When George Alexander Moore, a freelance production driver who finds props and other items for companies including Mirvish Productions, needed white paint for a staircase in the musical “We Will Rock You,” he turned to Rotblott’s.
The yellow-coated, two-floor hardware store on Adelaide Street West near Portland Street has long been a favourite of Moore’s. This time, he needed a special kind of long-lasting paint that wouldn’t fade over time, an essential quality for a long-running musical.
“Rotblott’s is very well known in the production industry,” Moore says. “When you need a specific type of paint or tape, other hardware stores just don’t have them.”
Founded in 1917 as a scrap-metal business, Rotblott’s now serves two very different worlds: everyday customers looking for hardware and film, television and theatre productions looking for things they can’t easily find elsewhere.
From gaffer tape to special paint that won’t shine under harsh lighting, the store’s unusual inventory has made it a resource for Toronto’s arts community for decades.
For the average customer, though, it’s simply a place where it’s easy to spend more than what’s written on the shopping list.
You come in for a couple of screws and a step ladder, but find yourself eyeing Edison light bulbs, a magnetic one-touch screwdriver, a 16-inch rotating fan and, heck, maybe that respirator mask could come in handy during the next smoky week.
Employees and owner Andrew Rothblott can often be found moving through the aisles, making sure the shelves are stocked. Street signs — King Street West, Richmond Street — hang above the aisles, while black-and-white photos of the business’s early days line the walls.
The family name is Rothblott, though the business has always been known as Rotblott’s. Andrew says his grandfather added the “h” to the family name to soften its sound, but because the business had been established as Rotblot’s in 1917, the company name was never changed.
The store’s customers are fiercely loyal, Rothblott says. It sells more than 100 gallons of paint a week and cuts about 2,000 keys a month.
On the west side of the store is a telling image: a painting of a horse leading a wagon loaded with metal parts down a street, with the date “1917” underneath.
That’s when the Rothblott family business began. Andrew’s great-grandfather, Itzak, founded a scrap-metal business that year on a small yard on McCaul Street.
Later, as the metal business grew, he moved to 560 Front S. W. and eventually passed the business to his sons, Murray and Mike. Murray’s son Howard took over in the 1950s.
“I loved the machinery of it all, and I still run it to this day,” says Howard Rothblott, 82, who continues to operate the family’s scrap-metal business in North York.
In 2004, Howard, his brother Bradley and Andrew began looking for new opportunities and decided to open a hardware store downtown. They took over the Adelaide Street West building after an organic food store closed.
The move into hardware drew on relationships the family had built through the scrap-metal business.
“We built such strong relationships with various suppliers on the scrap-metal side of our business, we knew we could get products for customers that would be hard to get otherwise,” Andrew Rothblott says. “If you need a barrel of climbing rope, for example, we can get that for you.”
It didn’t take long for production managers in film, television and theatre to discover the store.
“Word gets around about a store like ours,” Rothblott says.
“Have you seen ‘Gilmore Girls’?” he asks. “We’re in that show, if you look closely enough.”
He says production managers for the first season of “Gilmore Girls,” filmed in Toronto, bought steel wool, light bulbs and price signs from Rotblott’s when they needed a hardware store to look realistic.
Other productions have come looking for everything from tape, paint and rope to tires, wood and garbage cans.
“We once had Blue Man Group come here and buy garbage cans to bang on, and, well, a lot of blue paint,” Rothblott says, grinning as he walks down an aisle lined with 16 types of measuring tape. Around the corner, another aisle offers nine types of mousetraps.
The store has also supplied items for productions including “Reacher,” “The Boys,” “Frankenstein,” “Cinderella Man,” “Designated Survivor” and “Kim’s Convenience,” among others. Many Mirvish Productions shows have also sourced items from the store.
But the neighbourhood around Rotblott’s has changed dramatically since the family opened the hardware store.
The Fashion District was once a centre of manufacturing and industrial businesses. Now, many of those operations have given way to condos and restaurants, and some of the specialty stores that once served the area have disappeared.
Rothblott says the changes have left Rotblott’s in an unusual — and bittersweet — position.
“Gentrification, well, that just happens, nothing you can do,” he says. “But it’s a real shame we lost so many lumber yards and stores over the years, like Active Surplus on Queen. We feel like we’re the only one around anymore.”
That matters beyond the neighbourhood. For productions that need a very particular kind of paint, tape, rope or other piece of hardware on short notice, the disappearance of specialty suppliers means fewer places to turn.
The production business itself has also slowed in recent years, Rothblott says, as Toronto competes with other cities, including Vancouver, for film and television work.
Still, Rotblott’s occupies a niche that is increasingly difficult to replace: a place where a production crew can walk in and find the odd, specific item it needs, alongside the screws, ladders, paint and other supplies bought by generations of Toronto customers.
For Moore, that makes the store more than a convenient supplier. It is one of the few remaining places where productions can find what they need.
“Twenty-five years ago I could head to Queen Street and get everything I need for shows, but now there’s only Rotblott’s,” he says. “I don’t know how they continue to stay operating, but I’m glad they do.”
