7 Things That Replaced the Local Department Store in Pennsylvania Towns

Macy’s closed the Wanamaker Building in Philadelphia in March 2025, and the place sat empty for more than a year.

City Hall signed off on apartments for the top six floors last July.

Every downtown in Pennsylvania has some version of that story.

These are the things that replaced the local department store in Pennsylvania towns.

1. Lancaster’s Watt & Shand

Bon-Ton bought Lancaster’s Watt & Shand department store in April 1992.

The chain closed the downtown flagship for good on March 4, 1995, ending more than a century of business that started when the store opened its doors in 1878.

The building came down in 2006.

Its face didn’t.

Crews folded the Beaux Arts facade into a new complex built on the same corner, the Lancaster Marriott at Penn Square and the Lancaster County Convention Center, finished in 2009.

Locals still call the intersection Penn Square, the name Watt & Shand made famous downtown.

2. Pittsburgh’s Frank & Seder Building

Fifth Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh anchored Frank & Seder’s department store starting in the early 1900s.

A fire tore through the block in January 1917 and gutted the store.

Frank & Seder rebuilt on the same spot, reopening in 1918.

The store closed for good in 1958.

The building sat mostly empty for decades after that.

Nobody came calling.

Stark Enterprises bought the property in January 2017 for $10.4 million.

Renovation turned the space into apartments, offices, and ground-floor shops under a new name, Smith & Fifth, in 2019.

3. York’s Bon-Ton Building

York County left the old Bon-Ton department store building empty for more than a decade after the chain moved out to a suburban mall in the late 1970s.

Its windows stayed blank on Market and Beaver Streets downtown.

York County finally stepped in.

Workers spent the early 1990s gutting the interior, pulling out asbestos, and restoring the terracotta facade the building had worn since 1912.

The store had installed York’s first escalator when the building opened that same year.

County government offices have run out of the building ever since.

4. Allentown’s Hess’s Site

Allentown’s Hess Brothers department store anchored Hamilton Street for decades before it was torn down, and a new seven-story office tower rose on the same footprint in 2003.

PPL Corporation, the region’s electric utility, filled the tower with its staff for years and put its name on the building.

Then DLP Capital, a real estate investment firm, bought the property in December 2021 for $15.3 million.

Renovation crews moved in fast.

They gutted floors two through six into apartments starting in March 2023, kept the top two floors as offices, and opened four shops at street level.

The project, now called The Hamilton at Grand Plaza, was about 99% finished by the end of October 2024.

5. Scranton's Globe Store

Right after New Year's Day in 1994, Scranton's Globe Store filed for bankruptcy, and PNC Bank, the store's lender, seized its assets within weeks, laying off 400 workers.

The building sat mostly dark for over twenty years.

Lackawanna County picked it as the new home for its government offices, and departments finished moving in around 2018.

File cabinets replaced display counters.

6. Pittsburgh's Kaufmann's Building

Pittsburgh's Kaufmann's department store opened at Fifth Avenue and Smithfield Street in 1887 and stayed a downtown fixture for well over a century.

The final closing sale started on July 20, 2015.

Then it sat empty.

Developer Lubert-Adler spent $40 million turning the 13-story tower into apartments, and the finished building, Kaufmann's Grand on Fifth Avenue, reopened in August 2021 with 311 units.

A Target store opened on the ground floor the next year.

Burlington moved onto the second floor not long after that.

7. Pittsburgh's Horne's Building

Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield's Pittsburgh headquarters building started out as Horne's department store, which closed in 1994 after its last ten stores merged into Federated's Lazarus division.

Lazarus ran the store for about a year before moving out, and Old Navy later took the first two floors for several years before it also left.

Neither store lasted.

Highmark bought the building after that and put its name on the whole address, Highmark Penn Avenue Place, with offices upstairs and shops back at street level.

Downtown Pittsburgh still lights Horne's Christmas tree in the window every Light Up Night.

Philadelphia's Wanamaker Building

Philadelphia's Wanamaker Building held a department store, Wanamaker's and then Macy's, under one name or another for more than a century.

Macy's didn't lock the doors for good until March 2025.

City Hall approved developer TF Cornerstone's plans in July 2025 for 621 apartments across the top six floors, two rooftop decks, and a swimming pool overlooking City Hall.

The Grand Court and the building's pipe organ are supposed to stay open to the public, according to the developer's filings.