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Clayton Frazar of New Orleans hopes to turn the historic Mauffray?s Hardware on Beach Boulevard in Bay St. Louis into a combination home/arts-antiques shop. Alden L. Mauffray, shown here in 1987, worked in the hardware store from age 7 until a few months before his death in 1990.
Old Mauffray?s Hardware site may soon be an antique shop
By NAN EHRBRIGHT
THE SUN HERALD
BAY ST. LOUIS ? Clayton Frazar of New Orleans has been working as an ?apprentice? on weekends, soaking up as much as she can about how to run an antiques/arts business.
Frazar bought the historic Mauf-fray's Hardware building on Beach Boulevard last week.
If city officials approve the zoning variance she seeks to allow a residence in a commercial area, Frazar hopes to live upstairs in the loft and sell antiques, gifts and artwork from the ground floor.
The whole plan, Frazar said, "is in the formation stage.?
?I imagine my store will be very eclectic,? she said. ?You can?t always
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that?s traditional. You can get beauty in the modem as well as the old and traditional. ?
Eclectic is fitting for the downtown building that housed the hardware store from 1903 to 1990.
Mauffray?s had a reputation for car-tying an extensive inventory of hard-to-find items.
Over the years, the store stocked the usual nuts, bolts, hammers and gardening tools, but also sold coffee pots, skillets, crab traps, bug zap-pers, scythe handles, lawnmower wheels, porch swings, hog rings, fishing nets, weights, floats and oakum for caulking wooden boats.
At one time, it stocked horseshoes and horseshoe nails.
Alden L. Mauffray started working in his father?s store when he was 7. He bought the store from his dad in
before he died in 1990 at age 83.
After Mauffray died, his godson, John A. Scafide Jr., said many people stopped at the store "not necessarily to buy anything, but just to experience his personality.?
Mauffray also kept a customers? ?want book.?
"If you come in here and ask for a mule with a pink eye, I?ll write it down in the ?want book,? ? Mauffray said during a 1987 interview with The Sun Herald. ?That doesn?t mean I?ll order it, but I?ll write it down.?
Frazer hopes to obtain city approval for her plans by mid-March and open her new business in the summer.
?There?s no way I can afford to have a house as well as a business,? she said. ?Besides, J feel like that combination is the way I want to run it. I have seen others like that, and I
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Mauffray Old-Mauffray's-Hardware-site-may-soon-be-an-antique-shop-Sun-Herald-Saturday-March-1-1997-part2
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