Chamber Building (Jonas Long's Sons Department Store)

Chamber Building (Jonas Long's Sons Department Store)

Chamber Building (Jonas Long's Sons Department Store) Photo by William E. Fischer, Jr.
1893, P. J. Lauritzen. 2 Public Sq.

This former department store is another link between Wilkes-Barre and New York. After admiring a Brooklyn store built for another German Jewish retail family, Jonas Long commissioned its architect to design a five-story Richardsonian Romanesque retailing palace in tan brick and terra-cotta. Its three-story entrance arch, set obliquely onto the corner, was a gateway beckoning shoppers in from the streetcars. The original facade, buried under the turquoise panels of a 1950s modernization, was uncovered in 1994. Sadly, budgetary constraints precluded the return of the building's crowning cornice and pyramidal gable roof.

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