This photograph from the C. Frank Dayton Photo Collection at the East Hampton Library shows the A.O. Jones Hardware Store at 51 Newtown Lane. Owned by Asa O. Jones (1857-1953), it later became East End Hardware and today is A.L.C., a clothing store.
Jones likely opened the shop around August 1900, when he began advertising that he sold paint. He was originally a builder with a carpentry shop, which C. Frank Dayton described as located on part of what is now the village parking lot on the northern side of Newtown Lane. Jones continued to operate his carpentry business until at least 1907.
By 1908, his store was successful enough that he was able to keep it open until 8 p.m. daily. In the 1910 census, Jones appears only as a merchant, suggesting he was no longer working as a contractor.
The hardware store stocked everything from pesticides like Paris green to wallpapers, gas, and machine oil. In 1903, W.J. Hopper sold his paint business to Jones, who was able to expand the line he carried.
Dayton noted that the opening at the left of the photograph, near where a bicycle leans on a tree, shows an alleyway for wagons, reminiscent of a modern drive-through for business. The adjoining doorway was used to access both a basement plumbing supply shop run by Fred Ross and the upstairs Majestic Theatre, which opened around 1915 and later became a dance hall called Majestic Hall.
Relying on his carpentry background, Jones built a hinged stairway on pulleys that could be set up in the evening for the Majestic’s patrons and removed during the day for the plumbing supply patrons to have easy access to the basement stairs.
In June 1927, The East Hampton Star announced that Asa Jones had sold his business to a group of local business owners, who opened the East End Hardware Corporation in the same Newtown Lane location by July 15 of that year. That summer, Jones moved to Newport News, Va., with his daughter, Amy Jones McKay (1893-1960).
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Andrea Meyer, a librarian and archivist, is the Long Island Collection’s head of collection.
