Dubben Brothers Hardware & Plumbing in Delhi, NY. It is an old time store that has been owned & run by the same family for several generations. They specialize in "country plumbing"- and have stuff like well pump cup leathers and valve flappers, as well as a line of hardware. I forget which chain of hardware stores they affiliated with, but they have plenty of old stock in the store. I went in there one day, en route to Hanford Mills, needing some copper tubing for a lubricator line on the steam engine. Dubben had refrigeration grade tubing, and I got to see their back-store. Old wooden bins from floor to ceiling, filled with screwed black iron and brass pipe fittings and nipples. Old US made fittings in those bins. Some bins held bolts and other hardware.
Despite a "Tractor Supply" store opening up the street, Dubben hangs on. I think this is because they also handle propane and do actual plumbing work.
Hansen & Hassel, in Brooklyn, NY closed in about 1968 or '69. They were on Myrtle Avenue at Duffield Street. They had been there since the 1850's, and were a Starrett dealer along with mill supplies, heavy hardware, cutting tools and Lunkenheimer lubricators and valves. I got a lot of odds and ends when they liquidated their remaining inventory. They were in an old wooden building with clapboard siding, predating the Myrtle Avenue elevated subway line (which ran in front of their store). The neighborhood had once had a lot of industry, but that was nearly gone by 1968. The neighborhood had also become quite dangerous, with a hard drug rehab or withdrawl program center located next door. I remember at the end, we got a box of "Collins House Axes", in the original box. When was the last time anyone in Brooklyn needed a "house axe" to split kindling for a wood stove or range, or coal fired boiler ? I remember there was this huge Crosby shackle there, too big to be of any use to anyone other than a heavy rigging contractor or shipyard. I got a beautiful Atha 6lb cross pein blacksmith sledge and handle there, which I use to this day. They threw in a pair of hoof nippers. At the end, the fellows in Hansen and Hassel were just putting odds and ends they thought I could use into cartons and asking a few bucks. I was a freshman in engineering school (Brooklyn Polytechnic), which was within a couple of blocks, so I kept going back to Hansen and Hassel as they unearthed the last of the inventory.
As a sad but funny note to this: While they were selling off the last inventory, Hansen and Hassel was burglarized one night. The fellows there took the cash in the till home each night, so there was no money in the register. There was an ancient safe, the kind with fancy nickel plate finials on the hinges, and a scene painted on the door. The safe was locked, and that is what the burglars tried to get into. The burglars took new hacksaws and cut the finials off the hinge pins, then drove out the hinge pins. The door stayed put. They then knocked the dial off the combination lock, and beat on the "tee handle" that racked the bolts of the safe lock. Still could not get in. The thieves then took a NOS Black and Decker rotary hammer masonry drill and started attempting to drill into the safe with that. All that happened was the carbide masonry bits scarred the face of the safe door. The thieves gave up after a while and left. The funny parts of this are that an oxyacetylene cutting outfit which was used to cut heavy chain and wire rope, stood nearby. The other funny part of this is the safe was empty, as H & H no longer kept any money on the premises overnight.
Clearly, it was time for H & H to close.
Max Shur, a similar type of store, stood in the Centre Street/used machine tool district. Shur was a Starrett dealer where I bought my first Starrett tools while in HS. They had everything and anything, carbon steel lathe tool blanks, HSS toolbits, rough castings for chuck backplates and various handwheels and knobs, cutting tools, abrasives, supplies like cans of Kasenite and layout fluid, fitting for coolant systems, Williams industrial wrenches and lathe dogs and hold down hardware.... Shur closed sometime in the 1980's, I am guessing. The used machine tool district is completely gone, and only the painted business names and what they dealt in remain on some of the brick building walls.
Coming back from a trip to Minneapolis, MN, my wife asked to see a town where I had lived in 1975-76, Oak Harbor, Ohio. We swung inland off I-80 and went to Oak Harbor. I had not been back there since April of 1976. Main Street had changed here and there, but the hardware store with its original sign still stood on a corner. We walked in, and the wood board floors & smell were the same as they had been in 1976. Little had changed. Two men were behind the counter, and I explained I had worked out at "the Nuke Plant" (Davis Besse Unit I) and lived in Oak Harbor for a stretch in 1975 into 1976. I told them who my landlord had been, and they remembered them, both deceased. I asked if they were still known as "Halblitzel's Hardware", and they laughed and said they were the Halblitzels. We had been young fellows when I used to buy stuff there. I was 25, and they were a little younger. Halblitzel's did not look to have affiliated with any of the big chain hardware operations (Ace, True Value, etc). They had the modern and more homeowner-oriented goods in the store. Back in 1975, they were more farmer and mechanic oriented. Back then, you could get stuff like woodruff keys, taper pins, belts and pulleys and roller chain and sprockets and the hand tools were all good-name US made.Back then, they weighed the nails out on scale. It looked like this had drifted to the current stuff, made off shore for homeowners, fasteners sold by the blister pack or box, and not so much of the ag and mechanic type of stuff. But, the old store still stood, open for business, and still in the same family with the same old painted sign out front.
Smith's Hardware, in Saugerties, NY is another oldtime hardware store which has been there forever. They still have the wooden drawers and bins of loose fasteners, and carry a large line of tools and parts that people in rural areas might need. They have people who are knowledgeable, as I saw when an old farmer came in needing some bolts for a John Deere tractor. They move with the times, and carry stuff weekenders (second homeowners
up from "the City") would need. But, if I need a lsedge handle or wedges, or setscrews or nylock nuts or hemp rope ot chain, they've got it.
BTW: on the subject of Adze-eye handles: I have a "Warwood" (Woodings Verona) 8lb splitting maul with an adze-eye head. It developed some nicks and splitting, and was time to replace it. I went to any number of stores looking for another handle. I finally gave up, and bought a pick handle and some new wedges. I shaped the pick handle, which had extra wood on it, to fit the eye of my splitting maul. OTOH, when our son was a boy, he wanted to split wood with me. At a yard sale, I found a 6 lb Stanley-Atha splitting maul head. It was in nice shape, other than having the remains of the handle in the eye. I taught my son how to take out a busted handle and took him along to get the new handle. I also showed him, as my dad showed me, how to fit and wedge a handle. I had him take a scraper made from a borken powerhacksaw blade, and take the glossy finish off the handle, then brand his initials up at the end of the handle, and finish it with linseed oil. Our son split a lot of cordwood with that maul when he was home with us. Another time, I bought a Coleman lantern at a yard sale for 2 bucks. It was missing some parts, nothing major. I took our son into Houst's Hardware, in Woodstock, NY. Housts has drawers of Coleman parts. For another couple of bucks in parts and about $3.50 for some mantles, the Coleman lantern was operational. We've used that lantern countless times for picnics and camping, but also many times for emergency lighting during power outages. The old hardware stores carry stuff that the big box stores do not. But, people nowadays are far less likely to fix or build much for themselves. It's a throwaway society. I've found Coleman lanterns (liquid fueled) set out with junk for metal pickup. A trip to Housts for a few parts, and we have another lantern for power outages. The average person is either intimidated by a liq
Berkoff's Hardware, on Coney Island Avenue, in Brooklyn, was THE hardware store in the neighborhood when I was a kid. Berkoff's sold to builders, building superintendents, school custodians, homeowners, and custodians of private institutional buildings like religions schools, synagogues, and churches. They had a wide and deep store. They sold Shopsmiths and Delta/Rockwell power tools. At the back of the store was a raised mezzanine for the office. On the mezzanine handrail/wall was a display that proclaimed: "Williams- Tools for Industry". It had lathe dogs, boring bars, tee handle wrenches, spanner wrenches, and regular open end wrenches- all in the black finish. Berkoffs had a lot of loose inventory, and this was stored in "Breakstone's Cream Cheese" wooden boxes with finger jointed corners. They had a lot of inventory- shovels of all types including coal scoops, sledges, handles, grinding wheels, buffing wheels and compounds, and nails were kept in steel bins and sold loose, by the pound. They had the old style mechanical scale on the counter with a galvanized steel hopper pan to weigh out the nails. Bolts and nuts were in the drawers in the back.
They kept accounts for various businesses in the area, and stocked or could get a wide variety of things. We could walk to Berkoff's and get a blade for my father's table saw, a handful of bolts, a vee belt, setscrews, woodruff keys, and loose twist drill bits and taps.
They also sold houswares, which included pots and pans and kitchen items. If a household needed a glass dome for a percolator or a gasket for a pressure cooker, Berkoff had it. Paint was sold under Berkoff's own label. They had a neon sign that was two stories tall, anchored perpendicularly to the front of their building.
I do not know when Berkoff's closed their store on Coney Island Avenue. I am guessing it was after the year 2000, as some signage was in place directing customers to some new location further South in Brooklyn. Why Berkoff's closed their store on Coney Island Avenue is unknown to me. I am guessing the neighborhood changed demographically.
Friends of ours had a heavy hardware store in NYC for 3 generations. They did most of their business with accounts from office building maintenance superintendants, apartment buildings, and other businesses in the area. They had the usual bins of loose fasteners, and sold plumbing supplies and cleaning/janitorial supplies. They were forced out when the building lease ran out. The real estate was too valuable for a hardware store, and they had been losing accounts to on-line sales. They also said that some of the office buildings which had kept accounts with them for many years went under new management. These buildings had had in-house maintenance people including locksmiths, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, painters, and janitors. When the new management took over, they immediately laid off the entire maintenance staff and found outsources who could come in as needed. They also cancelled all accounts with the hardware and supply houses. Our friends now continue the hardware business in a different form.
They specialize in finding stuff that can't be found on-line. When the new management and outsource maintenance contractors can;t find it online, they call our friends. They call me for the odd stuff. Sometimes, it means duplicating something no longer available, or simply designing custom parts which I either make up in my own shop, or give out to shops I know. Stuff like bar-rail hardware from ancient private clubs, custom large brass lighting control panels, elevator cab hardware and sheet metal wall panels with finished trim fasteners. The old hardware stores in NYC had inventories of stuff their customers needed, "Bommer Hinges" for restaurant kitchen doors, Yale door closer parts, lockset parts. Nowadays, from what my friends have told me, and what I've seen, if a door closer does not work, they call in an outside shop. The outside shop, instead of rebuilding the door closer, throws it away and scabs on some light duty POS closer that does not even look right. The building staffs are all "adminstrative types" usually recent immigrants from places such that I've never met anyone from there previously. They have no more idea about what is needed to make repairs or modifications than the man in the moon. But, they are crafty. If I start measuring existing parts with a dial caliper and leave the caliper laying un-watched, they grab it and write down the name and model, then tell me they'd like one (hint that they want to be "schmeared" to give my friends the job). If I make sketches, they are looking over my shoulder, sometimes taking picture with their phones. If we name something in discussion, the building managers write it down. As soon as we leave to go back upstate and prepare a price/proposal, we know these clowns will be surfing the web trying to cut us out of a job. We've made samples of replacement parts and hardware, been paid for them, and instead of giving us a job to make a bunch more, these clowns shop the job. There is none of the loyalty that the old style building management had for the hardware or supply vendors in the neighborhoods who always came through for them. Now, when we go to measure up jobs or look at jobs to make replacement hardware for NLA stuff, we say as little as possible when the building management is in earshot. If they grasp one or two key words, they will invariably go online with them to try to undercut us.
I would say that changing demographics, a society that does very little for themselves, stores like Lowe's or Home Depot, and online sales have all killed off most of the oldtime hardware stores. I liken it to the evolution of hammers. Time was, if you bought a hammer, you bought just the head, and then either bought or made a handle for it. If you broke the handle, you bought or made another handle. You could knock out what was left of the broken handle, save the steel wedge, and put in another handle. Hammer makers started going to handles that are bonded into the hammer heads, and to handles made of plastics or fiberglass. Whether this was due to a fear of liability from loose hammer heads flying off in use, or to keep costs down is unknown to me. But, it kind of goes with the demise of the hardware stores. I remember as a kid, being taught by my dad to fit a handle to an axe head and to a hammer head, how to use a spokeshave and rasp, and how to wedge the handles. I am one of those people who picks up the busted or cut-off pieces of sledge handles and brings them home. I make handles for my blacksmith tools or for other lighter hammers from cutoffs from sledge handles. Mechanics on jobs often will cut down the sledge handles for work in close quarters. I am lucky in that the hardware stores up my way still sell the wedges for hammer handles.