The Strawbridge and Clothier Store is a historic

department store A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store under one roof, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store mad ...

building located at

Jenkintown Jenkintown is a borough in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is approximately north of Center City Philadelphia. History The community was named for William Jenkins, a Welsh pioneer settler. The borough was settled in about ...

Montgomery County, Pennsylvania Montgomery County, colloquially referred to as Montco, is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population of the county was 856,553, making it the third-most populous county in Pennsylvania after Philadel ...

. It was built by

Strawbridge & Clothier Strawbridge's, formerly Strawbridge & Clothier, was a department store in the northeastern United States, with stores in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. The Center City Philadelphia flagship store was, in its day, a gracious urban empori ...

in 1930-1931 and renovated and expanded in 1954. It closed in 1988 when it relocated to the

Willow Grove Park Mall Willow Grove Park Mall is a three-story shopping mall located in the community of Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, Willow Grove in Abington Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Abington Township, Pennsylvania at the intersection of Easton Roa ...

. It is now an

office building An office is a space where the employees of an organization perform administrative work in order to support and realize the various goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a position within an organization with specific du ...

, multi-tenant.

History

The original section is a four-story, steel frame structure faced in

limestone Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...

and on a

granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...

base in the

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

style. It has a flat

slag The general term slag may be a by-product or co-product of smelting (pyrometallurgical) ores and recycled metals depending on the type of material being produced. Slag is mainly a mixture of metal oxides and silicon dioxide. Broadly, it can be c ...

roof with

parapet A parapet is a barrier that is an upward extension of a wall at the edge of a roof, terrace, balcony, walkway or other structure. The word comes ultimately from the Italian ''parapetto'' (''parare'' 'to cover/defend' and ''petto'' 'chest/brea ...

. The building features piers that extend above the roof parapet, two-story projecting entrance pavilions, a one-story flat roofed extension with elegant display windows, and two five-story towers. The addition is a three-story structure with a parking garage. It was built as the second suburban branch of Strawbridge and Clothier. ''Note:'' This includes This Strawbridge & Clothier store closed in 1988 when it relocated to the

. In the late 1990s, the building served as the headquarters of fast-growing online music retailer

CDNow CDnow, Inc. was a dot-com company that operated an online shopping website selling compact discs and music-related products. In April 1998, during the dot-com bubble, the company was valued at over $1billion (~$ in ). In July 2000, it was acqui ...

. It currently houses an

Outback Steakhouse Outback Steakhouse is an American chain of Australian-themed casual dining restaurants, serving American cuisine, based in Tampa, Florida. The chain has over 1,000 locations in 23 countries throughout North America, South America, Asia, and Aus ...

. The building was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 1988. The building was built on the site of Wyndhurst, banker John Milton Colton's estate containing a

Horace Trumbauer Horace Trumbauer (December 28, 1868 – September 18, 1938) was a prominent American architect of the Gilded Age, known for designing residential manors for the wealthy. Later in his career he also designed hotels, office buildings, and much of t ...

-designed Tudor-style residence built 1899-1900. The main residence was razed in 1930 to build the Jenkintown store, but one of the outbuildings in similar Tudor style remains at 2 Rydal Rd.

References

Notes

External links

*
Strawbridge & Clothier company records
at

Hagley Museum and Library The Hagley Museum and Library is a nonprofit educational institution in unincorporated New Castle County, Delaware, near Wilmington. Covering more than along the banks of the Brandywine Creek, the museum and grounds include the first du Po ...

{{Authority control Commercial buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania Commercial buildings completed in 1931 Commercial buildings completed in 1954 Jenkintown, Pennsylvania Buildings and structures in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania Department stores on the National Register of Historic Places National Register of Historic Places in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania