LANSING – Flowers have been the Anthony family’s business for 84 years.
Harriet and John Anthony opened Jon Anthony Florist downtown at 120 E. Michigan Ave. in 1941. Five years later, it moved to 809 E. Michigan Ave., between what is now Jackson Field and Sparrow Hospital.
The business has been a local fixture for more than eight decades, providing flower arrangements for countless weddings and special occasions. It will close permanently on June 14.
The flower shop was a calling for Harriet and John Anthony, who spent the bulk of their lives working there. John died in 2014, Harriet eight years later, in 2022. The flower shop property has been for sale since her mother’s death, daughter Pamela Sage said.
Jon Anthony Florist has always been a part of her and her sister Patricia Holliday’s lives, Sage, 75, said.
“When I was eight years old, I was dusting counters at the downtown store,” she said, and throughout the years, various family members have taken turns behind the counter.
Deciding to end the business’s decades-long run is “so, so hard,” Sage said. “But it was still time for us to close the flower shop.”
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‘That’s my service to the community’
John Anthony knew the flower business well, even before he opened his own shop. His father worked at a General Motors Co. factory in Flint, but raised flowers on the side, then turned his hobby into a business. By 1940, there were two Anthony florists in Flint, owned by his parents and John’s brother, Gordon.
There was competition when her parents opened their store in Lansing but it didn’t hinder the business’s longevity, Sage said.
“(Dad) opened up, and he was down the street from another flower shop, and the owner of the other flower shop, he got wind and had said something like, ‘Well, I’ll give him maybe six months and he’ll be closed.’ And that didn’t happen, obviously.”
In late 1946, Jon Anthony Florist moved into its current building. “How can you gauge the popularity and success of any business?” read an advertisement for the shop’s grand opening that ran in the State Journal. “The answer is simple…by its growth!”
The “spacious, modern shop will cater to those who demand and appreciate fine skills and artistic taste in the designing of flowers,” the ad said.
In 2011, three years before his death, John Anthony told the State Journal he didn’t believe in retirement. “If you don’t enjoy your work, why are you working there?” he said. “Who wants to retire from what they enjoy doing?”
Harriet, who worked at the shop well into her 90s, loved the work as much as her husband, Sage said.
“She just absolutely loved making her flower bouquets for all the people in Lansing,” she said. “She just loved it. She said, ‘That’s my service to the community.’ That’s what she always told me, ‘That’s my service.'”
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‘It’s just getting to be too much’
Holliday has been running the store for the last few decades, Sage said.
“She’s 83 and I don’t know how she does it,” she said. “It’s just getting to be too much.”
A sale is pending on the Michigan Avenue property, Sage said. She declined to give details, explaining that it’s not yet official. “It’s in the works,” she said.
Jon Anthony Florist is currently hosting a final sale. Gift items are being sold at 75% off, and plants are 50% off.
“We’ve been swamped,” Sage said, who’s helping at the store during its final week. “It’s been a steady business and as more and more people find out, we get more and more people coming in.”
Contact Reporter Rachel Greco at rgreco@lsj.com. Follow her on X @GrecoatLSJ .
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: A Lansing original: Why Jon Anthony Florist is closing after 84 years on Michigan Avenue
Reporting by Rachel Greco, Lansing State Journal / Lansing State Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
