Strawbridge and Clothier Store

This article is about the Jenkintown building. For the site of the former Philadelphia flagship store, see Fashion District Philadelphia.

The Strawbridge and Clothier Store is a historic department store building located at Jenkintown, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. It was built by Strawbridge & Clothier in 1930-1931 and renovated and expanded in 1954. It closed in 1988 when it relocated to the Willow Grove Park Mall. It is now an office building, multi-tenant.

Strawbridge and Clothier Store, Jenkintown
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
The store in 2012
Show map of Pennsylvania Show map of the United States
Location	680 Old York Rd. N of Rydal Rd. Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Coordinates	40°6′6″N 75°7′32″W
Area	7.9 acres (3.2 ha)
Built	1930-1931, 1954
Architect	Dreher & Churchman; Herbert B. Beidler
Architectural style	Art Deco
NRHP reference No.	88003047[1]
Added to NRHP	December 22, 1988

History

The original section is a four-story, steel frame structure faced in limestone and on a granite base in the Art Deco style. It has a flat slag roof with parapet. 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.^[2] This Strawbridge & Clothier store closed in 1988 when it relocated to the Willow Grove Park Mall.^[3] In the late 1990s, the building served as the headquarters of fast-growing online music retailer CDNow. It currently houses an Outback Steakhouse.

The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.^[1]

The building was built on the site of Wyndhurst, banker John Milton Colton's estate containing a Horace Trumbauer-designed Tudor-style residence built 1899-1900.^[4] 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.^[5]