Well, sadly another very old, and old-school, hardware store is going out of business. The last time I wrote about one of these was in January, after visiting Finkle’s Hardware in Lambertville, New Jersey. It is, or was, everything awesome about old-fashioned hardware stores: every little piece and part and trinket and widget you can imagine, experienced old hands who know what they’re selling and what to do with it.

But it just doesn’t pay, between the big-boxes and e-commerce. And, perhaps, YouTube and the internet in general making specialized repair and maintenance knowledge easily available. Elements of this old physical retail experience can be replaced or replicated. But it was more than the sum of its parts, and it may never quite be seen again in full. Stores like this are like a critically endangered species; there is something bittersweet about being in a state of existence, without the capacity to reproduce. For most of them, the end is already embedded in the future.

From a news item:

Hugh Brown has owned the store for more than 50 years.

Everyone calls him Mr. Brown, even John Taylor, the store manager for 15 years. “He's a great guy to work for. It's almost like working with your dad,” Taylor stated.

At 83, Brown is the third generation to run this family business. It was founded by his grandfather in the late 1800s, then handed down to Mr. Brown's father.

The current store, built in the 1950s, has kept these old gumball machines. And Brown still uses his grandfather's safe.

He thinks the store has been successful because the customers come first. “We try to take care of them when they come in. Try to have the merchandise that they want,” explained Brown.

This time, it’s the city of Falls Church, Virginia that’s losing its old hardware store. Brown’s Hardware has been in business at the same location since its inception. The original store, in a house-like structure in basically the same spot, was torn down in the 1950s and the store took a location in a quasi-strip mall building.

It’s right along the town’s main street, called Broad Street. Today this new building looks old-fashioned, half urban block and half modern strip mall (it has a parking lot, but it’s concealed in the back).

As I like to do, I drove to Falls Church and explored the store and took a bunch of photos. It’s a time capsule inside, but it’s not like the stuff itself is useless or just for curiosity. For many people, maybe. But that’s kind of the point.

Brown’s is closing because the family that owns the store also owns the structure itself, and they’re selling, presumably, for the building to be redeveloped. There are no specific public plans yet for the site. It’s probably sad to hit the jackpot by selling off the old family business, but succession plans or buyers don’t always materialize anyway, and there comes a time for all things. And people need a retirement.

I chatted with a couple of the people working there and the man who I believe is the owner. They were doing decent business and I didn’t take too much of their time, but they gave me a brief little bit about the history of the store. I overheard a conversation with a local who remembered when Falls Church was sleepier and less crowded and less built up. She asked if the store was going to move. The owner answered that the commercial rents were far too high, and that if they hadn’t owned the building themselves, the store would have stopped being profitable a long time ago.

I did inquire about this neat old store display: a wooden 3M sandpaper display, with an ancient 3M logo. I offered to buy it, if it was for sale, and the owner offered it to me free of charge, as soon as the inventory was empty enough to retire it. To remind himself, he wrote me up a paper receipt by hand. I’m going to keep that tucked in one of those compartments.

Just the other week, I picked it up. It’s the coolest thing that this display, which has got to be at earliest from the 1970s, is now in use in my basement, in my own little tool and utility room. Sometimes you just see these things that you know will never be made again. Sometimes you get the feeling that the circle of life is real.

The displays are really cool in general—much more deliberate than the very generic bays and shelves in the big-box stores. Here’s a drill bit display, and here’s a unique cabinet to stock all sorts of neat parts: switches, sockets, electrical parts, odds and ends that might not sell a unit for weeks at a time, but which once in awhile someone absolutely needs. That’s what’s amazing about an old hardware store.

There’s really just everything in this store. And the prices were fair. I bought a new brand-name garden lopper for about $20. You can save a couple bucks on Amazon, but that comes with a cost—the decay of physical, embodied commerce and deep knowledge.

There’s even a little kitchen area:

Here’s a peek in the back room:

It does concern me a little that this type of business can no longer pencil out in a lot of growing, desirable downtown locations. This conundrum of high demand pricing out quirky small businesses that round out and enhance neighborhoods is something I think we should think about.

But Falls Church has a ring of early suburban development around it that isn’t as nice looking or expensive as downtown, and any number of small independent business owners can and have started various small stores and restaurants there. And you’re only a short walk or very short drive the core. I think it would be a mistake to fixate on a specific incarnation of a thing so much that we develop tunnel vision and don’t see the other incarnations of that thing, all around us.

But it is a shame, and even when an outcome is overdetermined, it can be mourned. Pour one out for places like this, because we might not pay the premium to keep them around, but we’re gonna miss them when they’re gone.

Check out all my photos of Brown’s Hardware here.

Related Reading:

A Piece of New Jersey We’ll Never Build Again

The Neighborhood Supermarket Never Disappeared

That Old Small Town Variety

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