A Key to Savannah

Bradley Locksmith Store in Savannah

One of the oldest businesses in Savanah is as though you mixed the two televisions show Twin Peaks and Cheers. It started in 1883 when Simon Bradley arrived via steamboat to Savannah with forty cents in his pocket. He noticed how everyone seemed to be carrying keys and he knew that making keys would be a profitable way to make a living. So he signed up with another key master and learned the trade and then started his own business which has survived as a family-owned business until this very day.
When his son Aaron married, he handed over the business and worked around the place for basically free. Aaron continued to sharpen scissors and pinking shears, repair guns and duplicate the silver and bone handles of umbrellas.  He was once quoted as saying ''We have every key but whiskey.'' Such puns would become a staple of the business.
It has been said that Aaron was attracted to the occult and was a talented hypnotist who performed with Harry Houdini on occasion. He even had séances performed at the business for the general public. Because Houdini was such a good friend he named his son William Houdini Bradley. He even had a picture of Harry Houdini and a wife hanging in his office.
William Harry Houdini was the one who, in 1967, moved the business to its current location. It is in a home that was built in 1885. He is also the one who is primarily responsible the ‘interior design’ which is full of antique keys even in the concrete at your feet and the many signs and curiosities that have been gathered by the family and him over the years. He would also increase the family fortune with a tool that could open bank lockboxes. Bank boxes were designed to be difficult to break into which became a problem when a customer lost a key.  The banks would have to wait for someone from the manufacturer to come and use a drill to break into the box in a matter of hours. The whole process would take days.
It started when ‘Dini’ who was sitting in a dentist chair with his mouth open as a dentist pulled off a crown.  He stopped his dentist "Let me see that tool," "Dini" mumbled. He had a found a solution to a problem that was in the back of his head for some time: how to open a bank box easier. Back at his workbench he configured a tool to open the bank boxes inspired by the dentist tool the dentist was using. He then went to a bank to see if it would actually work. He opened the bank box in 60 seconds.
His teenage son, Paul, who had come along to watch and had been soaked in the life of machines and key making all his life, stated "You need to sell that," Paul said. "I don't have time," his father answered, "I just wanted to make my life easier."  "Can I sell it?" the entrepreneurial Paul asked. His father must have agreed because he invented a tool useable for all to open bank boxes. This invention made the family a few dollars.
Today the store and its laid-back nature is a Savannah staple. Signs with their famous knack for puns are found throughout “We fix anything but a broken heart,'' and ''We sharpen anything but your wits,'' reads another. They can make keys even out of nothing. "We have $2 keys, but the average is about $1,” said George Seckinger, who has worked at Bradley's since 1975. “Mr. Bradley and myself been known to make them out of drill bits and pieces of metal because some of the older locks. You can't get the key blanks for anymore.”
It is also a place that ghost hunters of the professional nature say is one of the most haunted in America. Ghost hunters have measured many paranormal events, which makes sense in a place that has antique objects hanging all around and looks more out of a Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley shop than a real shop.  
The store now has become a gathering place for eccentrics and others who like a comfortable place to be and to be known. Stories are told about keys and objects that hang from everywhere. It is also a grand place to get a key made. But don’t be upset if it takes a wee bit longer than you want it to. After all that is Savannah time and there is nothing wrong with that.

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Bradley at work