We have a similar, fantastic hardware store in Chico, California like this. It’s been open for 60+ years in an 1871 building that’s in the heart of our downtown. Experienced employees that know everything and who are a godsend to anyone with a tricky issue, but especially those of us with old houses because they have the knowledge and all of the small hardware to boot. Beautiful old hardwood floors with all of their slants, scars, and stories. (Truly the vibe itself is worth having to deal with downtown parking.) I think it’s technically an Ace but it retains its own name and branding (Collier Hardware). It also has an upstairs area which has been many things over the years, including a theatre. It’s struggled to compete against e-commerce but it’s still going and I cheer them on and try to give them as much of my business as I can. like you said in your piece, it’s offering something still valuable though difficult to monetize.
The upstairs apartment still used as a residence is even more of a rare leftover! Most downtown buildings used to have apts upstairs where downtown workers lived. Almost WFH, especially if you worked at the store below your apt.
This is another sector of the economy where the loss of the decades of experience in knowledge-based customer service is as consequential as the loss of the magical spaces they once inhabited. When a house is twice the age of its owners, it likely has parts and components that are unrecognizable to some of the younger staff at big box home improvement stores (whose primary skill, in my experience, is the ability to use the store app on their phone to direct me to the appropriate aisle). One of my daughters had a joyful experience working at a small neighborhood-scale franchise hardware store. What she lacked in first-hand knowledge and experience, she made up for in courtesy, familiarity, and the ability to direct customers to the family owners/employees who knew everything she didn’t know. Places like this are essential for vital urban communities.
"They retain this almost whimsical tightly packed interior style, and somehow manage to have a whole bunch of little bits and pieces that the home improvement superstores don’t bother to stock."
We have a local hardware chain in the Twin Cities called Frattallone's that's exactly like this. My toddler strongly seconds the "magical;" she wanders the aisles saying "Wow!" at all the metal hoses and oddly-shaped light bulbs. Their stores are a tenth the size of the big box retailers (our neighborhood one is in an old theatre building next to a tailor and a cobbler; the overhead marquee covers their annuals in summer and Christmas trees in winter), but they literally prioritize the nuts and bolts over the big purchase tool sales. Despite being a chain, their inventory reflects the local community (e.g., wide assortment of 3M strips near a college campus, year-round firewood near high populations of Somali immigrants).
But it's the expertise that you really come for. As long as you enter with a reasonably well defined problem, you can trust that an employee with decades of experience with old houses and apartments will workshop it with you and get you a part that, if it doesn't solve the problem, will at least get you going in the right direction. They often expect to iterate the problem with you over multiple trips, since they know you live close by and that the part you bought is just a piece of what you're paying for. As places like this close, I don't know if younger generations will realize this trust can exist.
It's so sad to see an old hardware store like this close! Your photos remind me of the store my great-great grandfather ran at the turn of the 20th century in rural Michigan- these are from a bygone era!
I ran across a similar old store just across the river when we stayed at an Air BnB in Morrisville, PA. Check out Cunningham Hardware if you're ever in the area- it's literally smack dab in the middle of a neighborhood of older houses. I don't even think they had a parking lot.
I love the authenticity of these places, they are there to solve a problem for you not to look pretty, and yet they are totally engaging with their ramshackle appearance hiding idiosyncratic taxonomies. In the UK we’ve gone from them to big box, and now back to quite compact trade counters in strip malls that excel at click and collect for tradespeople, but there’s no sense of any subject matter expertise on offer. However, go rural and you’ll still find the old school gems that will do building supplies on the side.
We have a similar, fantastic hardware store in Chico, California like this. It’s been open for 60+ years in an 1871 building that’s in the heart of our downtown. Experienced employees that know everything and who are a godsend to anyone with a tricky issue, but especially those of us with old houses because they have the knowledge and all of the small hardware to boot. Beautiful old hardwood floors with all of their slants, scars, and stories. (Truly the vibe itself is worth having to deal with downtown parking.) I think it’s technically an Ace but it retains its own name and branding (Collier Hardware). It also has an upstairs area which has been many things over the years, including a theatre. It’s struggled to compete against e-commerce but it’s still going and I cheer them on and try to give them as much of my business as I can. like you said in your piece, it’s offering something still valuable though difficult to monetize.
The upstairs apartment still used as a residence is even more of a rare leftover! Most downtown buildings used to have apts upstairs where downtown workers lived. Almost WFH, especially if you worked at the store below your apt.
This is another sector of the economy where the loss of the decades of experience in knowledge-based customer service is as consequential as the loss of the magical spaces they once inhabited. When a house is twice the age of its owners, it likely has parts and components that are unrecognizable to some of the younger staff at big box home improvement stores (whose primary skill, in my experience, is the ability to use the store app on their phone to direct me to the appropriate aisle). One of my daughters had a joyful experience working at a small neighborhood-scale franchise hardware store. What she lacked in first-hand knowledge and experience, she made up for in courtesy, familiarity, and the ability to direct customers to the family owners/employees who knew everything she didn’t know. Places like this are essential for vital urban communities.
"They retain this almost whimsical tightly packed interior style, and somehow manage to have a whole bunch of little bits and pieces that the home improvement superstores don’t bother to stock."
We have a local hardware chain in the Twin Cities called Frattallone's that's exactly like this. My toddler strongly seconds the "magical;" she wanders the aisles saying "Wow!" at all the metal hoses and oddly-shaped light bulbs. Their stores are a tenth the size of the big box retailers (our neighborhood one is in an old theatre building next to a tailor and a cobbler; the overhead marquee covers their annuals in summer and Christmas trees in winter), but they literally prioritize the nuts and bolts over the big purchase tool sales. Despite being a chain, their inventory reflects the local community (e.g., wide assortment of 3M strips near a college campus, year-round firewood near high populations of Somali immigrants).
But it's the expertise that you really come for. As long as you enter with a reasonably well defined problem, you can trust that an employee with decades of experience with old houses and apartments will workshop it with you and get you a part that, if it doesn't solve the problem, will at least get you going in the right direction. They often expect to iterate the problem with you over multiple trips, since they know you live close by and that the part you bought is just a piece of what you're paying for. As places like this close, I don't know if younger generations will realize this trust can exist.
It's so sad to see an old hardware store like this close! Your photos remind me of the store my great-great grandfather ran at the turn of the 20th century in rural Michigan- these are from a bygone era!
I ran across a similar old store just across the river when we stayed at an Air BnB in Morrisville, PA. Check out Cunningham Hardware if you're ever in the area- it's literally smack dab in the middle of a neighborhood of older houses. I don't even think they had a parking lot.
I love the authenticity of these places, they are there to solve a problem for you not to look pretty, and yet they are totally engaging with their ramshackle appearance hiding idiosyncratic taxonomies. In the UK we’ve gone from them to big box, and now back to quite compact trade counters in strip malls that excel at click and collect for tradespeople, but there’s no sense of any subject matter expertise on offer. However, go rural and you’ll still find the old school gems that will do building supplies on the side.