Morales Hardware Store is located in the Bronx, NY on 1850 Jerome Avenue. The location of this hardware store was especially convenient because it was only 2 blocks away from where I live. I’ve been coming here since I was a little kid, whenever my dad was looking for materials for his construction projects.
This place is pretty huge, and pretty old. They don’t seem to sell much in terms of power tools or any heavy duty electronics but they have soooo many hand tools, parts…etc. You could come here looking for a million types of different screws and find them all. In a separate section cordoned off by a big glass door is where they keep all of the wood and where they cut it all. The door leads to a backyard/parking lot kind of place covered in like a foot of sawdust scattered all over the floor. That’s another thing, this place isn’t entirely clean and/or organized, but to be honest I felt comfortable and still felt I could rely on this place for whatever I may need to finish a project.
In another separate section of the store, it looked like a showroom for furniture, granite counters, floor tiles, bathroom tiles, caulk, grout…etc. It looked pretty amazing how organized yet dismantled this store seemed to be. The floor staff know a lot about what they are talking about but the cashiers are really just that, cashiers, they don’t know much about hardware and are just there to ring the registers, which is to be expected anywhere you go.
There are about 5 huge aisles of stuff all crammed together as far back as 50 feet and stacked up just as high. Surprisingly, even though each aisle is jam packed with stuff, they still manage to keep everything that is relevant together making for a casual, fun shopping experience. They even sell pots and pans. Finding things wasn’t that hard but before searching it seemed like it would take forever to sift through all the junk.
In all honesty, this was one of the my favorite hardware stores ever. Despite it’s minor flaws, I love the laid back, down to earth vibe of the place and honestly, just like old NYC, all the shitty things actually give the store character and make it unique to any other place I’ve ever been.
