370 South Centre Street

The two-story brick-and-stucco commercial building at 370 South Centre Street — on the corner of Centre and Washington streets, at the head of what Pottsville once called its “automobile row” — was built about 1920 as the showroom and garage of the Schuylkill Motors Company, the city’s Dodge Brothers dealer. Across the next century it sold Dodge automobiles, then Philco radios and televisions, then made ladies’ sportswear, then sold and repaired cameras, stood empty for years, and in 2023 reopened as The Chopping Block, an axe-throwing and social-entertainment venue.

The block before the building

370 South Centre stands in the 300-block of South Centre Street, the stretch of Pottsville’s main thoroughfare that runs south from the downtown core toward Mauch Chunk Street. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries this was the southern edge of the built-up town, and the frontage now occupied by the motor building was residential. The digitized Boyd’s directories of Pottsville show the 300-block of South Centre as residential before about 1920, with no business listed at 370; a full-text search of the 1917–1919 Boyd’s directory returns no “Schuylkill Motors” at all, placing the building’s construction and the company’s founding in the narrow window of about 1919–1920.

The character of the block changed with the automobile. By the 1910s and 1920s the lower blocks of South Centre had filled with new-car dealers, garages, and parts-and-service shops — a concentration local memory still calls Pottsville’s “automobile row.” The state historical marker at neighboring 394 South Centre — the former Morgan Studebaker dealership, today Jerry’s Classic Cars & Collectibles Museum — records the corridor plainly: “Centre Street was the home to many new car dealers during the early 1900’s.”

Schuylkill Motors Company (c. 1920 – c. 1938)

The building’s first and defining occupant was the Schuylkill Motors Company, and its automobile is confirmed from three independent kinds of record — the company’s own newspaper statements, its display advertising, and the annual city directories. A front-page notice in the Pottsville Republican of January 8, 1932 states the essentials in the company’s own words: the firm was incorporated in 1920, its showroom stood at 370 South Centre Street, and it was the local Dodge Brothers dealer — “tomorrow the Schuylkill Motors Co. will start at their showroom, 370 S. Centre street, the new Dodge eight and the new Dodge six.” The same notice names Clinton W. Sheafer, with the firm since its 1920 incorporation (vice-president, then “since 1922 as president”), succeeding H. T. Larzelere as general manager.

The city directories corroborate the address, the brand, and the officers year by year. The 1919–1921 and 1922–1924 volumes list “Schuylkill Motors Co., Robert A. Swalm, pres & mgr, distributors Dodge Bros. Motor Cars, Centre c[orner] Washington”; by 1928–1929 the firm is “Distributors Dodge Bros Motor Cars and Graham Bros Trucks,” at “370–374 S Centre, Phone 257.” The dealership’s early vigor shows in a news item of May 28, 1923 — “Sch[uylkill] Motors Doing Big Business” — describing carloads of new Dodge cars unloaded “nearly every day,” with manager “Bob” Swalm “walking along all the time with a big smile on his face.” By its own account the firm ran “for nearly twenty years”: a feature of May 10, 1937 describes its truck, used-car, service, paint, and metal-work departments. By the late 1930s the company had opened a larger garage on West End Avenue and ran a used-car lot at Connors Crossing, while still advertising 370 South Centre as its downtown home; its last confirmed appearance at the address is January 1938.

The Philco years: Schneider and Saphin (c. 1940s – late 1950s)

As the automobile business shifted to West End Avenue, 370 South Centre became a home-electronics distributorship — a natural second life for a building designed with a broad showroom and deep service space. The Pottsville Republican of July 9, 1948 fixes the occupant precisely: the 1949 Philco radio-phonographs were shown to local dealers “under the sponsorship of L. R. Schneider Distributors of 370 S. Centre st., this city, local Philco distributors.” When Schneider died, the distributorship passed to Albert V. Saphin of New York City, who in September 1951 “accepted the distributorship of Philco products for Schuylkill and Carbon Counties … succeed[ing] the late L. R. Schneider”; Saphin Television and Appliance Inc. advertised Philco from 370 South Centre through at least 1957.

I & G Sportswear Company (c. 1958 – c. 1976)

By the late 1950s the building had turned to the needle trades — the garment manufacturing that employed thousands of women across the anthracite region. I & G Sportswear Company, a maker of ladies’ apparel, ran a sewing factory at 370 South Centre Street. It is listed among Pottsville’s garment makers as early as 1958, and a help-wanted advertisement of November 9, 1961 places it squarely at the address: “Experienced Operators on Waist, Bolero and Skirts. Piece Work. Union Benefits. I. & G. Sportswear Co., 370 S. Centre Street, Pottsville.” The firm was still recruiting operators there in 1972.

Precision Camera Works (from 1978) and the vacant years

By the late 1970s the building had a fourth trade — photography. Precision Camera Works, described by the Pottsville Republican as “one of the new stores to locate in downtown Pottsville,” operated at 370 South Centre Street from September 1978 into at least the mid-1980s, selling and repairing cameras. The building’s later history is, by the county’s deed record, one of repeated turnover — from Charles E. Miller (1982, 1990) through Patrice Joyce (1991), the Ellises (1994), UB Enterprises (2003), VIST Bank (2013, a nominal transfer consistent with a foreclosure), and Mathew LLC (2015) — and the structure eventually stood vacant for years. By the time it was rediscovered around 2022 it was derelict enough, the future owners have said, that “it was raining outside … [and] also raining inside,” and gutting it filled more than twenty 40-yard dumpsters.

The Chopping Block (2022 – present)

The building’s current life began through Launch Pottsville, a business-plan competition run by the Pottsville Area Development Corporation to bring new ventures downtown. Two couples — Jonathan and Elizabeth Marsh and Alex and Samantha Chivinski — won a place in the program and bought the long-vacant building; county records date the purchase to June 9, 2022. After roughly ten months of renovation “down to the studs,” The Chopping Block, an axe-throwing and social-entertainment venue, opened in the summer of 2023, with a grand-opening “ribbon-chopping” (the owners cut the ribbon with hand-held axes) on Thursday, July 27, 2023. The Republican & Herald reported a first-floor room of 14 enclosed throwing lanes with electronically projected targets, a sports bar with 12 taps and nine televisions, and a staff of about 25, with a planned second-floor event space. Public officials praised the owners for restoring a building that had been vacant for years.

Architecture and the streetscape

370 South Centre is a two-story masonry commercial building — brick/block/stone construction finished in stucco, with a flat roof — occupying a corner lot of about 0.12 acre at Centre and Washington streets, with roughly 10,396 square feet of floor area. Its form is that of the 1920s auto showroom: a wide, glassy display front over a deep service/garage space (the county record still notes an overhead vehicle door), beneath a large upper floor the current owners describe as “enclosed with floor-to-ceiling windows.” The building lies outside the Pottsville Downtown Historic District (listed 1982), whose boundary runs through the north/central business core several blocks north; the county assessment record independently flags the parcel “Historic: No.” Its standing is in the documented century of trade it has housed rather than in a Register listing.