Charles Department Store in York
Charles Department Store occupied the six-story building at 9-11 East Market Street in York from 1947 until 1958. That tall building stands above all others on the north side of the first block of East Market Street in this circa 1950 Pinterest photo.
In a post last month, Kathy stated Shaffner’s was the jeweler to go to in York County from the 1930s thru the 1970s. In 1964, Shaffner’s moved into their biggest store, to date, at 9 East Market Street. At the time, the six-story building was known as the Small Building. Shaffner’s entrance doors and display windows covered much of the width of the building. The door at the east side of the building, 11 East Market Street, led to the offices in the upper floors. See the following, circa 1970, photo of the lower floors of the building.
Click on this LINK for a yorkblog.com Full View of the two original photos in this post if details are cut off in the cropping of the photos, or if any has been removed from the ydr.com site.
Several readers disagreed with my assumption that the white facing, applied to the first two floors of the building, was done when Shaffner’s moved into that building. Dotty Neff stating that facing was applied when Charles Department Store came to town. I stand corrected; the circa-1950 photo does show the white facing in place.
Charles Department Store opened in York on September 18, 1947. The store was staffed by 102 employees upon its opening. The store was the 35th in a regional chain of department stores, operating in the eastern US stretching from New York State to North Carolina.
The local Charles store closed in 1958, after making the decision not to move into the York County Shopping Center. Charles Department Stores were established in 1924 and continue to operate.
After Shaffner’s closed in 1973, Goodwill Industries retail store opened at 9 East Market Street on July 25, 1974. In time, the building was purchased for another facelift; at which time the top three floors were removed. Leaving the three-story Rich Executive Building standing at the site today.
Within that yorkblog.com site, the York Daily Record is presently experiencing gremlins, which, on some platforms, results in a new window opening at findbetterresults.com; a site no longer used by the York Daily Record. While the York Daily Record works on correcting this problem, simply close that window; the linked blog page, within yorkblog.com, that you were intending to reach should appear.
The gremlin also appears on the other yorkblog.com sites: Cannonball site of Scott Mingus, Only in York County site of Joan Concilio, Universal York site of June Lloyd, and York Town Square site of Jim McClure, where you can continue to access Jim’s older posts prior to October 30, 2015. As with all the yorkblog.com sites, the “Search this blog” within the page continues to be a fantastic search tool within each individual site.
Links to posts of a few other downtown York businesses:
- Prominent York jeweler started in Red Lion
- Haines Building on North George Street
- Mahlon Haines’ Hotel endures on North George Street
- Mahlon Haines built Haines Building at 101 East Market Street
