NASHUA – Almost two and a half years after a brutal murder led to the shutdown of the iconic McDonald’s Kitchenware Store on Factory Street, the building is set to become retail and office space for a Nashua design firm.

“This is going to be our design offices, with a boutique retail level,” said Melissa Zagaritas, who with her husband, Brian, owns Z Master Builders. They are buying the building at 7-9 Factory St. and plan to open later this year.

The store’s collection of varied and occasionally obscure kitchen goods, some of which haven’t been made for years, has been bought by Matthew Benoit. He will be selling them through his store, 101 Treasurers, on Route 101 in Wilton.

“It is brand-new stuff, but it’s new-old stuff,” said Benoit of the collection. “If it was kitchenware from the last 10 years, I probably wouldn’t have bought it.”

The tiny store – 100 feet by 22 feet – was opened in 1890 by Herbert McDonald, of Maine, as a hardware store, shifting into kitchen goods during the 1920s, as employee Hiram Rolfe took over more authority. Rolfe eventually bought the store, keeping McDonald’s name, and his grandchildren, Judy and Duane Rolfe, ran it until 2013.

All that ended June 19, 2013, when Duane Rolfe, then 65, bludgeoned his 66-year-old sister to death in their home on 8 Belmont St., hitting her as many as 20 times with a hammer

Duane Rolfe, who has a history of mental illness, pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to murder charges and is serving at least five years in the state prison’s secure psychiatric unit.

The store has been closed since, its future uncertain because Judy Rolfe owned the property and Duane Rolfe was her sole heir.

Attorney Martha O’Neill said the property is being sold by the estate of July Rolfe, which she described as still “open.”

Like many people in the area, O’Neill has memories of McDonald’s. “I went there as a girl,” she said. “I went there as an adult. You could find things there you couldn‘t find anywhere else.”

The store remained largely unchanged in appearance since 1954, when it reopened after being destroyed in the huge Central Market fire. In a 2012 profile in The Telegraph, Judith Rolfe said the store was unchanged because it worked, even in the recent recession.

“The last few years have been a little hard, but we get along,” said Judith, a 1964 graduate of Nashua High School. Duane, who was 11 months her junior, graduated in 1965.

“These days, we mostly replace what we sell. I’m not going to try something brand new unless 40 people call up asking for it,” she told The Telegraph.

Consistent sellers included traditional ceramic bean pots – “A woman came up from Boston; you’d think with Boston baked beans, they’d sell them there, but apparently not,” she said – roasting pans for large meats, contact paper for shelves and traditionally patterned kitchenware.

Duane Rolfe called 911 after the killing and said in a statement read by his public defender during a court hearing that he was “deeply, deeply sorry for taking Judy from the world.” On multiple occasions, Rolfe described the murder of his sister, who was suffering from skin cancer, as a “mercy killing,” prosecutors said.

David Brooks can be reached at 594-6531, dbrooks@nashuatelegraph.com or @GraniteGeek.