HINGHAM, Mass. – We should have known they were in trouble when they couldn’t succeed in Nashua, the retail capital of New England.

Two years after it closed its store on Amherst Street, the seller of castoff goods known as Building 19, famous for its comic book-style circulars and the motto “Good Stuff … Cheap,” announced it is going bankrupt after a half-century in business.

The Hingham-based company, with 9 stores in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and one in Manchester, N.H., has filed for bankruptcy. It is seeking permission to hire a liquidation consultant and close by Dec. 8.

The company cited Internet competition and a lack of cash for new inventory as the reasons for the shutdown, according to the Patriot Ledger of Quincy, Mass. In the bankruptcy filing, the company said a “decline in sales and the resulting losses” has eroded its working capital and ability to bring in new merchandise.

The company came to 420 Amherst St., Nashua, in 1995, occupying a building that already had been a hardware store and a grocery store. Its
self-deprecating, black-and-white circulars filled The Telegraph, and its folksy, deliberately crude aisle design drew crowds for years. It was unofficially known as Building 19 1? 15th, a joking reference to it being the 15th store in the chain.

The site came to regional attention in 2006 when Walmart sought to replace Building 19, while the Hingham firm still had a lease.

Residents and environmental groups loudly complained that the footprint of the proposed 140,000-square-foot Walmart would exceed the boundaries of the property, cause traffic jams and harming the Pennichuck aquifer. The city Planning Board agreed and rejected Walmart.

Even when it shut Building 19 was supposedly reluctant to leave Nashua. Company Vice President Wendy Linehan told The Telegraph in 2011 that the store “does well” but that the company couldn’t reach a lease agreement with the landlord.

The parcel has been empty since. Whole Foods, long touted as a likely replacement, is moving into Turnpike Plaza next year.

Building 19 was co-founded in 1964 by Jerry Ellis, a laid-off appliance salesman.

He and partner Harry Andler started selling a shipment of fire-salvaged furniture from a warehouse in the Old Hingham Shipyard, according to the company website. The building didn’t have a name, just a number – 19.

Over the years, the chain evolved to sell overstock, surplus and irregular merchandise, from books to clothes, furniture and rugs. It sold odder items over the years, including prison uniforms, pedal-powered lawnmowers, and Canadian army motorcycles. Andler died in 1978.

Ellis called himself the chain’s commander-in-cheap and had a self-deprecating sense of humor about the no-frills, disorganized stores, which often had shelves made of unfinished plywood propped up by cinder blocks. One recent circular urged shoppers to “Suffer a little. Save a lot.”

Aside from Manchester, the chain has stores in Weymouth, Burlington, Natick, Norwood, Haverhill, Hanover and New Bedford, Mass.; Cranston and Pawtucket, R.I.