The Blueprint for Timeless Style
Montana Avenue shop brings luxury resale to a building rich with history
When you step inside Blueprint MT, a luxury resale and curated vintage home décor and furniture store, there’s a feeling that the space already holds a few stories.
Sunlight pours through the large windows, catching on the curves of a tufted navy velvet couch and glinting off mercury highball glasses that could have come straight from a 1960s cocktail party. The red brick walls — part of the original construction — provide just the right aesthetic for this building with more than a century of history.
“I waited months and months for this space to be ready,” smiles owner Lindsey Whitcomb. “Once I saw it, I immediately knew this was exactly what I wanted. I loved the brick, the high ceilings. The double doors are a huge deal.”
Lindsey is, in a way, bringing the building, which sits at 2923 Montana Avenue, back to its original mission. Once home to Pouder Furniture, Howard Pouder and his wife, Nettie, opened and operated the secondhand furniture business beginning in 1916. Over the decades, the building evolved, hosting a dance hall and offices for a chicken hatchery before being transformed into apartments and, according to local lore, a brothel.
“I feel really grateful to have found this exact spot,” she says. “It celebrates the history that is alive downtown.”
Today, the space is full of gently used furniture with high-end labels — Restoration Hardware, Formations, Room & Board — just to name a few. In Lindsey’s mind, the business was built on the foundation of being able to buy a refined and timeless piece without taking out a loan.
“Secondhand isn’t for everyone, but I think that there are enough people who want it and enough who want quality stuff, which is harder and harder to find, at a better price point,” Lindsey says.
Blueprint MT is intentionally staged and cozy.
“When people walk in, I want them to be able to see their own space,” she says. “It gives you an idea on how to kind of ‘zhuzh’ up your own space.”
Each piece is handpicked by Lindsey. In fact, she started curating things 18 months before she even stepped foot in her new shop. There’s abstract modern art with a ’70s vibe, twin beds with tall plush headboards perfect for any child’s bedroom, and a mango-wood coffee table that beckons you to sit nearby with a beverage.
“I do a ton of research before I buy anything,” Lindsey explains. “I try to price it fairly, based on what it would cost secondhand from a reputable online retailer. It’s a tricky game. You have to be able to adjust.”
Sometimes, those finds come from unexpected places — like a luxury condo development in New York City that staged entire units, then sold everything afterward. Other times, it’s about networking and following leads she’s spent time cultivating.
“These seedlings were growing for a long time,” she says with a laugh.
At heart, Lindsey is an environmentalist. A pharmacist by trade, she paused her career when her now 15-year-old daughter was going on 2 years old and her twins were born.
“When I got back into working, I got connected with a local gal who was doing zero-waste school campuses nearby, and I jumped in headfirst with her, doing school food-waste management and composting,” Lindsey says. “When you are really passionate about something, it changes how you live day to day.”
She’s always loved thrifting and, frankly, has a knack for it.
“I really like to find things that are unique. I always wanted something that was just a little bit different,” she says. She adds with a laugh, “You know when you are in 6th grade and you show up to school and you are wearing the same exact thing as somebody else and you’re like, ‘Well, that is unfortunate.’ It planted a little seed in me,” Lindsey says. She knows the treasures she finds will give someone else a unique design advantage. “No one else is going to have this because it’s from 1974.”
Lindsey opened Blueprint MT quietly at the end of November, nearly two years after first imagining the idea. Her husband — retired Army — jokes that after buying things to use for the store for upwards of two years, they’re “not buying any more stuff,” though she admits she’s always dreaming of what might come next.
“One dream I have is to bring in really big, repurposed pieces — like old general store cabinets,” she says, recalling her admiration for the cabinets that sit in Central High School’s science lab. “They’re stunning. I’d take them off someone’s hands in a heartbeat.”
Lindsey is also motivated by a desire to shop — and sell — locally.
“I think you need to work towards building the community that you want to live in,” she says. “So, if I want to live in a place that has a cool, quaint, walkable shopping district, then I need to shop in those places as well.”
One step further, she says, is creating an experience within that little ecosystem. That’s what Lindsey is hoping to build here. You could say she’s even got the blueprint for it.
