Chas. G. Burch Supply Co.

This place was able to rebuild pre-​war faucet parts for me. An older pluming genius (one of the owners?) spent a good hour on it and then charged me a total of $ 23.78! $ 12 of which was labor. These guys are far out of my way but I will not use anyone else for plumbing supplies now. There are very few places like this left and I urge everyone to support them.

You know you’re in a rustbelt city when the three different people who give you directions to the same place describe it in terms of its location relative to landmark businesses that are no longer operating.
Well, I’m glad I waded through the weeds and old hubcaps and through the barbed wire fences to get to this plumbing supply place with the entrance way in the back lot of a building that can only be described as, um, non-​descript. I showed them a photograph of the old fixture I was trying to match and maybe thirty seconds later they came out of the back room with the exact part I had tried to find at a half dozen other hardware, big box, and more «modern» plumbing supply places. Then I waited a half hour while they wrote it up, trying to figure how to price it and get it back into the inventory system for re-​order, even though it seems I was the first person to buy one of the things in nine years.
They do have a customer service approach that might be better described by Margaret Mead, or possibly Dian Fosse. But businesses like this are in it for the long-​haul, they have the expertise, and I have the feeling that generations hence, my mutant descendents will be able to walk past the post-​apocalyptic rubble and into the door at Burch and find a matching flange for the pipe when this one finally wears out.