WHITEFIELD — Brown Street, just off downtown Whitefield, has become a much more desolate place in the couple of weeks since Brown Street Furniture and Vermont Tubbs closed the doors to its once-thriving furniture-making operation that dates back 62 years.

The company's two large vacant buildings stand idle amid a residential neighborhood. One was a warehouse and shipping and receiving center, the other a factory where workers turned out cherry or maple bedroom sets, end tables, cabinets and bookcases that were shipped coast-to-coast.

It was not long ago that the company employed 110 workers. By May 2011, layoffs had cut the staff to 20, according to former plant manager A.J. Peterson, who said some workers were added subsequently, and about 35 lost their jobs with this month's closing.

“It's like a divorce,” Faith Belanger said Friday, as she sat on the porch of her neatly-kept home on Whispering Pines Drive. She had just gone for a run that took her past the nearby buildings where she had worked for 40 years.

The 63-year-old Belanger looks much younger, and says she still has plenty of energy to handle the multiple duties she performed under the general heading of office manager for Brown Street.

“This is driving me nuts,” she said of her new forced idleness. “I loved what I was doing; that's the problem,” she said.

Belanger had been through one bankruptcy filing with a previous owner, but had never been out of work until now.

“I'm just optimistic that they're going to do something,” to restart the business, she said.

So are the owners, 40-year-old twins Kyle and Adam Tager, Montreal natives who are searching for new capital to pump into the business they bought in January 2008 and get it reopened. Kyle Thursday called the closing a “suspension” of business.

“By no means is it a closing. We do have some opportunities. We had a great deal of business, but not the capital resources,” to fund the day-to-day plant operation.

Peterson, of Ashburnham, Mass., is a 30-year veteran of furniture manufacturing with Stickley Furniture of New York and Nichols & Stone of Gardner, Mass., another industry casualty of market forces and a flat economy.

“We were experiencing some pretty good growth,” he said of his 14 months at Brown Street, especially after the plant started producing for the hospitality industry, shipping furniture to hotels and other lodging providers.

“But you have to be somewhat cash strong,” Peterson said, because it's a long way from the time a company takes a deposit on furniture promised, until it gets the balance of payment on delivery of merchandise.

“You don't see much money till you deliver. And furniture is a 'postponeable' purchase. If it has four legs and is standing, people are going to use it as long as they can, unlike a car or a refrigerator. It's very unfortunate. We had a wonderful group of employees,” he said.

Now Peterson, in his mid-60s, is pounding the pavement in search of a new job. Like his former colleague Belanger, he's already sick of the sidelines.

“I like to play golf, but I don't like to do it every day. I'd rather be working,” he said.