Whether coming back permanently or for a weekend, former State College residents must be startled when they discover that, anymore, they don’t know what’s where here. Mercantile pillars remain the same. But what was at one time a full-service downtown hasn’t been that for many years. Now, a doorway ushers you into a different store. Some establishments are completely changed.
Take 138 (140) East Beaver Avenue, for instance.
That location, only a block from the Penn State campus, closed its doors recently. July 15 was scheduled to be its last business day — culminating more than 70 years as the site of a pair of related grocery stores and a small CVS store (unusual these days). Before it went commercial, the 17-room Buckhout mansion stood there.
Its grocery-store period ended 25 years ago. The Weis-related Big Top Market closed in December 1992. It was missed by neighborhood and last-minute shoppers. “Shop no more: Only downtown grocery store slated to close,” read the Centre Dailey Times headline.
(Today, there is the larger McLanahan’s Downtown Market, 116 South Allen Street, which opened in 2001.)
Approaching the end, downtown had the vest-pocket-sized Big Top Market, and a larger Weis (not large by today’s standards) flourished on Westerly Parkway. The little market’s older sister had been the first Weis market in State College. Opening in the 1940s at the 138 East Beaver address, the local Weis Pure Food Stores had previously sold groceries in at least the 1930s at 106 West Beaver Avenue and 122 East College Avenue.
(Weis was far from the first grocery store in the downtown and wasn’t alone when it arrived. Around the corner, at 134 then 136 South Allen Street, there was the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, subsequently shortened to the familiar A&P. At 131 West Beaver was Temple Market, noted for its fresh produce, paper-wrapped meat and home delivery. Foods were also sold on College Avenue, on “Frazier” Street and elsewhere.)
A handy Weiss store was especially crucial for older people renting in the five-story 1933 Glennland Building, nearby at 205 East Beaver Avenue — once the tallest building downtown. I knew Glennland residents who had their groceries delivered when possible. Near there, at least one area resident now in her 90s remembers, “They let me take the shopping cart home,” coming to reclaim it later.
One summer day, I waved a happy personal “goodbye” at 138 East Beaver. Purchasing pocketable munchies for a Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, I stood in a check-out line behind an older woman wearing a tie-dyed dress (at that time, it was customary to wear something artsy for the festival). She turned out to be Miss (Elizabeth) Morrow, my strict ninth-grade English teacher. (The “C” I earned didn’t reflect all I learned.) It was a rare opportunity to thank her for being a wonderful teacher.
In addition to the building’s apartments, there have been offices/businesses upstairs over the years, such as those of: physician E. W. Cullen, dentists O. R. Lake, W. S. Swift, and J. F. Breslin, chiropractor John Cornel, and the Ruth Showers Beauty Salon — one of my “mum”-in-law’s regular destinations.
There were neighborhood devotees too of the just-closed CVS, particularly renters at the eight-story (mayor) Arnold Addison Court next door. “I went two or three times a week; it was very convenient,” says one of them. Like the grocery store, some customers were very upset that it wouldn’t continue being there for them.
The spot where this three-story 1940s building stands, sources say, is being looked at for a six-story multi-use building with street-level commercial space; however, as of this writing, there was no redevelopment plan.
If replaced, it would be the second time a structure was erased from that plot.
“In 1877, Professor W. A. Buckhout (identified elsewhere as a “professor of botany and prominent citizen”) built the first wing of his later spacious mansion on the southwest corner of Pugh and Beaver,” wrote CDT writer Vivian Doty Hench in the newspaper’s golden anniversary publication, The History of State College 1896-1946.
“Used in the 1920’s as a fraternity house, and more recently as a rooming house,” the writer continued, “it was demolished in 1945 to make room for the Irven Mohnkern building (first owner). But in its day, it was the mecca for both town and gown affairs, and the center for social activities among the young people.”
State College has experienced multiple layers of history since its babyhood as a village beside the Farmers’ High School. An early layer included street names. Consistent with other downtown streets, the ones that form the Pugh/Beaver corner are named for early Penn State leaders.
Evan Pugh was its first president (1859-1864); James A. Beaver, a Bellefonte lawyer who become a Pennsylvania governor, was an early Penn State trustee; his name also shouts at the campus stadium.
The east-west College Avenue town/gown separation aside, South Pugh Street was to be the town’s main street — not Allen, named after William Allen, whose presidency was for only two years, following Pugh’s.
“Pugh street,” Vivian Doty Hench wrote, “designed by the first settlers to be the center of the town, became the center for private homes rather than business.”
So much for predicting what you’ll see here.
(Penn State Special Collections)
Before 138 East Beaver Avenue became a commercial space, the 17-room Buckhout mansion stood there.
