Nantucket Historical Association
Man and woman drive in an antique electric car past Hardy's hardware store, 1959;
Bingo the parrot, long time resident at Hardy's, 1980s
The Hardware Store with a Parrot
Before South Water Street Sold Resort Wear, Hardy’s Sold Paint, Nails, Fishing Poles, and Local Memory
Don Costanzo • June 16, 2026
There was a time on Nantucket when a trip downtown might include a stop for nails, paint, fishing line, local gossip, and a visit with a Brazilian macaw. That place was Hardy’s Hardware.
For much of the twentieth century, the modest storefront at 5 South Water Street stood as one of those small, practical shops that helped hold everyday island life together. It was not polished in the modern Nantucket sense, it was useful and familiar, the kind of place where people came in because they needed something, and stayed because they saw someone they knew.
Today, the same address sits in the heart of a very different downtown. Lilly Pulitzer and Pierce Galleries now occupy the space, offering bright resort clothing and fine art where hardware, paint cans, fishing gear, and household odds and ends once filled the shelves. The building — though, renovated — remains, but the world around it has changed.
Hardy’s belonged to an older Nantucket, one in which South Water Street was still lined with the kinds of businesses that served the people who lived and worked on the island year-round. In early maps, South Water Street was simply Water Street, part of a downtown fabric that dates back at least to the late eighteenth century. By the middle of the twentieth century, Hardy’s had become one of its dependable anchors.
A 1965 Nantucket Historical Association photograph captures the store in its earlier South Water Street location, standing beside Cy’s Green Coffee Pot, the popular local eatery that shared the same corner building. Above the hardware storefront, the hand-painted sign advertised “Hardware” and “Paints.” The building had been physically split in 1937, with Hardy’s on one side and Cy’s on the other. Together, they formed the kind of unpretentious downtown pairing that once made perfect sense: coffee, conversation, tools, paint, and whatever else the day required.
Later, according to local recollection, Hardy’s moved farther along South Water Street into the building now associated with In the Pink and other retailers, after the A&P moved down toward the wharf. For many islanders, it is that later Hardy’s, with Bingo the macaw inside, that remains fixed most vividly in memory.
Hardy’s was not just a store, it was a daily stop. Island families came in for paint, nails, tools, fishing poles, and small necessities. Children came in because there was something to look at, someone to talk to, or maybe a small treat to be had. Workers stopped by because the store carried what they needed and because the people behind the counter knew what they were talking about. In winter, when the pace of town slowed and the island folded back into itself, Hardy’s became one of those places where stories passed easily across the counter.
Nantucket Historical Association
Left to right: Arthur Stojak, unknown young man, and unknown police or fish-and-game officer standing outside Hardy's, 1950s; View of Hardy's and Cy's Green Coffee Pot Bar and Restaurant on South Water Street, 1965. The large building on the left is the Dreamland Theatre. Before the mid-1960s, downtown Nantucket offered stores that supported daily life, including Hardy's and affordably priced restaurants, like Cy's Green Coffee Pot.
The shop was tied closely to the Hardy family, and later to Bob and Roberta Keenan. One family clarification, shared in response to the Nantucket Historical Association’s 2019 posting of old Hardy’s photographs, helps sharpen the record: Roberta was Roberta Hardy, daughter of Robert Hardy. Bob Keenan, according to that account, was brought in by Robert Hardy to manage the business. Eventually, the business was incorporated with Bob as president.
That detail matters because it shows Hardy’s not as a business that simply changed hands, but as a store whose identity passed through family, marriage, management, and daily stewardship. For those who remember it, Bob and “Berta” Keenan were part of the place. Former employees and customers described Bob as kind, steady, and memorable. One woman who had worked for him called him “one of the best bosses I ever had.” Another former employee simply remembered, “Nice man.”
But the most famous Hardy’s employee had feathers. In the early 1980s, the Keenans decided the hardware store needed a pet. From a shop in Hyannis, they brought back Bingo, a multicolored Brazilian macaw who quickly became as much a part of Hardy’s as the shelves and paint cans. Bingo was not background decoration, she was a presence.
She perched on shoulders, greeted customers, nibbled on fruit and, according to local recollections, even pasta. Children loved her. Tourists remembered her. Islanders came to think of her as part of the shop itself. One woman recalled that when people entered Hardy’s, they greeted Bingo first. Another remembered her mother being “bribed into many a Barbie doll” at the cash register while the children stood in front of Bingo. Decades later, she said, she still tells Bingo stories to her own child and thinks of the old store when she passes the Lilly Pulitzer storefront.
“This is Nantucket,” she wrote. “The real Nantucket.”
Then, in 1987, Bingo escaped. The bird slipped out an open door and launched what became a six-day island-wide mystery. Sightings came in from across Nantucket. Bingo was spotted over beaches, woods, and open spaces, turning a hardware store pet into a community concern. One person remembered being nearby the day Bingo “flew the coop.” Another called it an “island wide” hunt.
Eventually, in Madaket, a dog-walker managed to lure Bingo down with a piece of bread. The MSPCA helped return her safely to Hardy’s. A missing parrot was not, in itself, a civic emergency, but Bingo’s disappearance gave people something to follow, talk about, and root for together. When she came home, it felt like the island had gotten one of its characters back. That was part of Hardy’s charm. It had characters.
On a summer afternoon, someone might be testing a fishing pole outside the store. A neighbor might be leaning in the doorway. A child might be staring at Bingo. A year-round resident might be buying something ordinary and leaving with a story. In one 1950s image, young fishermen stand outside the shop, identified by the Nantucket Historical Association as Arthur Stojak and John Cabral. The store’s porch and entrance were often dressed with the visible tools of island life: fishing equipment, paint, household goods, the practical clutter of a working hardware shop.
In that sense, Hardy’s represented more than commerce. It represented a kind of downtown that was still built around daily usefulness. Nantucket has always had visitors, and downtown has always adapted to them, but for much of the twentieth century, the commercial core still held many businesses that answered ordinary island needs. Hardware stores, grocers, diners, pharmacies, repair shops, and small local retailers were part of the social infrastructure. They were places where errands and community overlapped.
One commenter on the NHA post put it plainly: it was hard to exaggerate what a central communal gathering place Hardy’s had been. Places like it blessed town with “camaraderie, humor and a casual intimacy” that felt increasingly gone. Another called Hardy’s “quintessential Nantucket.” When it closed downtown, one person wrote, it felt like “the beginning of the end of downtown as a destination for daily business and errands.”
Hardy’s eventually closed in the late 1990s, with local recollections often placing the end around 1998. By then, Nantucket’s downtown economy had already begun shifting toward a more seasonal and upscale retail model. The old hardware store space, like many others, moved from serving household necessity to serving the tastes of a visitor-driven market.
From the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror, 15 December 1994
The transformation is not unique. It’s part of the larger story of Nantucket’s downtown, where historic buildings remain carefully preserved even as their uses change dramatically. South Water Street still sits within the island’s historic core, and its buildings still carry the scale, materials, and charm of earlier centuries. But the storefronts increasingly tell a different economic story.
Where Hardy’s once sold hammers, paint, and fishing gear, shoppers now find resort fashion and art. There’s nothing unusual about that kind of change in a place as desirable as Nantucket. Buildings survive by being used, and downtown has always evolved. But certain losses register more deeply because they mark the disappearance of a type of place. Hardy’s was not architecturally grand. It was not famous in the way Nantucket’s whaling mansions or historic landmarks are famous. Its importance was quieter and more local. It was a place people used.
That’s why it remains in island memory. Longtime Nantucketers still remember the sign, the shelves, the feel of the shop, the conversations, the fishing gear, Bob and Berta, and of course Bingo. One person remembered bringing his daughters in to see the bird. Another said she may still have one of Bingo’s feathers. Others simply wrote the same thing, in different ways: loved that store, miss Hardy’s, good times.
The building at 5 South Water Street still stands. The windows still face the street. People still pass by, shop, pause, and look in. But for those who remember Hardy’s, another scene remains layered over the present one: paint cans near the door, fishing rods outside, Bob and Berta behind the counter, and Bingo watching the room as if she owned the place.
Hardy’s is gone, but it has not entirely disappeared. It remains in the stories people still tell when they pass that corner, in the memories of children gathered at the register, and in the simple phrase that keeps so much island history alive: “That used to be Hardy’s.”
Source note: This story draws on Nantucket Historical Association photographs and records, as well as community recollections shared in response to the NHA’s 2019 posting of historic Hardy’s Hardware images. Some identifications and memories are based on those public comments and should be treated as local recollection unless independently documented.