Grand Opening of Willow Hardware – Feb. 20-21, 1953

It's hard to drive down Oberlin Avenue in Lorain and look over at the CVS drug store near the intersection with Meister Road, and not miss the business that used to be at that location: Willow Hardware. 

The Grand Opening of that iconic institution took place seventy years ago this week. Above is the full-page ad that ran in the Lorain Journal back on Feb. 19, 1953.

It's interesting thinking about how that stretch of Oberlin Avenue used to be all farmland, outside of Lorain city limits in Black River Township. Then, as it became apparent that single family homes were going to be replacing the farms, savvy businesses like Whalen Drugs, Jay's IGA Foodliner and Willow Hardware began to move in during the early 1950s.

The page of ads below, which also appeared in the Journal on Feb. 19, 1953, provided some nice publicity for Jay's IGA Foodliner, Willow Hardware's immediate neighbor.

This blog post covered the opening of Jay's IGA Foodliner in March 1952, as well as how the small shopping strip grew during the 1950s.

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Journal Staff Writer Hank Kozloski wrote a great history of Oberlin Avenue back in 1989 that I posted here in two parts (here and here) that's definitely worth revisiting. It mentions all of the businesses noted above and many others.

My family had a ringside seat for all the growth on Oberlin Avenue. My parents built a house on W. 30th Street a few blocks from Oberlin Avenue in the mid-1950s, followed by one on Skyline Drive in the mid-1960s.