On October 20 at 11:00 a.m., a new store will open in Nyack with a ribbon-cutting at 15 North Broadway. Michelle & Mo unites a fixture of Nyack’s antique store heritage with a couple eager to help you find or repair the objects that beautify and improve our lives, while rebelling against the culture of disposability.
In a world where a broken chair, an old lamp or an appliance that has served us faithfully for years can be treated as something to throw away and replace, there is something wonderfully old-fashioned about looking at an object and asking, Can we save this? Can we find this another home?
That question has deep roots in Nyack.
There was a time when our village was a destination for antique hunters from far beyond Rockland County. During the 1980s, almost every street in downtown Nyack had a storefront selling antiques or collectibles. The village became known for its concentration of dealers, its affordable treasures and the people who understood that an old object could have a life beyond its original purpose.
But the impulse to preserve, repair, reuse and pass things along has not disappeared: it’s resurgent
In fact, it has just found a new storefront.
Mo’s long Nyack story
Mohamed Mahmoud opened his first antique store on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in 1983. He had come to the United States from Egypt in 1968 and initially worked as a chemist in New Jersey, but he wanted something different from the corporate culture of the chemical industry.
He wanted independence. He found it in antiques.
A decade later, in 1993, Mohamed brought his business to Nyack, first opening inside the Franklin Antique Center. Eventually, Antiques Masters became a familiar fixture on Main Street, where for more than 30 years Mohamed and his wife, Terry, built a business and a life around their love of beautiful things.
You might assume Mohamed’s passion for antiques came from growing up in Egypt, surrounded by some of the world’s most famous ancient monuments.
But Mohamed says it was actually the French influence in Egypt that introduced decorative furniture into popular culture. “Every home, rich or poor, had fine furnishings,” he has explained.
And there was certainly no shortage of furnishings at Antiques Masters: carved wooden frames, massive armoires, period tables, desks and chairs, lamps and sculptures.
But as the economics of Nyack’s antique trade began to change in the early 1990s, Mohamed began developing another specialty: restoration.
His sign said it plainly:
Bring me your broken chair, old lamp and your damaged table, and I’ll fix it and save you money.
The sentiment behind those words feels particularly relevant today.
Mohamed noticed that people were becoming less willing to throw things away. A chair with broken caning that once might have gone to the curb was instead being brought to him.
“People used to throw out chairs that had broken caning,” he observed. “Now I am re-caning ten chairs.”
Perhaps that is because old things often have something new things don’t: personality.
An heirloom is not simply an object. It can carry the hands that used it, the room it occupied, the person who gave it to us and the stories we attach to it.
To preserve one is, in a small way, to preserve all of that.
A new chapter
Then, in 2025, Michelle’s mother, Rachel, became ill. The family made a major decision: they would sell two houses, move in together and begin a new chapter under one roof.
Rachel was a lifelong collector of Art Deco, retro, vintage pieces and antiques. Her collections filled their new home and, more importantly, passed along to Michelle a love of eclectic, one-of-a-kind things—a sensibility that embraces different eras and styles and somehow makes them all work together.
When the family needed help selling some of those pieces, Rob turned to his old friend Mo.
Mohamed stepped in to help. Then came an unexpected turn.
In December 2025, at 84 years young, Mohamed found himself facing the possibility of retirement when he learned that the building that had housed Antiques Masters for decades was going to be renovated.
Michelle and Rob had another idea.
Why not continue the legacy together?
And so Michelle & Mo Antique Boutique was born.
The new shop at 15 North Broadway is not simply replacing an old antique store with a new one. It is carrying forward something much larger: the idea that beautiful, useful, interesting and meaningful things deserve another chance: The repair connection
Our village has long had a relationship with the second life of things. The Arts, Crafts and Antique Dealers Association helped establish the tradition of Nyack’s street fairs, and its members helped make the village a destination for people searching for objects with history, craftsmanship and character.
That history may not look exactly the way it did 40 years ago. It lives on through Michelle & Mo’s
The items from Antiques Masters that appear in my sketch—an Art Deco clock, a Louis XV ladies’ writing desk and an Art Nouveau boudoir chair—are reminders that the things we live with can outlast us.
And perhaps that is the real lesson of Michelle & Mo.
You don’t have to wait for the next Repair Café to save something.
If you have an object in your home that has served you well—an old lamp, a chair, a table, an appliance, some inanimate thing that has somehow acquired a little bit of an inner life—don’t automatically send it to the DPW.
Bring it to Michelle & Mo.
There is an antique boutique at 15 North Broadway filled with personality, craftsmanship, history and people who believe that some things are worth keeping alive.
Bill Batson is an activist, artist and writer who lives and sketches in Nyack, NY. Nyack Sketch Log: Michelle & Mo’s ” © 2026 Bill Batson.
