Queens family business Bartunek Hardware celebrates 100 years
A family hardware store has been offering tools and advice to a neighborhood in Queens for generations. Now
By Elle McLogan
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QUEENS, New York (WCBS) — A family hardware store has been offering tools and advice to a neighborhood in Queens for generations.
Now, the community is honoring the business as it marks 100 years of service.
Bartunek Hardware packs a lot into a small space.
“There’s mostly regular customers, repeat customers, and then, you get the new people moving into the neighborhood,” owner Gary Bartunek said. “They come into the store, they see that we have a lot of stuff to sell, and they keep coming back.”
And the staff knows every aisle by heart. They are the Bartunek family, and they’ve been running their Astoria shop together for five generations.
“Nine out of ten times, everybody that walks in here has always got a little piece of something in their pocket, and they’re coming in to ask, ‘Gary, do you have this,’ or ‘Do you have that?’ And magically, if it’s a palm-sized piece or a ten-foot pole, it magically comes out from underneath that counter,” customer Nick Arsenas said.
The store has been open continuously at the same 23rd Avenue address and in the same family since 1925, when founder Henry Bartunek bought the building for $16,000.
“My grandparents lived upstairs, so we would run around, me and my sister, we’d run around the basement,” the owner’s son Danny Bartunek said. “We’d write the prices on things when we were little kids.”
He has helped update store signage while preserving the original awning.
“The team, we have to solve problems,” he said.
Offering advice and support to contractors and home renovation amateurs alike, the shop is a family tradition for customers, too. Dozens came out on a rainy day for a street co-naming ceremony — the block is now Bartunek Way.
Now, the Bartuneks are looking ahead.
“My little one now just turned 1, so he’s the next generation,” Danny Bartunek said.
They say the community’s love has been overwhelming.
“Just to be here for people, I think, is a great thing,” Gary Bartunek’s wife Mary Witty said. “And the fact that it’s a mom-and-pop and that it’s surviving, that’s a big deal.”
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