Time was, a hardware store was one of the anchors of small-town commerce.
This Chattanooga Free Press archive photo of the White Oak Hardware and Appliance Co. at 2226 Dayton Blvd. dates from 1947, the year the business opened.
Just the inventory in view includes chicken-wire fencing, trash cans, brooms, rakes, pitchforks, wagons, mailboxes, electric fans, space heaters, buckets and farm supplies.
Signs on the building were sponsored by Sargent Paint, a Cleveland, Ohio-based company that was formed in the late 19th century by former associates of the Sherwin-Williams Paint Co., according to a published history of Cleveland.
The site of the old White Oak Hardware store – an area now occupied by Cooley’s Fine Clothing – is on the same block as the still-open White Oak Barber Shop, a business that was established 15 years earlier in 1932.