LT L o udo un Ne ws
Nichols Hardware: Best Hardware Store
Educa t io n Bu s in e s s
Sarah Huntington composed this photo of the staff of Nichols Hardware as part of her effort to record the history of the venerable Purcellville business.
For Ken Nichols, his “excellent staff,” many of whom have been with the store for more than 20 years, is the reason for its success. His first experience at the store was in 1940, when he was 10 years old. A third fire had hit the store, and he remembered taking home “charred wood to my mother to burn in the wood stove.” Sarah Huntington, who has her photography studio across from Nichols, made a film about the store with her husband Drew Babb and Peter Buck: Nichols: The Last Hardware Store. “It was a story we had to tell,” she said. — Margaret Morton
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When it comes to rating Loudoun’s best hardware store, Nichols Hardware in Purcellville is in a class of its own. The family-owned store is on the cusp of its 100th birthday and has, once again, been saluted by Leesburg Today readers as the top hardware store in the county. Founded in 1914 by present owner Kenneth Nichols’ father, E.E. Nichols, Nichols Hardware has survived several fires and become a standard for business integrity and a place “where you could find anything you want.” Just like the emporia of old, where you could buy snake oil, a Panama hat or sewing materials, part of Nichols’ success has been that it offers a huge inventory of “everything” on top of the basic hardware items—from rat poison to onion sets; meat seasonings to bird bath de-icers; feather dusters to deer stunners; nails and screws to pipe-heating cable; mixing bowls to window screens; paint and garden supplies; and snow sleds to children’s bikes. The stories of its vast inventory are legion. One former Waterford resident recalled returning from Italy in the early 1970s, where she had seen arugula lettuce being grown. “We called it roquette (or rocket lettuce). I came back and no one had heard of it, I couldn’t find it anywhere. I was in Nichols, looking for something else when I thought to say, ‘I don’t suppose you have the seed for something called roquette?’” “Of course, ma’am,” the salesman said matter of factly. And that’s just one of the many reasons why the public continues faithfully to vote Nichols as the best hardware store in the county.
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