The "Lunch & Shopping with Mom!" Story

Frank Winfield Woolworth

It was an ordinary day.  Talking with a friend about eating at the lunch counter in Woolworth's 5 & 10 Cent Store in downtown Lancaster.  I can remember shopping at the store with my mother and having lunch in the store before heading next door to McCrory's 5 & 10 Cent Store to shop some more.  Tough having to follow your mom from store to store, but I usually had a great time eating lunch at Woolworth's.  Recently saw a few old postcards for sale on different websites and noticed one which featured the Woolworth's Store on North Queen Street.  Didn't recognize it, since it didn't look the same as it did when I went shopping with my mom in it.  Frank Winfield Woolworth was born in Rodman, New York in 1852.  

The first successful FW Woolworth store in Lancaster, PA.

He was the oldest son of Fanny and Richard Woolworth who fought for the North in the Civil War.  Frank began working at his dad's farm at the age of fifteen,  but didn't enjoy farming so he got a job working in a shop in nearby Watertown.  He eventually was given the job of setting up a table of fixed price five cent goods which proved to be very successful.  Soon afterward, with the backing of his boss, he opened a store in Utica, New York.  

Demolition of first building so a new "skyscraper" could be built.

It was a failure, but within ten days he opened a store in the Amish country of Lancaster, Pennsyl- vania on June 21, 1879.  He began this store with a total of $410 worth of merchan- dise.  This time he featured items for both five and ten cents.  The small sales floor was filled from floor-to-ceiling in the store that only had 14 feet of street frontage.  

The grand FW Woolworth 5 & 10
Cent Store in downtown Lancaster.

His store displayed a red sign with gold lettering with the words "Woolworth's 5 and 10 Cent Store".  On the day he opened for business he made $127.65, selling about 30% of his stock.  His employees were paid $1.50 a week and he wrapped the purchases in old newsprint to keep costs low.  His best sellers in the store were tinware, toys, wash basins, handkerchieves and ribbons.  One of his assistants that first day was 13 year-old Susan Kane who worked four years at the store and eventually, at the age of 80, was interviewed by the Lancaster New Era, Lancaster's evening paper at the time, in 1963 about her many memories of that first day.  She told how she sat on a stairway at the back of the store, guarding the cash box while watching the clerks.  In 1900 he decided to build a "skyscraper" store with five stories of offices above and a restaurant and theatre in a roof garden at the top.  

The left photo shows the store with the roof-top garden
removed.  The store on the right is how I remember the
store in my youth.  I'm not sure of the dates that both
the alterations took place to the Woolworth store.

Rather than just enlarging his current store, he purchased properties nearby and did it right.  The store was the city's social center.  This store was the precursor to his next project, the tallest building in the world at the time; the Woolworth Building which he built in New York City.  FW Woolworth eventually had stores throughout the United States as well as stores all over the world.  I'm not sure of the date that the Woolworth store in downtown Lancaster was reduced in size or when it was razed, but I do remember the fun times I had shopping with my mom and having lunch at the lunch counter of Woolworth's 5 & 10 Cent Store in downtown Lancaster, PA.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.

The lunch counter of the FW Woolworth 5 & 10 Cent Store in downtown Lancaster.

This photo taken in the early 1900's shows Penn Square in the center of town in the right-front.  The Woolworth building towers over all the other buildings in the city in the center-rear of the photo.  It stood on North Queen Street.

One more photograph of the FW Woolworth 5 & 10 Cent Store.