225 North Centre Street

At the top of the west side of the 200 block, where the brick commercial row meets Race Street — across from the old Female Grammar School that now houses the county Historical Society — stands a three-and-a-half-story corner building that has never carried a name of its own. Instead it took the name of whoever kept its corner store: a Victorian grocer, then J. F. Rice the hatter, then — for two or three years around 1920 — a J.C. Penney department store, and later the Workmen’s Supply Co., outfitter to a town of miners. When downtown’s trade fell away the corner was taken in hand by the county’s anti-poverty agency, and its store-and-apartments plan turned to a new purpose: today it is the program office of Schuylkill Community Action, with affordable apartments above.

The Victorian corner store (1887)

The building was already standing, and already a store, when the run of surviving Pottsville newspapers begins. The 1982 National Register survey style-dates it to 1860–70 — “a three and half [story] brick Italianate inspired commercial building … [with a] deep bracketed wooden cornice” — and the documentary record catches up with it by 1887. The earliest located notice is a grand-opening announcement: “W. Jungkurth will open his [sto]re at 225 North Centre street.” By that December Jungkurth was advertising provisions and meats, and that same month the storeroom itself was advertised “For Rent — a large store … No. 225 North Centre stre[et]” — the room already in circulation. That the storeroom already existed to be opened and rented in 1887 places the brick building well before the assessor’s nominal “1900.”

J. F. Rice, the hatter (1901–1917)

At the turn of the century the corner became a hat store, and stayed one for the better part of two decades. In early 1901 the Miners’ Journal reported that “Rice … has removed his business to 225 North Centre,” and his own display advertisement announced, “HAVING REMOVED TO 225 NORTH CENTRE … Old Hats made to look like [new]” — a hatter who both sold hats and cleaned and reblocked them. The Pottsville city directories carry J. F. Rice at the address across the whole run — 1901, 1903, 1905, 1911, 1915, and 1917 — and as late as the fall of 1917 the store was still a hat shop and small manufactory: “BRING IN YOUR OLD HAT … WE ARE HAT MANUFACTU[RERS] … 225 NORTH CENTRE.” For sixteen years, 225 North Centre meant hats.

The J.C. Penney department store (c. 1920–1922)

A nationally known chain arrived just after the First World War, when the fast-growing J.C. Penney Company opened one of its early Pottsville stores here. In 1920 the Penney store advertised heavily under the corner’s double address — “225-227 North Centre Street, Pottsville” — beneath the chain’s monogram and slogan. A full display advertisement of September 1920 is unmistakable: “J.C. Penney C[o.] — A Nation-wide Institu[tion] — 291 St[ores] — 225-227 North Centre Street.” Penney’s chain passed 291 stores that year, matching the ad; for those two or three years, generally placed at about 1920–1922, the corner at Race Street was Pottsville’s J.C. Penney. (Sixty years later, the 1982 survey still recorded the building as “225-27,” preserving the two-storefront address.)

Sport shop, restaurants, and the work-clothes store (1929–1950s)

After Penney the storeroom turned over quickly, as downtown storefronts did. By 1929 it held a “Sport Shop … 225 North Centre St. — Opposite Capitol Theatre” — the anchor “opposite the Capitol Theatre” placing it firmly across from the great 1927 movie palace at 218–220. In the early 1930s the corner became a restaurant, the United Restaurant, which invited the public to inspect its kitchen; by 1938 it was again a restaurant, when the Majestic Restaurant held its grand opening at “225 NORTH CENTRE … ALL WELCOME.”

Then, in the autumn of 1939, the storefront settled into the trade it would keep for the rest of its commercial life. A grand-opening advertisement announced “OUR NEW STORE AT 225 NORTH CENTR[E] … A complete line of Work Clothes, Rubber Boots, Work Shoes, Leather Coats.” This was the Workmen’s Supply Co., whose bold advertisements ran through the 1940s and 1950s: “WORKMEN’S SUPPLY CO. — 225 North Centre Street — ‘Everything for the Working Man.’” In a town built on hard, wet, underground work, a store selling work clothes, rubber boots, and leather coats on a downtown corner was a fixture, and Workmen’s Supply Co. was the building’s principal tenant. Through these ground-floor changes the upper floors remained rented apartments.

Decline, and a historic rescue (1990s)

Like the rest of downtown Pottsville, the corner faded through the 1960s and 1970s as the anthracite economy collapsed and the Capitol Theatre across the street was lost (1982). The commercial title passed through a succession of private owners in the 1980s and, after a bank foreclosure, to Pennsylvania National Bank & Trust Co. in 1992, as the building declined toward vacancy.

Its rescue came from the county’s anti-poverty agency. In September 1992 the Economic Opportunity Cabinet of Schuylkill County, Inc. — the agency known today as Schuylkill Community Action — announced that it was “currently preparing an application to the PA … Housing Development Fund … to rehabilitate 225 North Centre Street, Pottsville, to create six affordable two bedroom apartments.” The 225 North Centre Street Limited Partnership, formed with the agency, bought the building in June 1993, and in 1994 the agency put the work out to bid — first “lead [aba]tement and asbestos [aba]tement,” then the full “Historic Renovation of 225 North Centre Street … limited [interior] demolition, new roof, mechanical/electrical sy[stems].” The renovation, respectful of the building’s place in the historic district, gave the old corner store a second century.

The building today

Today 225 North Centre keeps the store-and-apartments plan it has held since 1887, but under a single mission. The ground floor is the program office of Schuylkill Community Action (founded 1965), the county’s community-action agency, and the floors above hold the six affordable two-bedroom apartments created in the 1990s rehabilitation. The corner that once sold hats, then Penney’s dry goods, then a coal miner’s boots, now houses the office where county residents apply for housing help and the homes that help provides. It stands, contributing, within the Pottsville Downtown Historic District, at the Race Street head of a brick commercial row that has been downtown Pottsville’s main street for more than a century and a half — a few doors north of 217–219 North Centre and directly across Race Street from John Fraser’s 1863 former grammar school, the Schuylkill County Historical Society’s home since 2002.