Williams-Sonoma store back in Sonoma

Williams-Sonoma has returned to its roots.

The upscale cookware retailer has come home to the same spot on Broadway in Sonoma where in 1956 Chuck Williams launched a kitchenware company that would end up revolutionizing the way Americans cook.

The new store, at 605 Broadway, opens to the public at 9 a.m. Saturday. Before the doors swing open, a free pancake breakfast will be served at 8:30 a.m. at the Sonoma Plaza.

Journalists got a sneak peek of the store Friday at a media event featuring celebrity chef Tyler Florence.

Inside, Apilco porcelain casserole and soufflé dishes and classic cow-shaped milk creamers were neatly organized on white shelves. Across from them, Le Creuset cast-iron dutch ovens in orange, red and blue and Mauviel cooper sauté and saucepans were displayed with their handles out, just as Williams had arranged the display space a half-century ago to allow customers to pick them with ease.

“Everything he did was very practical,” said Carmine Fiore, who has worked with Williams for 23 years and considers him a personal friend, as he rearranged pans that were out of place.

Williams celebrated his 99th birthday in the store on Thursday. Fiore said he was among several friends who were invited for the celebration dinner prepared by Sondra Bernstein, owner of the downtown Sonoma restaurant, The Girl & the Fig. It was clear that Williams was glad to be home, Fiore added.

“His eyes lit up. For him, it was like turning back time,” he said about the founder’s visit to the store, which contains some of the original elements from the first store, including the front door and a sign that hangs on the storefront as it did before Williams moved his business to San Francisco in 1958. The sign features the iconic pineapple logo and had been sitting in Williams’ office for years, Fiore said.

Sonoma Mayor Tom Rouse welcomed the business back to the city, which held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on the founder’s birthday.

“I couldn’t be happier that Williams-Sonoma came home,” Rouse said. “It’s one of the crown jewels of our city.”

The new store is bigger than its predecessor, which Williams transformed from a former hardware shop. But the cookware shop, which sits at the front of the retail space, is still quite a bit smaller, at just over 600 square feet, than most other Williams-Sonoma stores.

The company had made the black-and-white checkered floor, similar to the one that Williams laid out in the original shop. Several of his finds from Europe are displayed on a wall.

From outside, copper pots and pans were visible hanging near a window. They captured the attention of Sonoma resident Jennifer Whitmer and her mother, Marilyn Edwardes, as they walked by the new venue, which also includes a cooking school, herb and vegetable garden and a patio area with a pizza oven. Both women, who live nearby, eagerly waited for the grand opening.

“I really look forward to what they’re going to do there. It looks like a lot more than a store with the beautiful open kitchen,” Whitmer said after peering at the new cooking school from the window. “It’s very exciting to have Williams-Sonoma back to Sonoma.”

The gold letters on top of the storefront came from the Sutter Street shop in San Francisco, the one he moved into after he left Sonoma.

Behind the shop is the house where Williams originally lived with his mother. The house, which is now part of the store, displays home decor and furniture for sale and an area where customers can get decorating advice.

The venue totals about 2,100 square feet, according to Jean Armstrong, the company’s brand marketing director who helped with tours Friday.

She said Williams, who had moved to Sonoma in 1947, fell in love with the French cookware while on a trip to Europe in 1953 and was inspired to open a cookware shop. His multibillion-dollar corporation now operates more than 250 outlets nationwide.

The parent company also operates the Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids and West Elm home-goods chains.

A cooking enthusiast and Williams-Sonoma fan for years, Edwardes credited the founder for moving Americans away from the “tin soups” and packaged foods of the past decades. Williams brought a passion in cooking that the country hadn’t experience before, she said. Her daughter agreed.

“He really opened up so much,” Whitmer said.

You can reach Staff Writer Eloísa Ruano González at 521-5458 or eloisa.gonzalez@pressdemocrat.com.