The business was started in 1898 and it most recently was managed by Jay Leonard Smith, the third generation to lead the more than 100-year-old local business, located at the corner of Maple and Railroad streets. Much of Wayland’s history can be found inside the stately building and Jay L. himself spent a lot of time on the premises weekdays in recent years repairing screens and glass and mostly tinkering with what many would call Wayland’s closest thing to a museum. The building, which has been on the real estate market since Smith Lumber closed in 2005, houses plenty of artifacts and mementoes of days gone by.

Smith Lumber closed its doors after 107 years in business, and Jay L., in an interview in 2014, explained it was “for three reasons: Lowe’s, Menards and Home Depot.” He said nowadays people in the Wayland area do their shopping in Grand Rapids at the big box stores for one reason and one reason only — price.

Yet there was one more reason: The fourth generation of the Smith family, seeing the handwriting on the wall about future prospects, just wasn’t interested in keeping it going.

“I’ve had a daughter and a son and grandchildren who worked here, but they like the eight-hour work day,” Smith said, noting it’s extremely difficult to invest such commitment to a venture that finds it hard to compete with the big guys. Perhaps it could be called the Wal-Mart effect, in which local mom and pop operations go belly up because the bigger nearby suburban retail giants have larger selection and lower prices.

“My dad (Ivan D. Smith) told me a long time ago that if you do business in Wayland, you shop in Wayland. My family always did its shopping with Brooks Hardware, Weaver Hardware, Gurney’s IGA…

“Back in the day, when mothers didn’t work outside the home, they’d walk in town to do their shopping. And farmers and people who lived in nearby rural areas would come to town Saturdays and maybe even go to the Wayland Theatre.”

It was Smith’s grandfather, Jay Leroy Smith, who in 1898 founded the business, first known as J.L. Smith & Sons, setting up shop on North Main where Freda’s Fish Fry and Cindi’s Boutique most recently did business. The current site at 710 W. Maple St. was contructed in 1902 and at first served as a sort of warehouse that sometimes sold coal and cement.

The main store was general mercantile, handling farm equipment, hardware, paint, lumber and it had a livery stable.

Jay Leroy sold his business site in 1912 and moved operations to where the current quasi-museum exists. The new venture was called the Businessmen’s Paper Press because it included paper balers.