visit, the girls sip cups of water and look at the art — a show featuring self-portraits of community members.

Alexander Bottinelli, a member of the “art committee,” relaxes in a chair to view her work. “We think showing art by community members brings vitality,” she says. “It’s inspiring to artists when they know they can hang their most recent work.”

When Fox opened the Renaissance Cafe in April 1993, she intended it to be a community
center — or, as she puts it, “a community building experiment.” Her $2500 budget included a grand from the town’s rotating loan fund and the rest from community shares. She invited anyone interested to join as “associates” in the nonprofit cooperative. About 25 people have stayed with it, each donating $25 a year. Volunteers handle everything, from working the counter to watering the plants.

Fox says the cafe now turns “a slight profit” — all of which either returns to members or goes back into the cafe. Members used last year’s earnings to finance the move to the Centennial House.

As far as Drex Wright is concerned the cafe’s success has proved his theory that a new
mindset has overtaken his small town. Maybe it’s something in the French Roast, but there’s no more dissing Hardwick as a cultural backwater. “I think there’s a sense of pride in the community,” he says. “People see Hardwick as a valuable place now, not a place to get trapped.”

This article appears in October 18 • 1995.