Today we're delivered a
few capitalist lessons that we instinctively already knew:
Paths to economic success
disappear over time.
One scientific
advance can lead to the launch of vastly
different and successful product lines.
Google moves
on.
Land is king.
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Murray Pergament, Chain
Grew From Paint Stores, 76, Dies
December 12, 2002
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Murray Pergament,
who with his stepfather opened
two paint-and-wallpaper stores in 1946
that grew into a chain of 40 home-supply stores in the New York City metropolitan
area, died on Tuesday at a Brooklyn
hospital. He was 76.
The cause was complications of cancer, his son, Bruce, said. He lived in Old
Westbury, N.Y., and Palm
Beach, Fla.
"Be
Confident, Shop Pergament" was the company's slogan, a vibrant declaration of its mission to attract do-it-yourselfers,
people so proud of their new houses in the new post-war suburbs that they were
eager — or at least willing — to try their hand at improving them.
Pergament's prices were low enough to
make the idea seem sensible.
Quickly, the company expanded beyond paint and wallpaper — all it offered
in its first stores in Franklin Square and
Freeport on Long Island — to sell lighting, flooring, lawn products and
more. But paint remained the core of its business: it made its own line of paint
at the Hoboken Paint Company, which it
partly owned.
Not only did it strive to offer low prices previously available only to contractors,
but Pergament was one of the first retailers to offer paint made with latex.
It supplied its private Pergament brand of paint to other chains as well.
"Naturally, our stores got larger
and larger," said Robert Pergament, who joined his father and brother
shortly after the first store opened. "We grew as Long Island grew."
Murray Irving Rothbard was born on April 6, 1926, in New York City. His father
died when he was around 1, and his mother, the former Marie Hollander, married
Louis Pergament. When he was 40, he was formally adopted
by the man he had always considered his father.
The family lived for a time behind a hardware
store that Louis owned in St.
Albans, Queens. Louis sold the store in 1945.
After serving in the Navy in the Pacific during World War II, Murray Pergament
opened the first two stores with his stepfather in 1946. As the chain grew,
Murray was chairman and president, and Robert oversaw merchandising and advertising.
Louis retired in 1965.
Pergament's focus remained Long Island, even as it expanded into Connecticut
and New Jersey.
The family sold the company to two investor
groups in 1989, and it has changed hands several times since. It has struggled
financially in competing with Home
Depot and other new companies in the same business.
The Pergament brothers continued to manage the real
estate they had accumulated over the years, including some Pergament stores.
Last year, they sued the current Pergament leaseholder for delinquent
rent.
Mr. Pergament contributed to many Jewish, medical and educational charities,
and was a staunch supporter of Alfonse
M. D'Amato, the former senator. He donated 52 copies of the senator's 1995
book, "Power,
Pasta and Politics," to local libraries.
In addition to his son, Bruce, who lives in Old Westbury, and his brother, Robert,
who lives in Garden City, N.Y., he is survived by his wife, the former Irene
Bernstein; his daughter, Linda Horowitz of Great Neck, N.Y.; and seven grandchildren.
His daughter Sherri Koeppel died in 1992.
Copyright 2002 New York Times (Registration required)
8:08:08 AM 
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