Van Horne Hardware - which has sold paint, copied keys and supplied all your fix-it needs since Max Schneiderman opened the place near Victoria and Van Horne in 1955 - has closed.Co-owner Karen Lukacs tells Coolopolis that the store was a lifelong setting.
"I worked here from the time I could walk. I spent my weekends and summers here growing up. It was a great experience,” she said.
She bears no regrets about locking up for the final time. “It's not sad for us, we're excited, looking forward to our future.”
Lukacs said that business is fine but retirement beckons. She and her husband are moving to Windsor to be near their daughter, a physician assistant in Detroit.
The extended Schneiderman family opened several hardware stores speckled around town in decades past, including one on
St. Viateur bagel that was eventually turned into a health food shop by a nephew.
Karen wasn't planning to take her father's store over. But that changed when her mother died about five years after Karen graduated as an account.
So in 1980 her father Max – who died in 2002 - said that he would close up shop unless she took it over.
So Karen left accounting and ran the place with her engineer husband.The store was originally located at 5950 Victoria, just a stone's toss away but has been in its current digs since about 1965.
Mom and pop hardware stores have been closing at a fast clip since the arrival of big box stores but the clientele has always been a loyal bunch and have been very supportive of their decision to close.
“People have been great, they're hugging us and giving us gifts for our daughter,” she said.