File:Paranormal Oddities - fmr Rogers-Day Company, Robert J. Hutchinson Grocery et al. - Depew, New York - 20220603.jpg

English: Paranormal Oddities, 5823 Transit Road at Eliot Avenue, Depew, New York, June 2022. Built about 1899, this is a good representative example of the Queen Anne style of architecture as applied to a commercial building, a relatively rare pairing locally. The rich decorative scheme includes an asymmetrical façade centered on a round-arched, keystone-studded entrance facing Transit Road, a pair of octagonal bay windows projecting from the front and side elevations, a Classically-inspired dentil row and understated cornice at the roofline, and - most obviously - a round turret with an orange domed roof crowning the corner entrance. Note the elegant garland reliefs, stylized pilaster strips, and paterae adorning the turret. Like most of the important commercial and institutional buildings of the village's early history, this one was constructed speculatively by the Depew Improvement Company, the New York Central Railroad-affiliated real estate developer that was charged with jumpstarting Depew's growth into a service hub and company town for the railroad. The building was purchased soon afterward by Charles Roberts, a grocer from Buffalo who would operate the semi-eponymous Roberts-Day Company, a grocery store and butcher shop, in the ground-floor retail space until 1913. Robert J. Hutchinson took over the business next, and although its subsequent history is quite murky, the building appears to have operated more-or-less continuously as a grocery store until at least the mid-1970s: subsequent names include Persichini's, Duvall's, and the Transit Superette. Paranormal Oddities is the current retail tenant, a gift shop specializing in its namesake inventory that's been in operation since 2017.