The "Sweet Treats Abound in Lancaster" Story

C. Emlen Urban's design for

the Keppel's Candy Company.

It was an ordinary day.  Stopped with Carol at Miesse Candy along Fruitville Pike to buy a gift for one of her high school classmates who had invited us to supper.  Neat new store that is hard to exit without buying a variety of chocolate treats to eat in the near future.  I wrote a store a few months ago about Miesse Candy and wrote a story years ago about Milton S. Hershey and the candy company he opened in Lancaster in the late 1800's.  Lancaster County has been home to many chocolatiers over the ages and gave birth to not only Hershey's, but to Peeps and chocolate Easter Bunnies and still boasts a few chocolate companies such as Miesse and Evans, but also has a large chocolate manufacturer in Wilbur Chocolate Company in nearby Lititz.  Thirty minutes away is the world famous Hershey's Chocolate Company which was opened after Milton S. Hershey sold his business in Lancaster and moved to Hershey, PA.  

The chute can be seen
towering above Keppels.

Well, there used to be another chocolate company in downtown Lancaster that closed in 1988 known as Keppel's Candy Company.  Located along North Queen Street in the center of the city of Lancaster, it was housed in one of the neatest buildings in Lancaster.  The Keppel factory is a classical design with Greek and Roman influences and was designed by famous Lancaster architect C. Emlen Urban.  The windows featured transoms and decorative motifs while Urban used a symmetric plan which shows in the identical windows and ornate sculptures in the building.  The building was built around a steel frame with stone while the inside has primarily red brick walls and hard wood floors.  Along the left side of the front is a rusting spire that appears to be some sort of chute or elevator.  Recently Jack Brubaker, a staff writer for the Lancaster Newspapers, wrote about the chute, saying that the apparatus delivered granulated cane sugar for most of the lifetime of the company.  

Keppels Inc. was located at 323-325 North Queen St.

The tower-like duct was probably installed in the 1930's or 1940's, but stopped operating 27 years ago.  Keppel's cooked their candy on the top floor of the building so the chute helped deliver the sugar to the top floor.  The chute was actually an elevator that carried the sugar to the rooftop where a conveyor delivered the sugar to a storage bin at the rear of the building.  

The Greek and Roman architecture can be seen in this photo.

Machinery inside the building moved the sugar to the cooking stations as needed.  Jack notes that one good aspect of the remaining decaying chute is that it probably saved the building from a lightning strike over the years.  I made a trip to the downtown location to take a few photos showing what the place looks like today, including the rusting metal chute that has been a Lancaster eyesore for years.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.