Enter a home improvement store, and you will find an assortment of hardware accouterments amid essential supplies: a painter’s cap, a waist apron, even construction toys for kids. Some buyers may overlook this paraphernalia. But the miscellaneous equipment from Central Hardware in St. Louis, Missouri, added to the legacy left by the Cohen family, extraordinary immigrant entrepreneurs.
Jane, Ellen, and Barb Schapiro laugh about their grandfather Julius Cohen’s continuous pursuit of remarkable customer service.
“Around 1917, the best way to deliver large products from Central Hardware was by streetcar,” Jane grins. “When Julius transported a brand-new pedestal toilet, it took up so much space on the crowded streetcar, that he had to sit on the toilet all the way to the customer’s house.” It was a humorous sight to see, but that level of dedication allowed the Cohens to grow Central Hardware from scratch to jumpstart a national DIY movement in home repair.
Julius was the fifth of Morris and Yetta Finkelstein Cohen’s seven children, born in Suwalki, Russia (later Poland), in 1897. This border community of 20,000 residents (about the seating capacity of New York City’s Madison Square Garden) was often sandwiched between opposing sides whenever the countries were at war.
“Depending on which year, Suwalki was adapted as military barracks for Polish soldiers or Russian soldiers,” Ellen explains. “Suwalki Jews constantly lived in fear.”
The Cohens lived with the Finkelsteins, Yetta’s parents, and Morris owned a bookbinding and printing shop in the courtyard of the same building. The neighbors were like family and looked after the Cohens. A Russian lieutenant who lived upstairs kept Cossacks from intruding. The Polish janitor protected all the tenants, and the landlord sheltered them from physical harm. Julius and his siblings spoke Hebrew in school, Yiddish at home, and Polish or Russian in the community.
Despite the crossfire, Jewish institutions had significant influence in Suwalki. A Jewish hospital and senior citizen home supported the larger community. Several hotels were Jewish owned. By 1859, the Suwalki community was sending 800 rubles annually to support a Jewish hospital in Warsaw.
Even so, antisemitism continued to increase in Suwalki. “The May Laws of 1882 severely restricted Jews in Russia,” Barb says. “Jews doing business with the government required a Russian Christian partner who would receive half the profits, even if the partner did not work.” Morris, age forty-one, knew it was time to leave. His two older brothers and a sister had already immigrated to St. Louis, and that’s where he would take his own family.
Rubin Cohen (Julius’s older brother) recounts their immigration process: his family had to abandon the bookbinding and printing shop. “We couldn’t get permission to sell them.” The plan was for Morris and two sons—Isador, sixteen, and Rubin, eleven—to get established in St. Louis, then send for the rest of the family. It would take weeks to get to the United States, but in early August 1903, Morris and sons rode horse and wagon out of Suwalki on an 800-mile trek to the seaport in Bremen, Germany. First sailing to Liverpool, they stopped in Leeds to say goodbye to the family living there. From Liverpool, they sailed for ten days on the RMS Carpathia, arriving in New York Harbor on August 28.
“The trip wasn’t too bad, as we were able to travel in tourist class,” Rubin notes. “The food wasn’t bad, either.” Morris looked the other way when the children ate non-kosher meat. Registration and inspection took place at Ellis Island. “When we arrived in New York, guides took the Jewish immigrants into a cell where we were served tea and white bread. Father offered to pay, but the guides said that they were volunteers, and all the food was donated.” All immigrants had to undergo a brief physical inspection, sometimes nicknamed the “six-second physical.” “That was the most frightening part,” Rubin says. “There was so much going on that I didn’t see the Statue of Liberty. I cried because I was still so grateful to be in the United States.”
The guides then took them to the train. “A man named Clancy met them at the St. Louis station and transported them to the home of J.D. Cohen—Morris’s brother—where they were greeted by Aunt Pauline. Clancy worked for J.D. in the lightbulb business. Morris rented a flat on Eighth Street, but there was no bathtub, so Clancy installed one. “He turned out to be a wonderful friend,” Rubin says, and the friendship lasted throughout their lives. Years later, when Clancy died, his widow brought her inheritance to the Cohens. She trusted them more than the bank.
Morris chose 823 North Seventh St. in downtown St. Louis to open his first shop. By stroke of luck, it was next to Bill Clooney’s plumbing services. Even though Bill, of Irish descent, spoke English and Gaelic, and Morris only spoke Yiddish, the two men became close friends. Bill was supportive of Morris, even lending him money to open the store. Morris bought bookshelves, counters, and a new awning for $50. They purchased discarded and broken tools—lanterns, picks, and axes—from Simmons Wholesale Hardware to repair and resell and named the store M. Cohen Tools and Hardware Bought and Sold.
Morris developed his business by learning on the fly and depending on the goodwill of his neighbor. When Bill showed Morris how to dissolve rust by dipping the used tools in muriatic acid, Morris assumed the tools would be even cleaner if he left them submerged overnight. But the next morning, Morris discovered only the wooden handles remaining. One Saturday, Morris, devoutly observant, walked past his closed store after attending Shabbat to find the store open, with Bill doing business for him.
A year later, Morris brought Yetta and the rest of the family.
As the business grew, the store name reflected the relationships Morris had established in St. Louis. When he wanted to expand, Morris acquired a loan from City National Bank. To show his appreciation, he renamed the store City Hardware. Working tirelessly, he earned enough to move to an even larger store. This time, he received a loan from Central National Bank, and he renamed the store Central Hardware, which remained the name for the life of the business.
By 1905, the seventh Cohen child—daughter Minnie—was born. By 1909, the Cohens who immigrated were naturalized citizens of the United States. Central Hardware was booming. They replaced their inventory of refurbished used tools with new ones. Morris and Yetta’s sons—Isador, Meyer, Rubin, Julius and Louis—all worked in the business.
Julius was an intellectual, the only son who left Central Hardware to attend college. After graduating in 1917, he aspired to earn a master’s in philosophy, but Morris ruled with a strong hand. He asked Julius to return to the business. Emotionally torn, Julius’s responsibility to his family and the business prevailed. He sacrificed his degree to return to St. Louis.
“Morris thought Julius was the most ‘Americanized’ of the children,” granddaughter Ellen says. “He had no Yiddish accent. He was the only son who had completed a college degree.” Morris made Julius the chairman and president of Central Hardware. In 1920, Morris retired. “He and Yetta moved to Palestine where he studied the Talmud and supported young men who wanted to become rabbis and teachers.”
Julius took his position seriously. “He felt responsible for the business, the employees, and the entire Cohen family,” granddaughter Barb explains. It turned out that Julius’s penchant for philosophical reflection was redirected to improving customer service. “He listened intently to what customers wanted and actively strove to meet their needs.”
By 1928, Central Hardware unintentionally acquired its first branch store. Julius purchased a bleak building fifteen miles southwest to stock inventory that had been crammed into the downtown store. He installed display windows in the front entrance. He didn’t anticipate how disappointed customers would be to browse the spruced-up warehouse but then be sent downtown to make a purchase. A few months later, he responded by renovating the front portion of the warehouse into a retail section.
The immigrant experience of fleeing Suwalki with very little to restart their lives in the United States sensitized the Cohens to the customer lifestyle. It also encouraged a DIY mindset as the Depression ensued. Central Hardware began selling hard-to-find plumbing supplies so homeowners wouldn’t have to rely on expensive professional services. Now the community could weather the economic plunge by fixing small problems before they grew big.
The store offered free classes on minor home repairs. The staff gave public workshops to explain the New Deal’s National Housing Act of 1934 and assisted community members in obtaining housing funds. Federal officials visited Central Hardware to learn how to replicate the workshops in other cities across the nation.
Even as the business grew exponentially, employees were loyal to Central Hardware because Central Hardware was loyal to them. During World War II, Central Hardware sent care packages filled with encouraging notes and reminders of home to employees who left to serve their country, holding their jobs for when they returned. The business supported the soldiers’ wives and families left behind by extending their credit when there were gaps in military pay.
In 1958, Julius handed the presidency to his nephew Stanley, who advanced new ways of doing business in the hardware sector. Instead of paying for paint in the paint department, then buying a hammer in the tool department, customers could browse the entire store, fill up their shopping carts, and purchase everything at a one-stop checkout counter. The 4,000-square-foot stores were enlarged to 55,000 to 70,000 square feet. Stanley added the marketing slogan “Everything from scoop to nuts,” a wordplay on the idiom “from soup to nuts,” to convey the full complement of hardware products available. The business expanded from six stores in the St. Louis area to thirty-nine stores in five Midwestern states.
“It was a family outing to go to Central Hardware when I was a kid,” former customer Lori Diefenbacher says. “My dad would walk us around and explain all the tools and hardware, and we were free to think about their uses. To this day, my favorite shopping is at hardware stores.”
In 1966, Julius and Stanley decided to sell Central Hardware to Interco, a conglomerate located in St. Louis, for $16.7 million in stock. The new business retained eight members of the Cohen family as management. Older brother Rubin joined Julius and Stanley on the day of the sale. Grinning as he picked up the pen to sign the contract, Julius remarked to Rubin, “It’s a long way from Suwalki.”
In the 1990s Central Hardware was ranked in the top twenty hardware retail stores in the United States. But ultimately, Interco declared bankruptcy, and Central Hardware closed its doors permanently in 1996.
Those accouterments with the Central Hardware brand are now collectibles that can be bought on eBay. These mundane items may seem dispensable, but they represent a legacy created by self-made immigrants who empowered customers through a do-it-yourself culture. They grew the business from scratch to a multimillion-dollar company that provided 3,700 jobs over nine decades. They made less-accessible supplies available for purchase, and equipped the public with information and resources through free, how-to-workshops. They experimented with concepts that preceded today’s big-box home improvement centers to transform their business from just selling hardware to an engaging shopping experience.
Throughout it all, caring for the community was part of the Cohens’ way of life. The support that Morris Cohen and his family received in Suwalki and as an immigrant starting a new business in St. Louis became the norm for how Central Hardware, in turn, cared for their customers.
Central Hardware is a success story of immigrants who sacrificed their homeland for a better life for their family. Julius’s granddaughters, Jane, Ellen, and Barb, recognize his deep sense of responsibility for the Cohen family and the community.
“We are so proud of the legacy of Central Hardware and what it means to the community,” Jane says. “Julius used his creative and visionary brilliance to build a lucrative business that stayed true to his values of civic service and family.”
Jane Chu describes the contributions of immigrants to the United States through her stories and illustrations. A visual artist living in New York, she served as the eleventh chairperson of the National Endowment for the Arts.
