All my life I've visited hardware stores.

I always dally to look at the beautiful functionalism of the whole store.

Canned lacquer by the gallon.

Dangled key shapes waiting to become the key.

Cedar planking destined for sanding.

Staining.

Standing on X legs beneath a bistro tablecloth.

Every nail, every can of paint, every light bulb has a destined use.

Centuries of evolution have gone into the present perfection of each tool, each implement the things that we make, say more about who we are than anything.

Our choice of material, selection of tool.

The unique process that leads to a finished product.

My hometown of Pittsburgh is a place that's been defined by its history, craftsmanship, and creative ambition.

Ever since I first picked up a guitar, I've defined my own craft through words and music.

I have like early versions of lyrics, lots of scraps.

My name is Jon Bindley.

I'm a songwriter.

I was on my way home.

Seeing no signs of stopping except the yellow light, a burning bright saying proceed with caution.

Now it's me and that police man Sitting here talking.

Then the next time I go out.

I guess I'll be walking.

Music with traditional roots strikes me because there's a plain spoken way about delivering messages, people having dreams and trying to build something.

You're also borrowing a medium that can help you find your voice.

It's really getting to know yourself if you really dig in deep.

Bindley Hardware Company is the name of a real business that existed here in Pittsburgh.

It was a wholesale hardware store where people in Pittsburgh got everything.

It was founded by my great great uncle.

I found bill-heads from like 1893.

I certainly wasn't aware of it.

I think my grandma had some notion that there was, you know, in recent years, I've spent a lot of time picking up some stories and artifacts, along the way.

Postcards.

How can understanding who my ancestors were help me understand something greater about my own identity, not just as a songwriter, but as a son of this region?

We shape our tools.

And then our tools shape us You've probably never heard of the Bindley family or their hardware company, but over a century ago, they helped build Pittsburgh into the place it is today.

Founded in 1880 by the two eldest sons of a prominent contractor, the company specialized in a line of quality made tools and home furnishings.

Some artifacts still exist today and recall a defining time in American history.

Test the Bindley Peculiar Razor in the only way a razor should be tested.

Have your customer try it on the beard.

And if it don't suit them, give them another one, or his money back.

A stronger guarantee is impossible.

I never really looked into what my name meant.

I think I was trying to learn something about my great grandfather.

He shares my name and I started seeing the hardware company pop up.

I kind of just stumbled upon this incredible history.

The hardware store, is opposed to everything that destroys, it, stands for building for repair, for doing something constructive by hand.

A store devoted to absolute utility.

You just heard the voice of Pittsburgh poet Samuel Hazo reading lines from a poem of his I heard long before I even knew about the Bindley Hardware Company.

I've come to think of Sam as a mentor.

His words and ideas have had a profound impact on me as a person.

For me, Sam Hazos poem brings the mystery of the hardware company to life.

We're lucky.

We've been around for about 250 years in Pittsburgh.

Relics, so to speak, are still intact.

So there's a history in this town, which in many ways is compelling.

My job is to help somebody find their past.

Well, is to say these are some things you should know about.

Looming up on the main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad is the Bindley Hardware Company.

You have a building with some character to it that had its own life as a hardware store, and it now is apartments.

That's happening a lot around here, like old industrial buildings being turned into high end living.

And, How are you doing?

Pretty good.

We're talking about the Bindley Hardware Company building.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Happy holidays.

The idea was they wanted a building which was going to be located next to the Pennsylvania Railroad.

So they would be able to ship all kinds of things on a major railroad system that went through Pittsburgh.

Railroads, Spread their tracks across our country from the farm into the big city.

The warehouse was designed by Albion Bindley, youngest of the three Bindley brothers who had taken over the contracting and construction business of their father in the city's rapidly developing East End.

Offering over an acre of floor space, the four story building connected to three separate rail lines and was unmatched by any other hardware house in the country.

This is a period when Americans are becoming kind of aware of who they are.

So think about 1900.

Pittsburgh is one of the ten largest cities in the country, and it's the center of the steel industry.

So there's a lot of production of hardware type materials.

Tools, hoes, rakes, nails, are one of the top products throughout the 19th century shipped out of Pittsburgh.

You begin to get sort of these specialized stores.

Bindley is a distributor and retailer, and they're becoming sort of the great storehouse to sell those things.

Carnegie and Frick, are making steel for the construction industry.

Bindleys clients are middle and upper class homeowners in the growing suburbs.

The experience they're trying to create around their business is match with the clientele they're trying to attract through the door.

Still learning a lot about it.

That's what's so exciting.

There seems to be layers the more you peel back.

Everybody knows that guy.

Who is the head of the company?

John Bindley.

So John Bindleys name is your name?

You're going to find a huge amount about John.

I mean, he was a very important person.

Were anyone who knows him asked to name Mr.

Bindleys dominant characteristics, the reply would probably be force and refinement.

Love of literature and art is an inherited instinct.

It's fascinating to find John Bindley, who was involved in business and industry, who built a massive enterprise, but essentially his name has been lost from the books of history until you're resurrecting his legacy.

Ready?

The moon's a silver sliver hanging by a thread.

Shadows here they linger, much longer in my head.

I always felt like I knew you.

I never dreamed you'd make me cry.

But it's a strange time to be alive.

Aint that right?

I've played music for almost half my life now.

I was always writing songs and stuff.

I really wanted to become a better songwriter.

And moved down to Nashville, Tennessee.

There's a lot of great music, and it's a Mecca, but I missed home.

I have always loved just sitting and listening to stories from the past.

I know myself better because of it.

This is my great grandfather, John Bindley Mercer for whom I am named.

My grandmother talks about her father fairly often.

I remember my father telling me at one point that my grandpappy had memorized the Bindley hardware catalog, which was hundreds of pages.

I was aware that there was a Bindley hardware.

The information was not exact.

No one said, you know, he was the CEO or whatever.

We were not benefactors of any Bindley fortune.

Nor were we necessarily even made aware of it.

What we've pieced together is that William Mercer, my great great grandfather, was a salesman for the company and a nephew to John Bindley.

For years, my mom and grandmother would hear stories about the Bindley family without much context until I started looking into it more.

I don't want our family history to be lost again.

So what is going on with Bindley hardware and maintaining its legacy?

Something about being connected to where you're from kind of brings a whole new purpose to the idea of roots music, for me.

I just seem to find more material in the place that I know best.

This record, Ever Satisfactory, is it a connection to Bindley Hardware Company or a connection to Pittsburgh?

It is.

So Ever Satisfactory is one of the terms that they use as part of their their advertising pitch.

And the language is just, you know, they don't write things the way they wrote them back then.

And I really appreciate that kind of thing.

It's sort of a lost art.

We all strive to be ever satisfactory.

Surrounded by these images and words from the Bindley Hardware Company, Sam Hazos poem resonates.

Long live this cafeteria of coiled hoses, ladders that open as the letter A. The power of a boat remembers Archimedes and the Gates of Troy.

Door knobs rounded for the human palm.

Tell me to turn them.

I wonder if a hammer can be better.

And it can.

I just can't pass unless I touch the trueness of a lock.

I stopped before a tray of quiet knives, their sharpness wakens in my skin.

The maker I was born to be.

Growing up, I wanted to be a ballplayer.

My grandmother wanted me to be a writer.

She made sure I was in the audience when Sam hosted poetry readings.

It was there I learned a poem passes by every five minutes.

It's just a question of whether we'll notice it.

Sam found one in the aisles of a hardware store.

When I visit Sam, I feel like I'm 13 years old again.

Forever the student.

A hardware store to me is filled with browsers.

People can go in there for a specific reason, but they end up looking around.

I like the poetic freedom of that, Theres a concept of almost poetic imagination in that.

So whoever made the first ax made it because he needed something to do the cutting.

There's no junk on the tool.

It exists for a purpose.

And purpose defines its shape.

Consequently, I apply the same standard to making a poem.

Here's a history of the form.

Every time I pick up an instrument, I think about Sam's poem.

How songwriting is its own craft.

The club or the studio or your drummer's apartment, its a workshop.

The musicians, the craftsmen.

Searching for that perfect intersection of utility and beauty.

We call ourselves Bindley Hardware Company.

That you might have missed your eyes are closed and mine will open, if we kiss.

You would write and write and write in those black composition books.

The Bindley personality was coming out.

I'm very curious about genetic memory and what kind of stamp we get that hasn't been awakened yet.

These images, and even the language used to describe Bindley hardware company, really showed me the kind of artist I want to be, and the kind of songwriter I want to be.

I don't have money, but I got my health.

I'm saving up my pennies.

Keep telling myself someday I'll be happy with the little I got.

What good is it going gonna do me now?

I call my daddy on the telephone.

Said it's always been this way.

Oh son, You gotta give yourself a raise.

Thank you so much.

Were the Bindley Hardware Company.

So Im trying not to live beyond my means.

I got a few more blessings then I got beans.

I don't want for nothing but some room to breathe the little house in the country Spent a long day last night playing music.

It's pretty much as good as it gets come to another city.

Play rooms full of people.

I don't have money, but I got my health.

I'm saving up my pennies.

Keep telling myself someday I'll be happy with the little I've got.

But what good is it gonna do me now?

It's kind of interesting.

I've been looking into family history, and there was a institution called the Bindley Hardware Company, and they were members of Calvary Church and, John Bindley Yeah.

I look at those names all the time And I'm just.

Yeah, because of this family history, I've been looking more into it.

I'm still trying to figure out exactly what happened down the line.

1912 The Bindley Hardware Company have decided to liquidate and go out of business.

Kaufmann's buy their entire stocks of sporting goods, auto and firearms.

After several decades of working in the merchant and manufacturing trades, John Bindley retired to his winter home in Coconut Grove, Florida.

The Mediterranean style mansion was named El Jardin.

He would not be there long as he passed away in the winter of 1921.

The Bindley family's Fifth Avenue mansion was demolished after nearly a decade of abandonment.

Do you know if there's like, a plaque or anything about Atherstone Manor and what it was or.

Does that look like a front gate?

Here we are 100 years later, and there are a lot of question marks that I have.

John Bindley dies and his Pittsburgh place on Fifth Avenue Was torn down, I think, 25 years later.

I wonder what became of El Jardin.

Carrollton school of the Sacred Heart.

Looks like it's a college prep school for girls.

Designed by a prominent architectural firm, El Jardin was also the winter home of a noted industrialist who we know.

It became Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart in 1961.

I wonder how that happened.

I called the Carrollton School, and it turned out that they were in the midst of planning a centennial celebration of El Jardin.

They've been looking into the estate's history.

The answer to what ever happened to the Bindleys is somewhere in that mansion.

Hello, I'm Jon.

It's great to finally meet you.

Great to meet you.

Thank you for making the time.

I really appreciate it.

My name is Iris Guzman Kolaya.

I am an alum of Carrollton School.

I also have two daughters that are here.

I'm also blessed to be on the Centennial committee celebrating the 100 years of El Jardin.

Yeah, I was reading a lot.

I've been doing research on the Bindley family.

What were their lives like and how it relates to this building that we have here today?

John Bindley first arrived in the winter of 1916, the city of Miami was only about 20 years old.

What you had were this group of very wealthy northerners that started to come down and build these grand estates on the bay.

The firm of Kiehnel and Elliott, which were prominent Pittsburgh architects, had not worked in South Florida until John Bindley hired them to come down here and build El Jardin.

Richard Kiehnel went on to design a number of buildings in this area.

El Jardin is considered one of the best examples.

What's really been fascinating to me is the ability to go back in time and piece together people's lives that lived long before you did, in a very different way.

John Bindley was remarkably successful professionally because he lived in this time, and this place had this industrial might, but it's not too hard to then connect the dots to see that what that living in that environment did for his family.

He had six kids.

Two died as infants.

His wife died of tuberculosis.

Subsequently, two more of his children, including a son that had started to take over his father's role.

By the time John Bindley died in 1921, he had two children that remained, and that son died a few years later.

And so the trail started to taper off because there really was not anyone to sort of continue that legacy.

These are letters that John Bindley wrote.

Iris told me that El Jardin was meant to be the home of John Bindleys only surviving child, Adelaide, as a type of sanatorium for the respiratory problems she had had since childhood.

Although historical records don't seem to indicate that she ever actually lived in the mansion.

After John Bindleys death, the property was effectively abandoned after being passed between prominent area industrialists until Carrollton bought it in 1961.

So is it more or less what you had in mind?

It's incredible.

On public television, it's very like I see this as the Bindley family story coming full circle.

The estate that John Bindley built for his daughter is now a place where young women come to learn and be inspired.

Just this awareness and appreciation of history, to me, is a really cool thing.

Jon Bindley would come back and want to know about his roots, and that's something we should all be a little curious about.

There seems to be some poetic justification to Carrolltons mission, just as Bindley Hardware Company has been reimagined, So has El Jardin.

What was a toy factory?

It was a hardware.

Wholesale hardware.

I would love to be able to use this in some fashion.

So are a lot of the residents aware of the building's history?

I talk about it during my tours.

Yeah.

All of these steel beams are original to the building It was never intended to be an apartment community, but I think it's great that there's still a piece of history in all of this.

Finally, being inside the hardware store that my ancestors built over 100 years ago has helped me understand what it means to build something that will last.

And once it's built, it's not yours anymore.

It's for the deer.

It's for a kid like me to come sit and think about how quality can persist in what you leave behind.

This is interesting.

Oh I know.

My mom would tell me this story about who your named after, and I would feel rooted and connected in this way.

All the things my father loved about life are personified in you, Jonathan.

This is our Bindley.

That's my grandfather.

There was a day around Easter time.

He was very ill.

I said, one day I'm going to have a little boy, and I'm gonna name him after you.

This was about two years.

Two years later.

Life is about building something with the tools at hand and trusting the blueprints laid out before you.

And then one day, the work ends.

All of us can and will be forgotten, save for maybe a few clues.

Even now, I still wonder who was my great grandfather, John Bindley Mercer, and who was our namesake, John Bindley?

What is it that keeps me coming back to these antique catalog pages?

Is it because no matter how I try, I'm never wiser than the truth of tools?

New or old.

They make the most of little, and the best of the least.

Wherever I look, I hear use me.

I will serve you well.

I ponder, I ponder, and agree.

My hand regains its cunning.

And the days I've yet to live.

Seem suddenly as numbered as my hairs.