Courtesy of Lowe's
The predecessor to Lowe's was a small store called North Wilkesboro Hardware.
- Lowe's can trace its roots back to 1921.
- That's when a businessman named Lucian Lowe founded North Wilkesboro Hardware in Wilkesboro, North Carolina.
- Lowe's son, Jim, and son-in-law, Carl Buchan, would later run the business together.
- Buchan would eventually spin off the company's hardware business in order to kick off the modern-day Lowe's.
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Lowe's is a mainstay for customers tackling home-improvement projects.
The North Carolina-based chain may be one of the largest home-improvement retailers in the world. But the business actually got its start as a single general store.
That small-town model eventually gave way to a larger regional chain of hardware stores, and as the company grew it began to take on more of the look of the modern-day Lowe's.
Here's a peek at what Lowe's stores looked like back in the day: