Emptying its drawers and packing away memories, a beloved Cornelius furniture store is saying goodbye after over 50 years of business.
Murphy’s Furniture announced plans to close its doors at the end of June, as the store’s location on East Baseline Street has been sold for the development of a new westside U-Haul hub.
Once overflowing with wooden stands and chairs, the showroom inside the bright-yellow storefront has dwindled down over final sales. Family history gleams off the lacquer finish of remaining tables; the weaving contours of natural oak dressers reflect a story of community — and resilience.
Growing a furniture empire
Founder Ruth Murphy built the base for the store as an antique shop located in her southeast Hillsboro home. A mother to seven children, the “furniture matriarch” began selling items she acquired from garage sales as a way to provide for her family.
“She started it as a home-based business to support her kids,” Ruth Murphy’s daughter and store co-owner Kathy Murphy-Hogan said.
As the merchandise began to burst out of the seams of the family home, she opened up a store in downtown Hillsboro, and the business moved into its current location in 1986. Self taught, Ruth Murphy eventually began working with unfinished wood and shifted the focus to selling natural furniture.
By the 1990s, Murphy’s had evolved into a family-owned furniture empire, with stores in Gresham and Tillamook selling both unfinished products and sporting the rich hues of polished wood. Overcoming a recession when first taking off, Ruth Murphy and her family pushed past setbacks through frugal business tactics, clocking in over $1 million in sales in 1991 and receiving awards for its growing success.
Ruth Murphy died from an unexpected heart attack on Sept. 12, 2001, sending the family and the business into a tailspin.
“It was crap; there’s nothing worse,” Murphy-Hogan said. “We closed the store the day it happened, and then the next day we were closed. The economy was tanking, and vendors were pulling credit lines from us because everything was tied to her. And we just tried to keep going.”
Murphy-Hogan and sister Mary Murphy-Delfs managed to purchase the property from their siblings and salvage the store, relying on the business-savvy tactics their mom raised them with.
The sisters — and their families — maintained the store’s commitment to selling high-quality furniture, offering locally sourced book cases, sofas and other furnishings to help residents transform their houses into homes.
Celebrating family and the community
Over the years, the sisters have formed bonds with community members through helping them find the right product. Watching parents purchase beds for their kids, the Murphys see those same kids come back to buy their own furniture.
“It’s not disposable furniture; this is generational furniture,” Murphy-Delfs said. “We’re seeing the grandparents and then the parents and then the children growing up, and they’re bringing their kids.”
Beyond everyday transactions, the family has made an effort to help their community. Customers go to the store when looking for business recommendations, and the sisters donated used furniture to St. Vincent de Paul second-hand stores. Murphy’s also provided wood for shop programs at Forest Grove and Hillsboro high schools, and the business dedicated profits from its Christmas tree and bark chip sales to the Boys & Girls Club in Hillsboro.
Proceeds were also donated from the family’s annual St. Patrick’s Day parade, which drew hundreds to march through the streets of downtown Hillsboro. Ruth Murphy first started the parade in 1978 as a way to celebrate the family’s heritage and drum up business, and the event transitioned to a fundraiser for the local Girls & Boys Club in the 1990s. Clad in green, residents would walk from Hare Field alongside horses and decked out floats, which was followed by a corned beef and cabbage feed.
What’s next for the Murphys?
COVID-19 halted the annual march in 2020, and it also played a role in the sisters’ final decision to retire the business.
“Since COVID hit, retail is not the same thing as it used to be. And if you’re a retail operation, you can’t survive unless you own your store; when you’re a furniture store you need so much square footage,” Murphy-Hogan explained. “Since we were selling the property, we had to decide whether to buy another furniture store or take this opportunity to do our retirement.”
Plans to sell the property have long been in the works, according to Murphy-Hogan. Over years of failed initiatives to incorporate grocery stores, shopping centers and even a swimming pool, the sisters were eventually approached by U-Haul.
“We’ve been marketing the property passively since before mom passed away, looking for somebody who is a property developer because it’s over three acres. So it’s a sizable chunk of undeveloped property,” she said. “U-Haul approached us in 2020 about possibly buying the property. And we kept saying no, but then finally said yes.”
Both Murphy-Hogan and Murphy-Delfs noted the difficulty of the decision to end operations, expressing their gratitude for the support customers showed them over the years.
“It’s like an Irish wake: you’re not celebrating the death. You’re celebrating the life,” Murphy-Hogan said. “The beauty of this is it’s worth celebrating because we finally found somebody who’s going to develop the property properly. And we are in a position where we can make a decision.”
“But through all those decades of change, from Mt. St. Helens blowing up to 9/11, to losing our mom, losing our sister to COVID-19, losing our brother, the store kept on,” she continued. “It’s nice to be in control after four years of COVID, where you are not in control. We had a good run.”
Selling furniture has always been a part of the sisters’ lives, and now both plan to take the time to explore other ventures. Murphy-Hogan talked about moving to Seaside, and Murphy-Delfs expressed interest in following a lifelong dream of working as a park ranger.
“This kind of stuff happens when you’re in business for yourself, but you have to keep moving forward,” Murphy-Hogan said.
Everything in the store will be sold at Murphy’s, including holiday decorations and costumes the sisters wore for television commercials.
Throughout May, the store will be open Friday through Monday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
To find out more about Murphy’s, visit murphysfurniture.store .
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