PARTY ORANGE: 27th ANNUAL ORANGE INTERNATIONAL STREET FAIR : Where Antiques Are King : 38 Shops Can Be Found in 4-Block Area Downtown

Emma Armen didn’t know what she was starting when in 1962 she opened Emma’s Antiques in downtown, now Old Towne, Orange.

Hers was the first antique store there. Nowadays the downtown merchants’ association lists 38 antique shops and malls in the four-block downtown area, and that isn’t all of them.

There is such a concentration of antiques that for the last three years owners have promoted their shops as a tourist destination, trying to draw visitors attracted to Orange County by Disneyland.

According to Lisa Ackerman, president of the Downtown Orange Business and Professional Assn. and herself an antique dealer, the promotion shows signs of working. Among the usual local shoppers these days are “people from all over the country,” she said. And anything that increases the flow of humanity in front of the shops is good for business.

Well, almost.

The flow becomes a flood during the Orange International Street Fair--perhaps a half-million visitors over the fair’s three-day run--and for antique shops that’s a mixed blessing.

“Most of us stay open during the day,” said Ackerman. “For some, business increases. For some, it doesn’t.”

But whether a shop stays open at night has a lot to do with the durability of its goods, said Ackerman.

“Most folks come [to the fair] in the evening, and things get a little more lively, shall we say. They are enjoying the food and the music and the beer. You don’t want 20 of them in a tiny shop that sells crystal.”

Consequently, most antique shops will be closed during the evening hours, she said. A few close entirely until the street fair is over.

So many shops survive in one locale because most specialize, Ackerman said. “You really can get anything from Oriental antiques to a 1950s toaster.”

What drew antique shops to downtown Orange was the district’s economic decline in the early 1970s. As in other old downtowns, longtime merchants in Orange, including national chain stores such as Cornet and JC Penney, forsook the old commercial areas for newer shopping malls, leaving empty storefronts.

But unlike many other downtowns, in Orange the buildings were maintained long enough for new tenants to appear.

The idea of antique stores in an antique environment caught on. “We have buildings that date back to the 1880s,” said Ackerman. “Disney created Main Street at Disneyland, but we have the real thing here.”

Those who want to shop systematically can get a map of downtown that shows both locations of the shops and their specialties. The maps, published by the merchants association, are available free in most downtown stores and at the association’s booth on the traffic circle in front of Orange National Bank.