This past Saturday, I took a stroll downtown during the June Arts Walk, a monthly street fair sponsored by Main Street Morgantown. The event gave me a chance to appreciate the creativity and entrepreneurship of West Virginia’s art community and also to browse through some downtown shops I had not had the opportunity to visit before.
Gallery 304 is a vintage shop with a flair for WVU sports team apparel. The owner, Nathaniel Hart, got his start selling vintage items online and at craft markets before graduating to a brick-and-mortar location at 327 High St. in the fall of 2021. The IRL shop is open from noon-5:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday, but Gallery 304 still does brisk business on its online storefront and ships worldwide.
For the discerning blue and gold fan, the shop offers a way to simultaneously show team spirit and an individual sense of style. Vintage means rare, so these items provide a chance to stand out in the cheering crowd. College athletes and other public figures have been known to stop in for some fashion. Mountaineers guard Erik Stevenson showed up on Instagram in a classic WVU puffer jacket sourced from Gallery 304.
It’s not all about WVU, though. The shop stocks many items that will inspire a sense of nostalgia for 80s and 90s kids, such as the officially-licensed Starter jackets oft coveted by that generation. Concert tees for artists from Cher to the Smashing Pumpkins are plentiful, as are VHS tapes of dubious classics like “Titanic” and “Scream III.” There is even a vintage Barbie or two.
The shop is just as much a museum of pop culture of a particular era as a retail store. Whether your taste is sports, movies, music, or something else, Gallery 304 has something for you — as long as you want something out of the ordinary.
EVA MURPHY is a freelance business writer for The Dominion Post. She writes a column on businesses, churches and other entities in the city. To suggest a topic, email her at Newsroom@DominionPost.com.
