Aubuchon Hardware closes

After doing business on Court Street for the past eleven years Aubuchon Hardware announced the closure of the store last week with a note on the door expressing "much regret" and directing customers to its stores Meredith, Alton and Franklin.

The company offered no explanation for its decision and calls to Michael Mattson, director of advertising and public relations at the firm's headquarters in Westminister, Massachusetts, were not returned yesterday.

Several years ago Aubuchon all but lost its frontage on Court when the owners of the lot added a building to the site, which now houses Hurt and Forbes Insurance Agency. The store was part of a condominium complex, which includes Little Caesar's pizza, owned by M.T. McCarthy Realty Holdings, LLC.

Aubuchon Hardware was founded in 1908 by William Aubuchon, one of four children of a widow who left Canada for America seven years earlier. Beginning with a store in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, the firm today operates 130 stores and employs 1,100 people, including 20 family members, in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Maine, New York and New Hampshire, where it opened its first store in the 1920s. The company now operates at 21 locations. Aubuchon claims to be the oldest family-owned hardware chain in the United States.