202–204 North Centre Street

On the east side of North Centre Street, in the block at the commercial heart of a downtown once nicknamed “Little Philadelphia,” stand two adjoining storefronts — 202 and 204 — that share a single tax parcel today but reached it by different routes. The older of the two, 202, has been a downtown store since at least 1885, and has almost never stood empty: its ground floor has sold, in turn, hand-painted signs, ice cream, hats, shoes, patent medicines, paint and wallpaper, and haircuts, while families lived above. Its neighbor, 204, is the newer building — the terra-cotta E. Deull Building of 1915, home of the jeweler Ellis Deull. This is not the story of one merchant but of a rented downtown storefront and the trades that passed through it across a century and a half, alongside the jewelers next door whose name ended up on the deed to both.

The older storefront at 202: a sign painter and a confectioner (1885–1905)

202 was already doing business in 1885. That autumn a business-card directory in the Pottsville Republican carried the line, in plain type among the town’s tradesmen, “JOHN PRASSE, FRESCO DECORATOR AND SIGN PAINTER, 202 North Centre St.” A fresco decorator and sign painter working out of the storefront is the earliest occupant the record names — and a fitting one, for the paint-and-decorating trade would return to this address more than once.

For a spell in the late 1890s 202 was a jeweler’s shop: Boyd’s directories place the watchmaker C. Gerz here in 1897–99, moved down from the corner at 201. By the turn of the century the storefront had become a confectionery. C. P. Galomis kept his candy and ice-cream store here until 1905, when he outgrew it. “C. P. Galomis, whose confectionery and ice cream establishment at No. 202 North Centre street has long been one of Pottsville’s most prosperous business places, is getting ready to move his stock into the Schaal building,” the Miners’ Journal reported; “the change will be made April 1 … Mr. Galomis has long been crowded for room.” That a confectionery had “long” traded here confirms what the 1885 sign-painter’s card already implies: a store had stood at 202 North Centre for a full generation before the newer building rose next door. Galomis’s departure was somebody else’s opportunity — within two weeks “Miss Maggie Boland … has rented the room formerly occupied by C. P. Galomis, No. 202 North Centre street.”

Shoes, drugs, and the E. Deull Building at 204 (1908–1926)

The 202 storefront changed trades at the brisk pace of downtown retail. By 1908 it was a shoe store — the Bates Shoe was advertised at “202 North Centre St.” Through the 1910s it was a drug store: C. W. Gorsuch, druggist, traded here for years, his advertisements for ORRINE and a “Quaker Remedies” health demonstration running under the line “202 North Centre St.”

It was in the middle of that run, in 1915, that the newer building went up next door, and it carried a jeweler’s name. Boyd’s directories place Ellis Deull, jeweler, at 204 North Centre from at least 1913, and the new building — “a three story terra cotta facade and brick commercial building, four bays wide,” in the words of the later National Register survey — rose with his name cut into the parapet, where it still reads E. DEULL. (The 1982 survey recorded the building as the “F. Deull Building,” misreading the initial; the frieze itself and Boyd’s city directories give the jeweler as Ellis Deull.) The trade stayed in the family: his son Irwin E. Deull worked beside him as an optician, and by 1922 his sons Irwin and Harold were trading as E. Deull’s Sons — the firm that carried on at 204 after Ellis died in 1923, still there in 1926. The name is recorded in these years as both Deull and Duell.

In February 1926 the 202 storefront briefly took in a displaced tenant: Frumkin Bros., an “upstairs clothing shop” smoke-damaged when a neighboring confectionery caught fire, moved its stock to 202 as a temporary “Fire Sale” — “Look for the large Yellow Sign.”

The barber, the Paint-Up Store, and the Duell jewelers (1928–1933)

By the late 1920s both storefronts were busy. A barber shop occupied part of the 202 ground floor — its proprietor advertised “FOR SALE—Barber shop equipment. [In]gartano Barber Shop, 202 North Centre street, City” in February 1928 — the first documented instance of the barber-and-salon use the building still keeps a century later. That summer a short-lived retailer, Benson’s, ran a sale from 202.

Then, in the spring of 1929, the paint trade came back. The Pottsville Paint-Up Store — a paint-and-wallpaper dealer — opened at 202 and advertised heavily into the early 1930s. Its own copy fixed the block’s arrangement in one line: “POTTSVILLE PAINT-UP STORE, 202 North Centre (next to Deull Jewelry Store)” — the Paint-Up Store at 202, the Deull jewelers next door at 204. The jewelers, after all, were the owners. When the recorded chain of title begins, it begins with them: Anna Duell — Ellis Deull’s widow — held 202–204 North Centre by June 28, 1933. The Deull/Duell jewelry store anchored the address through the years when the storefront beside it turned over from drug store to clothing sale to paint store.

Reiley’s, the Mansells, and the modern era (1966–present)

In the mid-twentieth century the storefronts settled into the quieter role they largely keep today — apartments above, small shops below — and the newspaper trail thins accordingly. Ownership, though, is well recorded. On May 13, 1966, Reiley’s Stores, Inc. — the appliance-and-hardware firm that had long occupied the corner at 200 North Centre — bought 202–204 in the very same deed by which it took the corner building, briefly joining the two properties under one owner. Three years later, on January 16, 1969, 202–204 passed to the Mansell family, who held it into the 2000s, the title moving among family members. The paint-and-wallpaper trade proved as durable as ever: as late as October 1995 a decorating store here was giving away “Discounted Wallpaper Books.”

In 2006 the Mansells sold to the parcel’s present owner. And in 2018 the ground-floor storefront came full circle to the barber’s chair: Father and Son’s 2 Barbershop opened at 202 North Centre — a family-run shop, an extension of the “Father and Son’s” barbershop that had opened in Reading in 2016. Above it, the building keeps its apartments — six units of record — as it has kept rooms over the store since the milliner and the confectioner shared the block a hundred and twenty years ago. Both storefronts stand contributing within the Pottsville Downtown Historic District, a few doors north of 200 North Centre and a short way south of 206–208–210 North Centre and the Lefkowitz Building.