Macon Hardware
Can we talk about Mrs. Clara Hayes? She is the owner and manager of Bed-Stuy’s Macon Hardware, which she has run, originally alongside her late husband Peter Hayes, for the past 69 years. A native of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, she keeps shop with help from her children, nieces, nephews and grands. And today is her 90th birthday!
“I don’t want to retire — why you say that?” she says, disbelievingly, when we ask if she plans to slow down any time soon. “I enjoy seeing people in the neighborhood. How can you walk away from something you’ve been with for the past 60, 70 years? It’s not that easy.”
Mrs. Hayes credits staying in the hardware business for nearly seven decades to God’s will. Also, she owns the building.
“A lot of people have moved out, which they shouldn’t have,” she says of the changes to Brooklyn over the years. “When the old people turn their homes over to the kids, all they see is money. I insist on them, ‘If you got your house, you should keep your house.’ But you can’t tell people what to do.” For her part, Mrs. Hayes refuses to sell and has passed that value on to her children. They plan on keeping the property, and Macon Hardware, in the family.
Macon Hardware provides all your basics: keys, locks, tools, paint. But Mrs. Hayes — she has the range. She also offers vintage glassware, board games, greeting cards and, prominently displayed in the storefront window, women’s church hats. “Hats was a good thing for me for years; now they’re not a good thing for me,” she says. “The kids moving in, they don’t wear hats. But I’ll replace that with something else.”
“ I enjoy seeing people in the neighborhood. How can you walk away from something you’ve been with for the past 60, 70 years? It’s not that easy.”
339 Macon Street, 718-574-4244
