After years of abandonment, the John Jacob Astor Hotel Lobby is back in business.

Plaster is missing from the pillars and there are holes in the ceiling and Becky Johnson and Paul Tuter, co-owners of Vintage Hardware, have never felt more at home.

They’ve spent a good portion of their lives salvaging items worn down by time, weather, and use. Turning the Astor Lobby and its adjacent commercial space into their new flagship store made sense.

Much like the furniture and houseware Vintage Hardware sells, the richness and beauty of the hotel is still obvious in the lobby, but so is the decay.

“We’ve been itching to get in here,” Tuter said.

They moved to the space from their store on 14th Street and held an opening event in the lobby September 25.

The response from the Clatsop County residents was overwhelming.

“I swear we had close to 500 people come through,” Johnson said. “There were so many memories and stories associated with this building. … We’ve thought about starting a scrapbook.”

Vintage Hardware seemed like a perfect candidate for the space, said Paul Caruana, an Astoria developer who co-owns the Astor Hotel with developer Brian Faherty.

“People want to see their products, and people want to see the Astor lobby,” Caruana said.

“This building always stood to me as a failed vision,” he added. “We’re trying to reverse that stigma.”

Built in the 1920s, with 150 guest rooms, the hotel was too big for Astoria.

“It was never entirely successful in what it was built for,” Caruana said. “The hotel never did fill up like they thought it would.”

It might never have taken off like people hoped, but it had its moments: actors and actresses ate barbecued crab at the hotel grill; one manager painted the building pink and changed the name from Hotel Astoria to the John Jacob Astor Hotel, hoping to drum up business; a local radio man, Ed Palmer, invented cable television on its rooftop, picking up a distant Seattle TV station.

But the years never stopped coming and the hotel waxed and waned. It survived a hit from the Great Depression, only to close as a hotel in the late ’50s. Several other businesses survived until the building itself fell victim to rowdy customers and disuse.

Carol Carruthers Lambert of Hammond – who recently wrote and self-published a family history, “Letters to Louise, A Love Story”- remembered the mosaic floor in the hotel lobby.

“It was a busy place,” she said. “It was beautiful.”

It made her sad as, over the years, the building fell to pieces.

The Astor spent the better part of one decade with doors shut and interior crumbling.

Then it came under new management and, for years now, has housed Amazing Stories Comics and Games on its main level and apartments in the upper stories. The lobby and remaining commercial spaces, however, remained closed until Caruana and Faherty bought the eight-story building two years ago.

Since November 2008, they have been working to upgrade the commercial spaces and improve the apartments. With Amazing Stories, Vintage Hardware and, more recently, Nepal on Exchange, moved in, only one more commercial space remains on the main floor.

Johnson and Tuter hope to do their part of bringing the building back to community use by bringing people back into the lobby. They’re a mix of business, art and museum.

Johnson estimates that 95 percent of their merchandise comes from the community, or, at least, within 70 miles of Clatsop County.

“It was just sitting there in people’s basements and garages,” Johnson said. “Now it has a home.”

“What do they say? If it doesn’t sell, it’s a museum?” Tuter said. “People can come and just look around.”

The two have salvaged even more items through a partnership with Western Oregon Waste. The refuse and recycling company sets aside items that could be reclaimed and then calls Vintage Hardware.

“I’m amazed by what is thrown away,” Tuter said. “I think, ‘Wow, these wonderful doors almost became hog fuel.'”

“This is a community store,” Johnson said. “People have ownership of this building. It’s a cultural and historical landmark and the items they bring in help us make the store beautiful.”