OpenStreetMap (new tab)

Google Map (new tab)

Google Streetview (new tab)

Building History

On 09/01/1914, the Cooley Hardware Store celebrated its 39th year in business on West 3rd Street in San Bernardino, CA. An advertisement taken out in the San Bernardino Sun on that date said of the business: "Thirty-nine years ago, on September 1st, 1875, George M. Cooley, the present head of the George M. Cooley Hardware Co., entered the employ of Ruffen & Biays as a clerk. The store occupied a small portion of the present location, and was known as a hardware and tin shop. At that time the floor space of the Ruffen & Biays store occupied 1350 square feet and carried a few hundred dollars' worth of stock. Today the Geo. M. Cooley Company occupies 21,210 square feet of floor space; it is housed in a modern up-to-date building and carries the largest stock of hardware in Southern California outside of Los Angeles. These 39 years of success mean 39 years of merited confidence; it means that from the little tinware and hardware shop George M. Cooley has built up a business to include Hardware of all kinds, Plumbing and Plumbing supplies, Cuttlery [sic], Builders' Supplies, Stoves and Ranges, Jobbers in Iron Pipe, Agency for White Trucks and Automobiles and Diamond Tires." (See "Geo. M. Cooley Co. Pioneer Hardware Folks advertisement," San Bernardino Sun, vol. 38, no. 78, 09/30/1914, p. 21.)

Pioneers Jack Ruffen and Sam Rolfe were partners in this hardware business between 1866 and 1873. (See "Old Friends Testify in Ruffen Case," San Bernardino Sun, vol. 27, no. 104, 06/07/1907, pp. 1, 3.) Ruffen then partnered with Biays, before the business was eventually acquired by Cooley.

PCAD id: 22709