Photo via International Association of Firefighters Local 36

It didn’t take long for customers and other supporters of Frager’s Hardware to rally around the store after a four-alarm fire gutted the 93-year-old Capitol Hill mainstay. A campaign on the fundraising site Give Forward is seeking to collect $100,000 for the ravaged store, and in the first few hours, has already netted more than one-tenth of that sum.

The campaign was launched by Julia Robey Christian, the chief operating officer of the Anacostia Playhouse (formerly the H Street Playhouse) and a 36-year Capitol Hill resident. She tells DCist that the store’s owner, John Weintraub, and former co-owner, Ed Copenhaver, “are like family to me—heck, the entire staff is.” Frager’s had 60 full- and part-time employees. (Matchbox, the restaurant group, is offering the hardware store’s suddenly out-of-work staff temporary work at its Eastern Market location.)

Christian says that over the years, at her theater and other businesses she’s been involved in, she depended on Frager’s for lots of supplies. “I can’t tell you how many house accounts we’ve had there, or how many times I was sent there to pick up nails, or get keys made, or a can of paint,” she says.

All that remains of Frager’s, a two-building complex at 1115 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, is a charred brick façade. The roof, interior, and even the floors are gone, and the store faces a long process if its owners choose to rebuild. Christian’s fundraising page is designed to help the store recoup part of the costs that are not covered by insurance.

The store’s property, spanning from 1113 to 1117 Pennsylvania Avenue, is assessed at $2,257,130, according to the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue.

So far, Christian has raised nearly $14,000 in less than 12 hours. “Frager’s is the epitome of what this neighborhood has always been about, taking care of one another,” she says.