Home Rule, 14th Street’s go-to store for fairly priced home goods, will shut its doors after two decades.

“For 20 years, our customers have supported and delighted us, and we are grateful for your loyalty and the many friendships we have made over the years,” founder Greg Link and co-owners Grace Allison and Rod Glover wrote in a closing letter. “We have diligently worked to be the best small neighborhood store we could be. In doing so we nourished a community of neighbors, friends, and colleagues and became a unique and significant presence in Washington D.C.’s retail landscape.”

Washington City Paper readers agreed: Home Rule was voted “Best Home Goods Store” every year from 2013 to 2018.

Link tells DCist that deciding to close was “bittersweet.”

“When we opened Home Rule, we thought we’d do it for a year,” Link says. “After five years, we thought we’d be done soon, too. So having 20 amazing years felt really lucky.”

Link said the decision to close came as he, Allison, and Glover grew older. “Today’s retail is a lot of self-promotion and social media,” Link says. “None of us are really savvy self promoters. We don’t enjoy that part—what we enjoy is brick and mortar. We tried online retail and it didn’t work for us.”

Home Rule opened in September 1999 “as one of the first new businesses to renovate a building on 14th Street NW that was still derelict from the riots of 1968,” its co-owners wrote. Washington Post reporter Paul Schwartzman called the store a “pioneer of 14th Street rejuvenation.”

Link named the shop with a pun on the 1973 congressional act, which expanded D.C. residents’ ability to govern their local affairs through an elected mayor and the D.C. Council.

Link owns Home Rule’s building, which is located between on 14th St. NW between T and S. He says he’s entertaining the ideas of selling or using the building for other reasons.

The 14th Street corridor has seen lots of changes in the last few years. Pulp, go mama go! and Home Rule, all local, non-restaurant businesses, used to hold down the corner of 14th St. and S NW. Before announcing its closure, Home Rule was the last of the three still standing. Home Rule’s neighbor, the iconic Black Cat, closed its downstairs music venue last year.

Home Rule’s last day of business will be March 31. The store will see large closeout sales throughout the month.