A historic downtown Edgartown property that housed a women’s clothing store for nearly three decades has been sold.

Carol A. Lattmann sold the Captain Samuel Pent House to Christopher Celeste and his wife Nancy Kramer late last week, after operating Very Vineyard there for 28 summers.

Mr. Celeste, who owns a home in Edgartown, plans to convert the stately white building at 20 South Summer street into a year-round food market with his daughter, Julia, and two other partners. The 4,700-square-foot mansard-roofed building dates to the 19th century and has many ornate exterior architectural details. It was refurbished eight years ago; there is a large apartment on the second floor.

The selling price was $2.55 million. The property is assessed at $1.96 million.

Reached Monday, Julia Celeste said her plans for the property are something of a return to the property’s roots.

“We are looking to return the building to a pedestrian market, which is what we understand it originally was,” she said.

The building’s most notable occupant was Civil War Capt. Samuel Pent, who operated Summer Street Grocery in the second half of the 19th century. The building, which was constructed circa 1875, abuts the town hall parking lot, facing the Charlotte Inn. Gazette archives show that a smaller, older building once stood at its left, which likely served as Mr. Pent’s grocery before Manuel Silva moved it across the street to the present-day Charlotte Inn location.

The smaller building, which was torn down sometime before 1956, housed the offices of the Vineyard Gazette from 1921 to 1939.

Longtime Edgartown resident Ted Morgan lived in a house on School street during that period. One evening in May of 1935, fire broke out at the Gazette and Mr. Morgan’s brother, Robert, was the first to spot it.

“He looked out the window and saw smoke coming off the roof of the Gazette office,” Mr. Morgan recalled. His brother’s discovery enabled an efficient fire department response, which saved much of the building and documents from significant damage.

In 1939, the newspaper office moved to its present location at the corner of South Summer street and Davis Lane.

“That was a good neighborhood in those days,” said Robert J. Carroll, who was born in 1924 at a different corner of South Summer and Davis, and whose father was employed as a butcher at the market.

The Pent House itself remained a residence at least until the death of Samuel Pent’s widow, Eunice, in 1938. Mr. Carroll recalled that she and second husband, Horace Vincent, kept chickens in their yard.

The Celestes plan to renovate the two-story building and have an application in front of the Edgartown historic commission. They want to build a two-story addition at the rear to house a commercial kitchen. Ms. Celeste’s team, which includes former Flatbread Company manager Tina Miller and baker Rachael Fox, has not finalized many of the specifics of the venture, including the name and the extent of renovations to the space.

“Ideally we would be open at some point this summer, but it’s hard to make those calls without any permits,” Ms. Celeste said.

In more recent years, the Pent House has had a variety of uses including boarding house, antique store, vintage jewelry store, yarn shop, hair salon, and even temporary town hall, during renovations.

Seller Carol Lattmann’s mother, Georgia Kroehnke, bought the property in 1980, and relocated her business, Edgartown Camera, to that site.

Very Vineyard, the clothing store, opened in 1987. Mrs. Lattmann designs her own clothing and also supplies other retailers.

In 2007, she bought the building from her mother and has since renovated the complex.

The closing, which she said marked the end of an era, was last Friday.

“It was just time,” she told the Gazette by phone on Tuesday. “It’s a big responsibility and the building was all redone and new, so my feeling was this was the time.”

Mrs. Lattmann is looking for another retail space in Edgartown.

She has not yet found an affordable rental, so she may have to skip this summer season, she said.

“I am open to looking at other towns, but I would rather stay in Edgartown,” she said. “That is where my clientele is.”