There are tiny homes, and then there are tiny homes. For lovers of the latter, Ms. Peggie’s Place in Pacific Beach is the type of shop that commands an almost religious devotion. Part home improvement depot, part department store, and part antique megamart, Ms. Peggie’s has provided a haven for dollhouse devotees for more than 45 years.
Inside, it’s a fanciful emporium packed with fun-size furnishings and diminutive doodads: toast-shaped Colonial four-poster beds, lentil-sized cantaloupes sliced on a cutting board, rice-length pickles in a jar, copper pans no bigger than blueberries.
There are Pop Tart–sized Turkish rugs, marshmallow-ish pillows, and shoe-shine boxes with the dimensions of a foil-wrapped pat of butter, plus scaled-down crown moldings, staircases, tiles, carpeting, bedding, light fixtures, faucets, appliances, picture frames, cribbage boards, and bowling trophies. It’s dizzying. But for the meticulous mini home–maker, it’s all part of the allure.
“People come in saying, ‘I want to live in an old Victorian or create my dream house,’” says owner Michael Sue Nanos, who took over the shop from the original Ms. Peggie 22 years ago. “It’s a way for people to live out their dreams.”
And while the items are small, the prices sometimes aren’t. Furniture sets can go for hundreds. A grand piano is $350.
“This is highly addictive,” Nanos admits. “When people get started, they look at the prices and say, ‘I didn’t pay that much for my real couch!’ Then, six months later, they’re saying, ‘Oh, that’s not too bad.’”
Dollhouses date back hundreds of years, but their popularity has grown or shrunk depending on the decade. “At one time, San Diego had nine miniature shops,” Nanos says of the dollhouse-building frenzy of the 1970s. Today, Ms. Peggie’s is one of just four such stores left on the West Coast, though its charm remains larger than life.
Ms. Peggie’s feels like much more than a store. It’s a community hub and classroom built around model-making, interior design, and imagination. Nanos is the glue that holds it all together.
“I walked into my first miniature show 50 years ago and broke out in a sweat,” Nanos recalls. “I couldn’t believe so many people loved little things.”
