Williamsburg Nursery School Offers Holiday Shopping For a Cause

People don’t usually go to a nursery school to shop for postcards of Italian piazzas and California missions from the 1950s, antique bookends, vintage shoes, books of found photography or Julian Schnabel paintings, but you could find all of these things at the Williamsburg Neighborhood Nursery School’s first annual holiday flea market last Saturday afternoon. Less surprising were the little kids running around underfoot, playing with toy trucks and trains (which were also for sale), or their parent’s pant leg. Tucked away in the school’s building on Wythe Avenue and South 1st, the market provided a warm, if unlikely, shopping alternative to the stores on Bedford Avenue. “Fun Alert!” read the flyer on the door.

The items for sale, which also included furniture, crafts and clothing samples, were all donated by parents of children who attend the school, or their friends. People could also buy raffle tickets for a Sirius Satellite Radio with three months’ subscription, or $1000 worth of NARS cosmetics. A group of mothers had also prepared brownies, cookies, cake and coffee. The money raised on Saturday—which totaled over $2000—will go toward financial aid for the 2009-2010 school year.

Dana Stewart, who organized the flea market, said it was busy all day, and estimated that around three hundred people attended. But despite the traffic, not everything was sold. Leftovers will be donated to the Salvation Army and to Flying Squirrel, a toy and children’s clothes store on North 6th Street.

Stewart is the nursery school’s Teacher-Director, which, as she puts it, means she has to wear a lot of hats—and not just the flea market-organizing kind. “I’m in the office all morning and in the classroom all afternoon,” she said. The school was founded in 1999 and was located in the basement of the Northside Catholic Academy on North 7th Street before moving to its present location. The steady flow of customers and the generous amount of money raised were encouraging signs for next year, Stewart said, when the school hopes to hold another holiday flea market in a bigger space.