Demolition has begun on the former Tymes Remembered Tea Room at 1020 Otley Ave. in Perry. The quirky building, built in 1920, is a minor maze of small rooms that are soon to serve as the offices of Perry Family Dentistry.
Ramona and Jim Birdsell of Perry opened Thymes Remembered Tea Room in 1990 as an extension of their Calico Corners gift shop, opened in 1980.
At their height, the tea room and gift shop were a significant tourist attraction in central Iowa, with whole tour busfuls of travelers filling the daintily decorated quarters, where they enjoyed quiet pleasures amid the porcelain figurines.
The Birdsells later sold the business in 2006 to Vicky Taylor of Windsor Heights, and she ran it as Taylor’s Tea Shop until March 2011, when she ceased operations and later filed for bankruptcy.
Wells Fargo Bank held the property until 2014, when it was purchased by Dr. Gregory D. Steffen of Perry Family Dentistry.
Mitch Leeper of Iowa City, lead project manager with North Liberty-based Home Repair Team, began interior demolition work on the property last week, with help from a pair of casual laborers from Des Moines, Haime Canas and Gary Smith.
“There’s sure lots of rooms,” Leeper said Friday. He said he expects the job will take several months.
Many vestiges of the former business still litter the floors of the vacant rooms, the shared luncheon intimacies now only times remembered.
Perry Family Dentistry was not immediately available for comment.
