Landmark hardware store in downtown Joplin to close later this month

The Pearl Brothers Hardware Store in downtown Joplin, Missouri, will close for good on Jan. 28 after 117 years.

However, the new owner says he’ll keep the Pearl Brothers name as part of the building and nominate it to the National Register of Historic Places, according to the Joplin Globe.

Harold Berger, who’s been part of the store since 1977, said he needs to retire because of mounting health problems.

The newspaper had more details about the new owner:

Sawyer Smith, with Blue Haven Investments and Homes, said Wednesday he has a contract to buy the building. His company is also buying the name Pearl Brothers, and plans to use it somehow when they renovate the building.

“The top two stories are just being used as storage, so we want to use those for either commercial or residential space,” Smith said. “Then we’re going to renovate the bottom floor area. It’s going to be some form of retail, honoring that legacy of what’s been there, but we don’t have solid concrete plans on what exactly is going in down there. I can’t say how we’ll use it, but we were intentional in buying the Pearl Brothers name. That will be part of it. The building will always be known as the Pearl Brothers building for sure.” […]

Smith said they plan to buy Berger’s stock and liquidate it after they close on the building.

“Our plan is to restore it through historic tax credits,” Smith said. “In order to do this through historic tax credits, it’s in a historic district, but the sheet metal on the front makes it a noncontributing member, so our plan is to pull that sheet metal off and bring the facade back to its historic state and get it on the National Register of Historic Places as a contributing member of the downtown historic district.”

Gus and Dave Pearl opened the store in 1905 at 220 S. Main St., predating the oldest alignment of Route 66 by more than 20 years.

Its current location at 617 S. Main St. since 1965 still is on the old alignment and sits less than a block from the newer Seventh Street alignment of Route 66.

Berger’s dad Joe and his grandfather, Jake, bought the store in 1949 but kept its name.

In a story from about a year ago, Ozarks Farm and Neighbor posted a photo of Joe Berger chatting with famous radio broadcaster Paul Harvey, who was a True Value Hardware spokesman at the time.

Pearl Brothers Hardware also is the site of a prominent photo-op in the region. In 2013, Images in Tile created the Route 66 Mural Park and embedded a half-Corvette on the south side of the building.

The Corvette was removed for renovations a few weeks ago, but it’s anticipated it will be re-installed before spring.

(Excerpted Google Street View image of Pearl Brothers Hardware Store in Joplin, Missouri)