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The Herald-Dispatch file photo
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Like other businesses along 3rd. Avenue, the Emmons-Hawkins
Hardware Co.
was inundated by the 1937 flood.
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HUNTINGTON --
For decades, Huntington's Emmons-Hawkins Hardware Co.
was the largest hardware
firm between Pittsburgh and Cincinnati.
The 812 pages
of the company's 1938 catalogue listed a bewildering array of items for sale -
tools, pumps, insecticides,
plows, harness, lanterns, jacks, stoves, bathroom
fixtures, light fixtures, fans, radio tubes, padlocks, metal ceilings,
shingles,
glass, clocks and watches, guns, ammunition, fishing tackle, bicycles and more.
Much more.
Emmons-Hawkins traced its origins to the very year of the city's birth, 1871,
and the opening that year of a hardware store
by C.F. Parsons. Later his son, W.E. Parsons, became a partner with Carlton D. Emmons under the name Parsons and
Emmons.
Still later, J. L. Hawkins became a partner and the firm became
Emmons-Hawkins. In 1896, the company built a retail store,
office and warehouse
at 1022-1032 3rd Ave. and remained there for an amazing 74 years.
Carlton
Emmons was the son of Delos Emmons, a brother-in-law of Collis P. Huntington and
the rail tycoon's right-hand
man in the new city of Huntington. The younger
Emmons was president of the hardware firm until his death in 1937.
He was
succeeded as president by J.L. Hawkins. He in turn was succeeded by Mathias W.
Dugan,
who had been with the company since 1913.
In 1944,
Emmons-Hawkins closed its retail operation and became exclusively a wholesale
house,
sending out its 16 traveling salesmen over a large part of West Virginia,
Eastern Kentucky and Ohio.
The company
went out of business in 1970, selling its inventory to an out-of-town buyer and
its building to the
Huntington Urban Renewal Authority, which demolished it as
part of the city's downtown urban renewal
program. Today, Mack & Dave's store
occupies most of the block where Emmons-Hawkins once stood.
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Note: This Article and picture appeared in the Herald-Dispatch Newspaper on Aug. 25 , 2014
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