217–219 North Centre Street

On the west side of North Centre Street, in the block between Arch and Race, a three-and-a-half-story brick building of about 1870–80 has kept downtown Pottsville in hats, candy, tires, automobiles, sewing machines, hot meals, and, more recently, cell phones. Numbered 217 and 219, it reads as a single Second-Empire commercial block: the 1982 National Register survey describes “a three and half story brick Second-Empire style building” that “retains portion of original period store front” and, on its upper floors, “their original hooded openings and robust bracketed wooden cornice.” For a century and a half its two storefronts have changed trades about once a generation, and in the early 1920s a tire dealer named W. A. White drew them both into the automobile business.

The Victorian storefronts — Ziebach’s millinery and the candy trade

Both storefronts began, in the documentary record, as ordinary store-and-dwellings of the 1870s and 1880s, when the west side of the 200 block filled with the brick commercial rows that still line it. At 217, the tenant was a milliner. Through the 1880s and beyond, the city directories list J. B. Ziebach at 217 North Centre — 1887, 1889, 1891, 1893, 1895 — and the newspapers fill the listing out. In May 1890 the Pottsville Republican carried the store’s advertisement: “Ziebachs have, at 217 North Centre street, the finest selection and most complete stock of Foreign and Domestic Millinery ever offered in this city.” The store dated itself “Since 1879,” and it was still there thirty years on: an October 1921 advertisement reads simply “ZIEBACH’S — 217 North Centre St. — (Since 1879).” From the 1880s into the early 1920s, 217 North Centre meant hats.

At 219, the trade was toys and then sweets. The earliest located notice, a Christmas advertisement of December 1888, announces “L. Imschweiler … 219 North Centre street … TOYS, TOYS,” matching the directory’s “L. Imschweiler” of 1889. By the 1900s the storefront had become a confectionery. Harry C. Glenwright kept “Glenwright’s” at 219 from at least 1907 through 1922, advertising “a large line of Sweet Chocolate Goods for Easter” in 1917 and, in 1922, inviting Pottsville to “let us serve you with our Special Hard [candies for the] Holidays.” The candy counter would outlast Glenwright by a generation.

W. A. White and the automobile age (1922–1940s)

The building’s decisive turn came with the automobile. By 1922 the tire and automobile dealer W. A. White had taken over 217 North Centre — Ziebach’s old millinery, which was still advertising there as late as October 1921 — for his Kelly-Springfield tire business, and he was moving quickly into cars. He built in two directions at once. Behind 217, the Pottsville Republican reported that March, he would “build a two-story service station in the rear of his property, 217 North Centre St.,” and in April that he would “erect his new service station for his Hudson-Essex agency” there. At 219, next door, he reworked the storefront itself: that September the paper’s “News of the Auto World” column noted that “the home of the Essex and Hudson has had some little delay in getting the steel for the building at 219 North Centre St. … owner, W. A. White.”

Just how much of 219 White rebuilt in 1922 is not settled by the located record. The surviving street building is the c. 1870–80 Second-Empire structure the National Register survey dates — its upper floors and cornice are of that period, not the 1920s — so White’s 1922 steelwork is best read as a showroom reworking of the 219 storefront, and the two-story service station at the rear of 217, behind the retained older front, rather than a wholly new building. (The Sanborn fire-insurance sheets that would show it — the June 1920 and August 1922 Pottsville editions — are not digitized.) White kept the tire store at 217 for two decades — “W. A. WHITE — Kelly-Springfield Tires — 217 North Centre Street — Established 1867,” his advertisements read through the 1920s — and the directories carry the White family at 217 from 1922 to 1941.

The candy-and-restaurant years (1924–1957)

White’s automobile showroom did not keep 219 for long. By 1924 the ground-floor storefront had returned to its old trade: the city directories place Paul K. Schultz and the Schultz family at 219 North Centre from 1924 through 1941. The family ran the Paul Schultz Candy Co., which the newspapers place on this block — it was Paul Schultz, “of the Paul Schultz Candy Co., who occupy a store in the same block,” who turned in the first alarm when fire swept the Coney Island building two doors south in April 1930. Glenwright’s candy had become Schultz’s candy, and the confectionery held 219 for the better part of thirty years.

After the Second World War the storefront became a restaurant. In December 1945 a “new restaurant” opened at “219 North Centre St., Opposite the Capitol Theatre (formerly the Grand Restaurant),” and by 1946 it was advertising as the Anthracite Restaurant — “Quality Foods,” “Full Course Dinners.” The Anthracite Restaurant kept the counter through the 1950s. A February 1951 real-estate notice, recording the transfer of the property from Paul K. Schultz, described it plainly as a “double brick three story” building at 219 North Centre — three full floors beneath the attic half-story the National Register survey counts as the “half,” the same masonry structure the assessor records today.

Sewing machines, apartments, and the block’s quiet decades

At 217, White’s tire-and-auto business gave way after the war to a sewing-machine shop: in the fall of 1948 “Schuylkill Service — Sewing Machine Service — 217 North Centre St. … formerly Dormer’s Sewing Shop” announced its new location. Above and behind the two storefronts, the building had by now settled into the pattern it keeps today — stores below, apartments above, the upper floors filled with ordinary households. The commercial title passed through a succession of owners — Joseph Yashan held 217 from 1956 to 1984, while 219 passed among private owners and lending institutions — as downtown Pottsville weathered the decline that followed the collapse of the anthracite economy and the loss, in 1982, of the Capitol Theatre across the street.

The building today

The two storefronts keep the store-and-apartments plan they have held since the nineteenth century. As of 2026 the 217 storefront houses a Metro by T-Mobile store, with a second storefront at 219 and apartments on the floors above. The building is a contributing resource in the Pottsville Downtown Historic District, its upper floors still carrying the “original hooded openings and robust bracketed wooden cornice” the 1982 survey recorded. The trades have turned over about once a generation — millinery, candy, tires, automobiles, sewing machines, hot meals, now a phone store — but the Second-Empire building that has housed them all still stands much as it did when Ziebach’s millinery filled 217 and Glenwright’s candy filled 219.