Bronx, NY 10474
H.C. Oswald Supply is in an old brick building sitting swat on a street in the Bronx less than three miles from Yankee Stadium.
Oswald started its business in 1923 just a decade after the New York Yankees showed up, and they, too, have a grand history.
Robert Oswald Jr.is of the fourth generation and I like him a lot because he is passionate about this business. He understands that it is about more than just answering phones and moving shelf goods. He knows that there is a sweet history here. You pick up a piece of old iron and it tells a tale.
“It is incredible working in the business that your great-grandfather built almost 100 years ago,” Robert tells me. “Walking through the warehouse as a child and seeing my name, ‘OSWALD SUPPLY,’ forever cast into a diamond-shaped cast-iron plate, which itself may be 100 years old, both inspired and humbled me.”
As he told me this, my childhood memories of my father’s days at the supply house, Glauber, Inc., which was in Manhattan, came flooding back to me. My name was on nothing but my father back then, but Iwas proud of his size and his strength and how he laughed with the contractors on the loading dock. I remember how those strong men would pat me on the head during the long summer days when that place was my playground. This is a generational business.