In Store

A visit to an eighty-year-old hardware store where you will never suffer Home Depot meltdown.

Photo by Mark Thomas Deming

Say you need a screw. A metric screw. A 4mm x 12mm hex head with .70 threads, to be exact — just one. No way you’re going to Home Depot for one screw. Anyhow, you can’t buy just one screw at Home Depot. You have to buy twenty, if you can find any.

Enter Lincoln Hardware, Tacoma’s last, best mom-and-pop hammer shop, where the thirdgeneration proprietors not only carry that screw,
but will find it for you.

“The box stores spend a lot of money advertising service, but they don’t provide it,” says Scott Feist, who runs the store along with his brother Dave and sister Jennifer.

Founded by the trio’s grandfather in 1929, and family run ever since, Lincoln Hardware can’t compete with the warehouse giants on discounts or selection. Instead, this International District landmark offers exactly what the big guys can’t: the hometown touch. Few retailers know their customers the way they do at Lincoln Hardware.

“We know their names, their kids, their grandkids, their dog. We know their next-door neighbor,” says Jennifer. “People will call and ask us to drop something off on our way home.”

During a recent visit, a steady stream of shoppers came and went through the big red doors. Most were greeted by name. A man purchasing a mousetrap was asked if he had the proper hunting license.

Whether searching for a mousetrap, a screw, a fi tting, a padlock, a knife, a sprinkler, a cast-iron Dutch oven, canning jars, a stuffed moose, advice or just a chuckle, no one seems to walk away unhappy from this place. And no huge parking lot has to be crossed to get there.

Lincoln Hardware

3726 S. G St., 253.472.1425
Monday – Saturday: 8:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.