206–208–210 North Centre Street

Wider and plainer than the ornate blocks a few doors north — the four-story Lefkowitz Building and the carved Diamonds Building — the store at 206–208–210 North Centre was built for volume, a deep block the 1982 National Register survey dates to the 1920s. It has spent much of its life selling groceries, on the east side of the “Little Philadelphia” that downtown Pottsville once called itself. Across a century the site has been a row of Victorian storefronts, an A&P “Big Market,” Freedline’s self-service Super Market, Lango’s Market, and Towne Markets; and for the last generation — much of it with a gymnastics school under the same roof — it has been the Salvation Army’s thrift store, where the goods of one Pottsville household are sold to the next.

The lot before: a row of Victorian storefronts

Before it became one big store, 206, 208, and 210 North Centre were three separate brick store-and-dwellings of the late nineteenth century — shops below, rooms above. The newspapers catch them one storefront at a time. At 210 North Centre in the 1890s there was a shoe store; at 208 North Centre in the early 1890s stood the Pottsville Steam Laundry. These were ordinary downtown storefronts, and for forty years they changed hands the way such stores did.

Then the row gave way to one wide building. The 1982 survey records it as a “brick vernacular 1920’s commercial building … built contemporary to construction of [the] Capitol Theater complex” — the great movie palace up the block went up in 1927 — “three stories high by nine bays wide.” (The county assessor dates the parcel to 1920, and records two stories today — whether a floor was later removed, or the two records simply count the building’s stories differently.) By 1933–34 the wide store held a grocery: the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. operated an A&P “Big Market” spanning 206–208 North Centre, “BIG MARKET — 206-208 North Centre St.” The site was a substantial grocery well before Freedline’s — which is why what happened in 1953 is best read as a reopening rather than a raising.

Freedline’s Super Market (1953)

Freedline’s Super Market — the store whose 1953 grand opening drew a mayor and a crowd — did not begin at this address. Roy Freedline had been in “the meat and grocery business in Pottsville” since 1920, when he opened his first store at 404 North Centre Street; in 1945 he added a second at 107 West Market Street. Then, in 1953, he consolidated. As the Pottsville Republican put it the next year: “Both stores were closed in 1953 upon the opening of the huge new Super Market at 206 North Centre Street.”

The opening was a downtown event. A full-page advertisement announced the “GRAND OPENING OF FREEDLINE’S SUPER MARKET — 206-208 NORTH CENTRE STREET — WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 30th,” billing it as a self-service store. The next morning the paper ran a photograph of the crush under the headline “Crowds Jam New Freedline Market For Grand Opening.” Its caption records the ceremony: “Mayor George S. Heffner cuts the ribbon to officially open the gleaming new store … Fifty food baskets and 500 loaves of bread were distributed to lucky shoppers.” For a downtown that had shopped at counter-service groceries and butcher stalls, Freedline’s self-service Super Market on North Centre was a genuinely new kind of store.

Lango’s, Towne Markets, and the supermarket years (1968–1980s)

Freedline’s held the building into the 1960s, and when it changed hands it stayed a supermarket. In March 1968 the property passed to George and Arleen Lango, and the store traded for the next decade as Lango’s Market — “Apply Lango’s Market, 206 N. Centre St., Pottsville,” its help-wanted notices read. In September 1977 the real estate was conveyed to Towne Markets, Inc., and in March 1981 back to the Langos — Freedline’s, Lango’s, and Towne Markets being three names on the same downtown-supermarket circuit. It was under the name Towne Market that the building entered the National Register inventory in 1982. In the years that followed, as full-service supermarkets left downtowns for the highways, the grocery here closed, and the big store found a very different tenant.

The Salvation Army store, and the gymnastics school (1990s–present)

By August 1994 the ground floor was unmistakably the Salvation Army’s — the chain of “Family Store” hiring notices from that month lists the job site as “Salvation Army … 206 North Centre … Pottsville.” The Salvation Army ran the store as a tenant for decades and bought the property outright on April 27, 2021.

For nearly three decades the building did double duty: alongside the thrift store, the Pottsville Gymnastics & Theatrical Center coached generations of local gymnasts. Founded in 1986 by Barbara Kost-Lonergan and her twin sister Sandy Kost-Sterner at another site in the 200 block, the school moved here in 1992, and closed on May 28, 2021, undone by the pandemic’s shutdowns. The Salvation Army’s purchase of the building came within weeks of the school announcing its closure — so that the same spring saw the gym go dark and the thrift store become the owner of the whole building.

Today the Salvation Army Family Store & Donation Center occupies 206 North Centre Street, selling clothing, housewares, and furniture where an A&P once stacked butter and a self-service supermarket once drew ribbon-cutting crowds — a downtown store that has never really stopped being one. It stands, contributing, within the Pottsville Downtown Historic District, a few doors north of 202–204 North Centre and south of the Lefkowitz Building.