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| Remembering Downtown Past - Dohn's Hardware |
| Monday, November 24, 2003 5:18:59 PM - Middletown Ohio |
by Barb LaPierre, TV MIDDLETOWN
Yesterday morning, we watched as two gentlemen from Allied Restoration took down the Dohn's sign from the front of the former hardware store building on North Broad Street. That building is currently being rehabbed by Tri Tech Sound and will soon be in use as a recording studio. We're glad to see that we have new downtown neighbors.
But there are many of us who still miss Dohn's Hardware. For one thing, they seemed to have just about anything in the way of hardware - and if they didn't have exactly what you wanted, they had something that could be used in its place or they would special-order the gizmo. You could ask the salespeople how to fix a leaky faucet or replace a damaged electrical cord - and they could tell you in layman's terms just how to do it. Their customer service was exceptional - it was one of the reasons folks kept coming back to Dohn's, even when the bigger stores with lower prices came into the area.
Lots of people have their favorite Dohn's stories. There's the TVM board member whose father needed a pulley for a rather ancient piece of machinery - a replacement was found in the store's back room. This editor remembers Dohn's well - it was the first store she visited when she first came to Middletown in the 1960's. Buying a wedding gift for the soon-to-be-sister-in-law who seemed to have everything could have been a formidable task, but the saleswoman in charge of the bridal registry was able to find a present which was very special and unique. Many years later, we at TV Middletown were forever traipsing over to Dohn's for everything from hardware to trash bags. And on one winter Saturday in 1999, we remember running over there just as the store was getting ready to close, to get loads of plastic tarps to protect our gear from water from a roof leak.
The Dohn's sign was in place before the construction of the mall in the 1970's, could be seen through the mall windows, and survived the demolition of the mall in 2001. The business didn't - the mall deconstruction limited access to the downtown area. But Dohn's and all it stood for as a family-run business will not be forgotten.
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