Amelia Island Paint, 516 Ash Street (Fernandina Beach): Fall 2025 no comments
I have the feeling that this place had a different name when I was growing up, and indeed you can see that the current marquee seems to be installed over a, different, previous one. During those years, it was not at all unusual for a "real" store to be in downtown Fernandina. There was a grocery store where the antique mall is now, Wass Drugs, the local department store, run by by a childhood friend of my father, a gas station, and several sundries shops. Now it is all pretty much restaurants and touristy shops -- not that I don't enjoy that, but a bit of the character of a "working city" is gone.
I don't have many specific memories of the hardware store, except that I'm pretty sure my father would walk over from my aunt's house now and then to pick up things for the various small repair projects he did for her on our visits, such as tacking the stair-covers down again. As it happens, I needed a dowel when I was in town in December of 2023, and walked over from the hotel and got one. The place was very old-school of the sort you don't see much anymore -- think the downton (not Five Points") incarnation of Hiller Hardware.
They have been trying to sell the building for a couple of years, and this summer seemed to have stepped up the efforts, and posted official closing signs. I'm unclear if they are still open at this time or not -- I don't see anything online, and google doesn't have them down as "closed", but if not, it's just a matter of time.
