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A turning point foreshadowed early this week is now reality.
"The oldest hat retailer in the United States, Henry the Hatter, 'has lost its lease and must close' its downtown Detroit location, a news release announced Friday," the Detroit Free Press reports. The five-paragraph item adds:
The last day of business for the store, making hats for such high-profile people as U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and George Clinton, is Aug. 5. The other location in Southfield will remain open.
In addition to that 10 Mile Road site, the owner hopes to reopen elsewhere in the city where the shop has operated since Grover Cleveland was president 124 years ago. "We're gonna be a Detroit business, one way or another," Paul Wasserman tells a Crain's Detroit Business freelancer this week.
Its original site was on Gratiot Avenue downtown. It expanded in 1923 with a branch on Michigan Avenue in the Lafayette Building. In 1952, the Gratiot Avenue store was demolished and Henry the Hatter moved into the current building at 1307 Broadway.
Earlier article, June 25:
More downtown Detroit offices and style-conscious workers are good for Henry the Hatter, a presence in the city since 1893.
Customers pose in the landmark shop on Broadway downtown. (Photo from Henry the Hatter website)
Sales have grown steadily since 2012, owner Paul Wasserman says in a Crain's Detroit Business report by Aaron Mondry, a Southfield freelancer. But the business, which his father Seymour bought in 1948 with a partner and which has been at 1307 Broadway since 1952, may be displaced if commercial rents downtown keep climbing, the 70-year-old proprietor tells the reporter:
"I'm already worried," says Wasserman. "For all the good [Dan] Gilbert's done, if it has a dark side, that's it. Businesses like mine, if trends continue the way they are, will be a thing of the past.
"I'd like us to be here, but it ultimately won't be my choice."
Even if his store on Broadway closes, Wasserman insists he'd continue in Detroit at another location. "We're gonna be a Detroit business, one way or another."
There's also a Southfield branch, open since 1991 at a West 10 Mile Road strip mall. From 1985-2009, Henry the Hatter had a Hamtramck shop on Jos. Campau Street.
The venerable retailer, a survivor for 124 years, has surmounted other challenges. "Even though hats have, at various times, gone out of the mainstream, Wasserman says the store's character and brand recognition is one of the reasons he's been able to stay in business for so long," Mondry writes.
As more men went hatless in the 1960s, the shop began repairing and renovating headgear that customers already owned.
"Henry the Hatter was actually a hat factory until 1985," its website notes. "When you came into Henry the Hatter at that time, if you didn’t see a hat on the shelf that caught your eye, a quick call was made upstairs where the hat finishing was done. You selected the felt finish, the brim size and finish, and what trimmings you wanted on your hat. Within a couple of hours your custom hat was ready."
Now, in the 21st century's second decade, the headline at Crain's is stark:
Oldest hat retailer in the United States contemplates future in changing Detroit
