Long before The Home Depot, Lowe’s or Ace Hardware were names that came to mind for people who needed building supplies, tools, paint, equipment for yard work, etc., the Chattanooga Hardware Co. flourished at 2615 S. Broad St.
Exactly when Chattanooga Hardware opened its doors is difficult to pin down. One story in the Chattanooga Times Free Press archives dates the business to the Gilded Age — the mid-1890s to be exact — while another put the opening around 1910, which would have been during the presidency of William Howard Taft.
What is known is that the business shut its doors for the last time in 1986, when Ronald Reagan occupied the Oval Office, making Chattanooga Hardware not only a staple of Broad Street for most of the 20th century but also a Scenic City fixture.
In 1985, The Chattanooga Times, then the city’s morning newspaper, described the business this way: “Strolling through Chattanooga Hardware is like going back to another time. There are no fancy displays, no signs advertising a super-slashed price. There’s just hardware, about 10,000 items worth, stacked from the floor to the ceiling. Why, they even use rolling ladders to retrieve things you can’t reach. … They just don’t make ’em like this anymore.”