Andy’s Hardware Article – Sept. 1970

Mention “Andy’s Hardware” to anyone from Lorain over the age of fifty, and you’ll probably watch them break into a smile at the memory of the place. The iconic business on Ninth Street at Oberlin Avenue was one of those stores that everybody visited at some time or another, especially if they were looking for some hard-to-find item. It was an integral part of the Lorain that many of us grew up in.

Although the business is long-gone, here’s a gem from the pages of the Journal. It was written by Bill Scrivo and appeared in that paper on September 20, 1970. It profiles Ed Andy, the man behind the hardware store. (Here I always thought his first name was ‘Andy!’)

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Lorain’s Ed Andy: Hardware Man
Who Stocks What You Can’t Find

By Bill Scrivo

A MAN IN ALABAMA built an authentic log cabin and needed three sets of an antique door lock to complete the job. He went to his local hardware and found only one.

The store owner said he would try to get the other two locks. It was 8 1/2 years later that the man who ordered the locks was about to give up and put on another type of lock. As he was discussing it with the merchant in Alabama, a traveling salesman overheard the conversation.

“Why don’t you write a letter to Andy’s Hardware in Lorain, Ohio?” the salesman asked. “I’ve been there and I’ll bet he stocks the locks you need.”

Ed Andy recalls the letter.

“He described the lock,” says Ed. “There was also a picture of the key. I had 10 or 12 of those in stock.

"I sent him the locks and he was so happy he sent along a $15 tip.”

THE LOCKS, made some 83 years ago, are only one of some 46,000 items packed into the white frame hardware store at Ninth Street and Oberlin Avenue, Lorain, and a couple of nearby warehouses and garages. Ed Andy can sell you anything from a washer for a faucet even the manufacturer wouldn’t have, to a talking ouija board. This is no accident. Ed started his business 17 years ago with just that in mind.

“I figured there were so many hardware stores going out of business,” he says. “In order to stay in business I would have to have a variety of hard-to-get items.”

That’s how Andy’s Hardware got the reputation, locally, statewide, nationally and internationally of being the “Have everything” store.

Edward R. Andy is a native Lorainite, 68 years old and the son of Polish immigrants who settled in the Steel City. His father worked at American Ship.

A widower, Ed had five children. One daughter, Mrs. Charles (Laverne) Almasi, works with him in the store and is probably the only other person in the world who knows where most of the thousands of items in the store can be found.

ED ANDY graduated form Lorain High School in 1914 and went to work at the Post Office. He worked there until 1925 and then went into business for himself, making “Uncle Sam” mailboxes for rural route box owners. He made a success out of the venture, then went to work for a paint company in Cleveland.

“From there I took up the trade as a decorator,” he says. “I opened a store in Cleveland and then branched out and opened a store in Lorain.

His decorating business was a success too and he had write-ups on his work in national magazines.

“I worked with scenics,” he recalls.

A FREEWAY came through where the store in Cleveland was located and Ed Andy started the hardware store in Lorain he calls the “hardware store with 53 hardware stores in it.”

When you walk in the front door of Andy’s hardware, you can see exactly what he means. There’s barely room to walk between shelves that extend from floor to ceiling.

Ed Andy pulls open a drawer and comes up with a faucet stem.

“This is for a sink sold by Sears Roebuck,” he says. “You have to buy a whole new faucet if you go to Sears. They don’t stock this item.”

He points to the window display.

“Look at the skateboard. You can’t get those anywhere anymore.”

Out in the back of the store is a warehouse full of parts that attests to the wisdom of Ed Andy’s business judgement. There are boxes and boxes of parts for gas heating stoves and grates. They’re all numbered and identified.

“There are radiant replacement parts,” he explains. “We are the exclusive worldwide distributor for these. Anyone who wants these parts has to come to us.”

The distributorship is a result of Ed’s purchase of a Cleveland firm, Schuler Distributor’s, which started in business way back in 1907.

THERE ARE many other interesting facets of Ed Andy’s character – and many people who find him an interesting person.

He likes to fish and on vacations in California goes fishing with Bing Crosby, Lawrence Welk and Jack Haley. He plans a California excursion in February to see some of these “friends of mine.”

Ed likes to pitch horseshoes too and once was Lorain County Champion.

His main hobby now is reading history and “especially law books.”

He’s been reading law books since he was a kid and feels he could present a case in court as well as any lawyer.

Ed Andy’s store is a reflection of his philosophy:

“I say there is nothing impossible. You can do anything if you make an effort to do it.”

And he illustrates it with a story about himself when he was a boy of 13.

“I went to the newspaper and asked them for some newsprint. I told the man I wanted to make a map of Lorain. The man asked me how long it would take me and I told him about a year and a half.

“SO I PUT the paper on the wall and started on it, day after day. One part I couldn’t get was the shore of Black River by National Tube, so I borrowed a rowboat and I finally got the bend in the river right for my map.

“I went back to see the man at the paper and told him my map was finished. He came over to the house and looked at it and asked me if he could put it int he window at the newspaper.

“It was on display 2 1/2 weeks and then someone asked me if I wanted to sell it.

“I got $1,750 for it.”

That’s Ed Andy. And if you need an odd washer, a nut, a bolt or a talking ouija board, you can meet him yourself in his store on Ninth Street and Oberlin Avenue in Lorain.

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UPDATE (April 23, 2023)

Here's a terrific interview with Edward Andy by longtime Journal writer Darlene Brown. It ran in the paper on June 8, 1993.