Zollinger-Harned Company Building

About this property

The Zollinger-Harned Company Building, now known as The Sovereign Building, is a historic department store building on Hamilton Street in the Center City section of Allentown, Pennsylvania. Zollinger-Harned was founded as Lawfer & Steckel by William R. Lawfer and W. R. Steckel in 1866 in Allentown, at the corner of Church and Hamilton streets, at 626 Hamilton Street. The store carried a large stock of dry goods, notions, and groceries. The business was continued by the original partners until 1874, when Steckel disposed of his interest to George W. Hartzell. Hartzell retired in 1876, and the firm was reconstituted as W.R. Lawfer & Company. Lawfer expanded the business and purchased the larger buildings at 611 and 613 Hamilton Street, combining the structures into one large building, which opened in March 1882. The firm sold a wide number of women's dresses, and coats. As the firm grew, it expanded with books, toys, jewelry, kitchen crockery, carpets, and men's and children's clothing. To accommodate the expansion, Lawfer expanded the store by first purchasing two properties at 12 and 16 North Sixth Street, which were merged into an "T" shape with the Hamilton Street buildings extending north to Court Street and the Sixth Street buildings merging into the Hamilton Street building on the right side of the property. The present-day Sovereign Building retains this basic design. A second expansion added the stores at 607 and 609 Hamilton Street to the store. Lawfer adverted the store as "Allentown's Big Department Store". Lawfer was friends with John Wanamaker, a Philadelphia-based retail entrepreneur. Lawfer worked for Wanamaker in the 1850s and 1860s prior to opening his own store in Allentown. William Zollinger, who lived in Sandusky, Ohio, operated the Zollinger Department store the 1880s. The new owners tore down the amalgamation of separate storefronts and erected a single large three-story building at 607-613 Hamilton Street that wrapped around to the right with a double storefront at 14 to 16 North Sixth Street. While still at Wanamaker's department store, Lawfer began decorating his own store as early as Christmas in 1904. Lawfer's was the first local department store to feature a separate toy department that it called "Toyland". At the center of the toy display that Christmas was a twenty-four-foot-tall, one-ton figure it called "Santa Claus’ Father." It is not known if this was an attempt to combine the English figure known as “Father Christmas” with Nast's character. On December 9, 1905, local newspapers ran the first announcement of Lawfer's live Santa Claus. "Visit Santa Claus at his Cave in Toyland," it read. "If you haven’t paid Santa a visit in his pretty Toyland, you had better come soon. Santa remembers every little face, you know, and he says there are some chubby little folks on his list he hasn’t seen yet. Bring your letters and put them in the letter box in his cave."

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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