Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society
History Quarterly Digital Archives

Source: July 1989 Volume 27 Number 3, Pages 102–112

Club Members Remember: The Changing Face of Paoli

Page 102

This article is based for the most part on the recollections of club members and guests who remembered Paoli "as it was" twenty, thirty, fifty years ago at our club meeting this past March. As with any collection of recollections, there are undoubtedly omissions and business places that have been forgotten or overlooked — and we also recognize that memories in some cases may not be infallible.

One of the buildings that has not changed a great deal over this period is the Matthews Ford agency. It has been in the same two-story red brick building, at the triangle formed by the intersection of the road to West Chester (still sometimes referred to as "old 202") and the Lancaster Pike, since 1924, three years after Walter T. Matthews first obtained a franchise to sell Ford cars. (The Matthews Sales Company, its official corporate name since 1946, is the oldest Ford agency in Chester County.)

Actually, this is the fourth location for the agency. In 1916, when the automobile industry was still in its infancy, Walter Matthews opened a one-car garage on Spring Street and acquired an Overland franchise. As the business expanded, in 1918 he moved into Dalton's garage, and then farther to the west into the old Leech blacksmith shop on the Lancaster Pike. Finally, in 1924, he again moved to the present location.

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The service building across the highway on Greenwood Avenue, opposite the post office, was built in about 1954. For many years there was also a Gulf Oil service station on the northwest corner of Greenwood Avenue and the pike, across from the showroom.

Of considerably more recent date is the stone store/office building where the Wawa store, a finance company, and a real estate office are now, on the other side of "old 202" and Circular Avenue, southeast of Matthews'. When this complex was built it was identified as Paoli Square.

This was the location, during the first three decades of this century, of the livery station run by John Eachus. (His daughter Mary Eachus still lives nearby on Circular Avenue.) The stables were on the eastern portion of the lot, with the Eachus home next to them to the west. For a dollar, a horse and rig could be rented for the entire day! Eachus also owned much of the land to the south, which he used for pasture. With the coming of the automobile, in the early 1930s he finally gave away his last three horses, retiring them to pasture, and rented out the old livery stable building, first as a garage for Francis Motors, and then to Bill Murray.

Bill Murray started in business in Paoli in 1936 with a small Gulf service station in the triangle in front of Matthews'. In the following year he rented the old livery stable, renovated it, and went into the electrical appliance business. It was one of the first "discount" stores in the area. He later bought the property from Eachus, and in about 1951 added an auditorium and warehouse. (His annual cake-baking contests were described in the April 1983 issue of the Quarterly [Vol. XXI, No. 2].)

After Murray went out of business the property stood vacant until the new stores were built in 1970. The adjacent store to the east and on Lancaster Avenue, now a home furnishings store, was renovated in the same style about seven years later.

The building on the northwest corner of the intersection of Spring Street and Lancaster Avenue, now vacant but until recently a pet shop, was years ago a grocery store operated by R. F. Matthews and his two sons, with their brother Walter also working there as a delivery boy before he went into the automobile business. Somewhat later the building was used as the Paoli agency for Avil's Cleaners in Wayne, and after that by People's Cleaners. (The pet store, incidentally, at one time received quite a bit of publicity when a large tiger was in residence there.)

Paoli West, the group of nine stores east of Spring Street on the south side of, and a little back from, the highway were built between 1976 and 1978. From 1959 to 1964 the Paoli post office was located at this site, in a remodeled building that had originally been a garage.

Several years before the First World War Ralph Edwards, who had opened the first garage in Berwyn, attempted to open a similar establishment in Paoli in 1911. He soon was confronted with a petition for an injunction barring him "from erecting a garage and repair shop for autos", it being alleged that "it would be offensive and a danger to the neighborhood".

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(According to tradition, John Dingee and Henry Biddle, who at that time owned much of the land on both sides of the pike and railroad in the eastern half of Paoli, were great horse lovers and violently opposed to automobiles and gasoline-propelled vehicles. They formed the Paoli Improvement Association, and one of its provisions was to prohibit the sale of gasoline or the repair of automobiles on this land.) Because of this, Edwards relocated in Malvern, but Eric Ottey, his associate, persisted, although he was forced to locate the garage over on West Central Avenue and away from the highway.

Finally, in the early or mid-1920s, he and his brother Al Ottey were able to open a garage on the highway where Paoli West is now located. (Some people still remember a music box in the window sill of the garage; it played a large metal disc, perforated like a piano roll.)

In the early 1940s a Kaiser-Frazer agency was also opened on the property, on a lease basis, and after the Otteys moved to Plank Avenue, the property became a Packard agency.

In March of 1956 the building was leased to the U. S. Post Office Department. The building was "extensively remodeled, renovated, and modernized" under the direction of architects Carroll and Stephenson, and before the summer was over became the Paoli post office. Although the original lease was for fifteen years, the post office remained at this location for less than ten years, and in 1965 was moved to its present site at the corner of Greenwood Avenue and Paoli Plaza [see below].

The two-story building in the English split-timber style that contains the remaining four stores on the south side of Lancaster Avenue west of South Valley Road was designed and built in 1928 by Boyle Irwin and Arlington Supplee. (They also designed and built many of the homes north of East Central Avenue on the other side of the railroad when the old Biddle farm, or Biddle Tract, was later subdivided for development, and Arlington Road is, in fact, named for Arlington Supplee. Similarly, Biddle Road was named for the Biddle family, and Rochsolach Road for the name of the Biddle estate, with Fennerton Road taking its name from the name of the residence and estate of John Dingee. Irwin, incidentally, also designed the original Ottey garage and the Matthews Ford building.)

The westernmost store in the building, now the Army-Navy Store, was originally and for many years a hardware store operated by Arlington Supplee 's brother Clarence Supplee. He started his hardware business upon his return from service after the First World War; with the completion of the new building he moved into it and remained there as Supplee's Hardware for almost two decades. (In 1926 he also opened a branch store in Berwyn, which he sold to Cass Tollinger ten years later.) After Supplee sold the store in Paoli in 1947 it was known, under the new management, as Paoli Hardware; when it was sold again four years later it became The Hardware Center. In late 1955 the new owners moved the business to the new Paoli Shopping Center [see below], and shortly afterwards the Army-Navy Store was opened in its former location.

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To the east for many years was a grocery and produce store, with various owners — it was a Hubbs Store for a while, then in the mid-1940s it was Starkey's, then Espenshades for about three years, then Friedels, and, later on, Burkeys. Because the words "Fresh Daily", presumably a slogan for some brand of bread, appeared over the doorway, however, despite the changes in ownership, it was generally known as The Fresh Daily Produce Store or simply as Fresh Daily's.

Along the north side of the Lancaster Pike between Greenwood Avenue and North Valley Road, the buildings, aside from the Mellon Bank which was built in 1971, reflect quite recent changes in the face of Paoli. From east to west, the Roach Brothers real estate office opened just last November; the Caldwell Banker real estate office a year earlier in November 1987; and the Paoli branch of the Bryn Mawr Trust Company in May of 1988.

The Mellon Bank originally opened as the Girard Bank in 1971; it became a Mellon Bank ten years later. Before it was built, the Wedge Building had been at the northwest corner of the pike and South Valley Road, now part of the bank's parking lot. It took its name from its owner, not its shape; it was built by Utley Wedge as the office for the Electro-Chemical Company, of which he was the president. It was also at one time used for a bank, and was the first home, in 1958, of the Fox Chase Cancer Research Center Thrift Shop, now located in Daylesford.

For fifteen years, from 1939 to 1954, the Acme Market was located to the west of the Wedge Building, before its move to the new Paoli Shopping Center in 1954. After renovation the building became the showroom and store of the Penn Colony Wayside Furniture Company, "where economy meets elegance", with a Western Auto outlet, and later a Glidden paint store, occupying the western part of the building.

The Paoli Diner was located about where the Roach Brothers real estate office is now for several decades, startina in about 1931. (The diner was later moved to Frazer and was a diner there; then it became Linn's Vietnamese restaurant, but now is the Frazer diner once again.) After the diner moved from Paoli it was succeeded by Capp's Big Pixie, a drive-in fast-food 'burger stand where you telephoned in your order as you drove in and a carhop would then bring it to you, after you parked, on a tray that attached to the car door. After that it became a Big Wigwam Drive-In; then it was a real estate office for a while; then a bulk grocery outlet; and now, after being completely remodeled last year, the real estate office that is there today.

On the lot where the Caldwell Banker real estate office is now located was Cooksey's Atlantic gasoline station. It was there from the mid-1930s until 1951, when it was relocated in the eastern part of Paoli. At one time there was also a Cooksey Lane between the highway and Paoli Plaza.

There was also a gasoline station at the northeast corner of Greenwood Avenue and the pike, Zuschnitt's Texaco station, where the new Bryn Mawr Trust Company building is now located. He started out in 1935 in a small metal shack on the property, but after the Second World War this was torn down and a new modern service station erected in its place. (Zuschnitt later also obtained a Hertz rental car franchise.) in the early 1930s,before the gas station opened, a miniature golf course was located on the property.

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The post office was established at its present location a block back from the highway at the northeast corner of Greenwood Avenue and Paoli Plaza in early 1965, as in less than ten years the facilities at the old Ottey garage had already become overcrowded and were causing considerable traffic congestion on the highway. The new building was designed by John Van Balen, a Paoli architect. Appropriately, the lot on which it is now located was also the site of Paoli's first post office, established in 1828 at the old Paoli Inn with Joshua Evans Jr., the innkeeper, the first postmaster. (The old inn had burned down in 1899.)

The first two buildings of the Paoli Village Shoppes, east of the post office and parallel to the railroad tracks between Paoli Plaza and the railroad, opened the following year, in 1966. (Before their construction the area was described as having "long been an eyesore of weeds and rubbish".) The two-story brick buildings of "Williamsburg" design, each with space for six retail outlets on the ground floor and for professional offices on the second floor, were also designed by Van Balen. The third unit, running north and south at the eastern end of the project, was completed in 1967.

The three-story white building with a Dutch roof, now a gift shop and real estate office, between the Village Shoppes and North Valley Road, is considerably older. In the early 1930s it was the salesroom and office of Great Valley Mills. Their principal products were stone-ground whole wheat and rye flour and corn meal; the company had a large mail order business and shipped its flour all over the world.

On the other side of North Valley Road is the railroad station. It is now thirty-six years since the old two-story station building, built in 1893 by W. H. Burns, was replaced by the present "modern" building at track level. The old station was situated about eight or ten feet above the tracks, with a covered stairway leading down to the platform along the tracks, similar to the one still at the westbound platform. To the east of the station building, at track level, was the freight station.

Before the new one-story yellow-brick station was built, the site was graded so that it could be put at track level, with the land to the south made into a parking area for commuters. A private residence near the northeast corner of the pike and North Valley Road was also torn down when the hill was graded.

From 1884 to 1893, and again from 1897 to about 1910, the post office was also located in the station building. As the volume of mail increased, however, the railroad erected a new post office building just west of the station. It was later a newsstand, before it and the old station building were razed for the present building.

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Coming back to the south side of the highway, the two-store, two-story building east of South Valley Road was built in the 1920s, before the stores on the west side of the road. The store on the corner, until recently Congressman Dick Schulze's Paoli office, was for many years a drug store, operated first by R. J. McDermott (who also had a drug store in Malvern) and then, beginning in 1934, by Bill Earle. It was a real old-fashioned drug store, with a soda fountain. (When the third unit of the Village Shoppes was completed in 1967, Earle's drug store moved there and has been there ever since.)

Before it moved to the larger store next to the Wedge Building in 1939, the American store was located in the other half of this building. For a few years after the Second World War, it was Bob's Five-and-Ten Cent Variety Store, and it has had several tenants since then. A combination dress and gift shop is located there at the present time, with offices in the rear area.

The next four stores to the east are also somewhat older buildings. Some old-timers still refer to the first one as "the old Cilley Shop", recalling when the Chrismans had a card shop and gift shop and lending library there — despite the fact that Bruce Erb since then had his Town & Country travel agency there for 20 years, from 1965 to 1985. (Erb had previously been located in the Fire House [see below] starting in 1961. Before he moved into it, "the old Cilley Shop" had become a residence.) After Town & Country moved to Swedesford Road, Wolfe's Music Store occupied the store for a while. An art gallery opened there just this spring.

The saddle shop has been in the next building for about twenty years now. In the mid-1960s it was a delicatessen, and before that the Colonial Luncheonette was located there. And, next to the east, the tailor shop of Gino Bruni, and before him his uncle Philip Bruni, has been a part of Paoli sonce 1921.

The annex to the Meridian Bank, which also houses the Paoli Library, is, in contrast, only three years old. The annex is on the site of the former Fire House, erected in 1921 as the first "permanent" home of the then twelve-year old Paoli Fire Company. The architect for the building was E. Nelson Edwards, a resident of Paoli; at the laying of the cornerstone, the principal speaker was J. Hampton Moore, the mayor of Philadelphia. For several years after it was completed, its auditorium was also used for dances and socials and also as a motion picture theater, with movies presented every two weeks for the benefit of the Fire Company. After the new Fire House on Darby Road was built in 1977, the old building was torn down.

In addition to serving as the Fire House, the building on the pike also housed the post office for eight years, from 1921, when the post office was moved from the small building at the railroad station, until 1929. A news agency was also located there.

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The bank building, now the home of the Meridian Bank, was built in 1923 for the newly chartered Paoli National Bank. In 1957 the Paoli bank and the Berwyn National Bank merged to form the Upper Main Line National Bank, later to become the Community Bank & Trust Company, which, in 1952, in turn, was consolidated into Central Penn. Finally, in 1986 Central Penn became a part of Meridian Bank.

To the east of the bank, on the corner of the highway and Darby Road and now a part of the bank's parking lot, was the grocery and produce store of Francis Dixon. It carried a line of fine groceries, and its customers included many of the people who lived on the large estates and sent their chauffeurs to Dixon's to make their purchases. Before the building was razed to provide more parking space for the bank, it was a florist's shop.

On the north side of the pike, between the entry to the railroad station and the one-block Paoli Court, is the red-brick Gable Building, built in 1929. It was designed by Boyle Irwin and built by Lowell Gable. When it was completed, the post office was moved across the pike from the Fire House into the westernmost part of the new building. It remained there for more than a quarter century, until 1955 when more space was needed and it was moved to the old Ottey Garage.

When the post office moved out of the Gable Building, the interior of the building was remodeled and the Paoli News Agency moved into the center part, with various real estate and law offices occupying either end. A printing firm is now in the western portion, with a law office in the eastern part.

Across Paoli Court is a one-story red-brick building. It was completely remodeled in 1982 for the Marwyn Shoe store. Before that it had been a gasoline station, Freas' Esso station, which opened in the late 1920s or early 1930s. It was later operated by Al Pusey before it closed in the early 1980s. Before its move to this location, Marwyn's had been located in the Paoli Shopping Center.

On the east, where the parking lot for the Baptist Church is now located, was the residence and office of Dr. Robert Hughes. The house was built by his father in 1912, and was torn down in about 1976. Dr. Hughes, incidentally, owned one of the first automobiles in Paoli.

The church building was built in 1907, and was originally a Presbyterian Church. Fourteen years earlier the Trinity Presbyterian Church in Berwyn started a mission Sabbath School in Paoli, building a small chapel for it on Darby Road in 1893. When the Paoli Presbyterian Church was formed six years later, it continued to hold its services in the small chapel until 1907 when the church building "across the pike" was built. When the Presbyterian Church moved to its new location on South Valley Road in 1962, the old church building on Lancaster Avenue was sold to the Baptist Church. The residence to the east was originally the Presbyterian manse, but is now used as a church annex and nursery school.

Next to the east, the meat market has been in business, under different owners, since 1944. It was built in that year by Bob Funkhouser, on a vacant lot he purchased from the Dingee Estate the year before.

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It was originally called the Paoli Frozen Food Locker; the meat was purchased in quantity (by the quarter or half), with locker space provided to store it. In 1960 Funkhouser leased the operation to the Broome Brothers from Omaha, who ran it until the late 1970s, when it was bought by Ed Shaughnessy, who added a delicatessen. Shortly after he bought it he remodeled the building, adding the stucco front and two additional stores, now occupied by a picture framer and the PIP Printing shop.

The Paoli branch of the Main Line Federal Savings Bank, next on the east, opened in 1987. Before it was built, another gasoline station had been located there, and before that it was an open field and part of the Dingee Estate. The service station opened in 1951 when Cecil Cooksey moved his Atlantic gasoline station there from its previous location west of North Valley Road; when the station closed in 1983 it was operated by John Young, who later opened a beverage outlet in the Shopping Center.

The two-store stone building that is next, on the highway across from Chestnut Road, was built in 1958 after a fire destroyed the old inn that had been located there for 140 years. It was in 1818 that Henry Hamm was first granted a license to operate the General Jackson Tavern there; it was a stage coach inn, and a few years after it opened was also the meeting place of the local Paoli lodge of the Free and Accepted Masons. In the early 1830s, Randall Evans was the innkeeper. (He was the brother of Joshua Evans Jr., the innkeeper at the Paoli, and traditionally there was considerable sibling rivalrv between the two brothers and their taverns.) During the First World War, the Paoli branch of the American Red Cross was started in the old inn building, providing a canteen, reading room, and showers for the Marines stationed at Camp Fuller down in the Valley. The building also served as a hospital during the influenze epidemic of the winter of 1919-1920. After the lease of the Red Cross expired in 1929, it became a well-known and popular restaurant, known as the Windmill Tearoom. A fur shop and bridal salon now occupy the two stores that took its place; among the earlier tenants during the past thirty years were Ryner's Music store, a dress shop, Rubinstein's Stationery store, and a print shop, among others.

Returning to the south side of Lancaster Avenue, in the block between Darby Road and Chestnut Road were five Victorian-style residences until after the Second World War. The two on the east are still standing, but have been remodeled into stores and offices.

The old Baugh residence, at the corner of the pike and Darby Road, was the first to be torn down, in early 1946, for the Sunoco service station still at the corner. (Dr. Anthony Wayne Baugh, a physician for the Pennsylvania Railroad and also the school doctor for several school districts, including Tredyffrin, was a charter member of the Tredyffrin Easttown History Club.)

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Next is the Paoli branch of the Malvern Savings & Loan Association, which opened in the fall of 1967. The building, designed by Fridtjof Tobiessen, who lived in Easttown Township, was built on the eastern part of the old Baugh lot, which the Savings & Loan bought from the Sun Oil Company. (The company dates back more that 100 years, to when the Malvern & Duffryn Mawr Building & Loan was chartered in 1887; it took over the old Paoli Building & Loan Association in a merger in 1969.) Originally the two-story stone building also included five stores, running back from the pike, with offices on the second floor, but as the operation of the Savings & Loan expanded it took over the entire building. The residence next door on the east was torn down for parking space in the mid-1960s.

The next residence was replaced by a meat market in about 1966. The one-story building, back from the highway, has been vacant for about a year now.

Four years earlier the next residence was remodeled and became Pat Grosholz's dress shop, The Cocked Hat. A health food store is located in the rear of the building. The fifth building, at the corner of Chestnut Road, became Jane Beetem's Christmas Shop (it is now run by the Ericsons) in the fall of 1965, with the western half a doctor's office. Old maps indicate that in the early 1930s, the house had been the barracks of the Pennsylvania State Highway Patrol.

East of Chestnut Road on the north side of the pike, the section between the old General Jackson Inn and the Schofield Building at the intersection of the pike and Bear Hill Road was developed for the most part immediately after the end of the Second World War, although some of the buildings are of more recent vintage.

The Jiffy-Lube building, for example, is only three years old. It is on the site of the former used car lot of the Francis Motors automobile agency that was in the adjacent building to the east, now LaserLand. Immediately before the location was taken over by Jiffy-Lube it was a sales lot for used Avis rental cars.

The Francis Motors Company, a Plymouth-Dodge agency, built and moved into the adjacent building in 1946. It continued there until the late 1960s, when the building was purchased by Bob Graves and used for the rental operation of his Main Line Sales and Rental Company [see below]. It subsequently became a computer outlet, Computer Land, and is now a compact disc record and phonograph store named LaserLand.

The Home Appliance store farther to the east also opened in 1946 as the Home and Garden Equipment store. After it acquired a General Electric appliance franchise, in 1960, it became the Home Appliance store. The store manager was Jack Schulze Sr., and his son Jack is now the manager. A line of furniture was also added for a short time in the 1950s. The original building burned down in 1965, at which time the present building was erected to take its place.

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Between these two buildings is Main Line Tire & Service. This building was also built at about the same time, for Ralph McAllister's Tire store. He also did recapping, and bought old tires to be recapped for a dollar each. In 1949 the building was bought by Charles E. Hires Jr., with the tire business continued under the management of his son and Paul Kocher, under the name Hires & Kocher. When Kocher opened his own business on Plank Avenue in 1960, Hires stayed in business for a few more years and then sold the building to Bob Graves for his Main Line Sales & Rental company. For the past several years it has again been a tire store.

Next to it is another old residence remodeled for commercial use, now a catering service and a tailor shop.

The real estate office to the east of the Home Appliance store opened as Andrews & Pinkstone in about 1974. After it merged with Weichert Realtors later on, the building was remodeled extensively and enlarged. Before it was made over into a real estate office, it had been the office and warehouse of the Paoli Beverage Company, beginning in 1969, and before that it had been another Texaco gasoline station.

The pizza parlor next door opened in the early 1980s. It was preceded in this location by a doughnut shop.

South of the highway, except for the "seven sisters", as the seven houses along the east side of Chestnut Road are sometimes referred to, the land to the east of Chestnut Road in the late 1940s and early 1950s was just an over-grown field, the remnants of the old Dingee farm and the Tredyffrin Country Club.

The Tredyffrin Country Club was organized in 1917, and its golf course opened the following year. While most of the course lay to the east of Leopard Road, between Paoli and Daylesford, the last four holes, tennis courts, and club house were on the west side of Leopard Road. The 18-hole course was designed by Alex Finley (he has been described as the "father of golf in this country") and the men's course record was set in 1923 by Bobby Jones. A casualty of the Second World War, the club was disbanded in 1944; all that remains to remind us of it now are a few street names — Golf Course Lane, Fairway Drive — in the development that took its place. The club house was a remodeled old barn. A few years after the club closed, it became a restaurant when Paul Ferrari opened the Paoli Inn there in 1950. It was later torn down and replaced, first by a Thriftway market, and then by the Pep Boys store which opened about six years ago.

Another old barn, the sheep barn of the Dingee farm, was located at the southeast corner of Chestnut Road and the pike. In early 1956 it was torn down and replaced by another gasoline station when the DiAntonio brothers opened a Gulf service station there. (With the number of gas stations that eventually opened in Paoli, Dingee and Biddle must have frequently turned in their graves! Today there are almost as many banks in Paoli as there were gasoline stations thirty-five years or so ago.)

Three years earlier Paoli Markets, Inc., a corporation controlled by the John J. Mailey family, had bought most of the remaining ground to the east. A tract of this land was sold to the American Stores Company in 1953, and in the following year it relocated its store from the site next to the Wedge Building to the present location.

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The new Acme was more than three times the size of the previous store, and when it opened in 1954 it was said to be the largest Acme market in the East. (During the years that the store participated in a savings stamp program — remember green stamps? — beginning in about 1971 the store was officially known as a "Supersaver" market, but reverted to the name Acme Market when this promotion program was discontinued in the early 1980s.)

The Acme Market was the first unit of the new Paoli Shopping Center that was being developed on the 11+-acre site by the firm of Mailey, Smyth, and Walton. It was the first "shopping center" on the upper Main Line. When it was first planned, it was announced that it would include a small department store, a bowling alley, and a motion picture theater, among its twenty-five proposed units.

The first five units running back from the pike along the east side of the Acme Market, and the Hardware Center, were opened shortly after the Acme. Additional units on either side of the Hardware Center, and running east and west parallel to the highway, were added in 1957 and 1958. A final group of stores along the east side of the parking lot were added a couple of years later. Much of the construction work on the project was done by Lowell Gable. Ten of the original stores were later damaged by fires in 1967 and 1970, but in each case they were quickly reconstructed. Among the early tenants still located in the Shopping Center, in addition to the Acme and Hardware Center, are the Paoli Center Pharmacy, the M-R Shop, Walter J. Cook's Jewelry store, Higgins' Bakery, and Suzanne's. Other early, and long-time, tenants of the center who are no longer there include Deever's Men's Store, Henry's Barber shop, Dick's Delicatessen, and Helen Ware's Children's Clothing store.

The Mobil service station, on the highway at the eastern end of the Shopping Center, opened at about the same time as the shopping center, in 1955.

Across the highway is a travel agency, in another remodeled old residence, and the Paoli Rug Company which also opened in about 1955.

At the corner is the old Schofield Building. Recently refurbished, it is the oldest building on the pike in Paoli. In the late 18th and early 19th century it was a general store and grocery, and for four years during President Cleveland's second administration, from 1893 to 1897, it was also the Paoli post office, with H. B. Schofield, the storekeeper, also the postmaster. More recently, in the 1940s and 1950s, it was a bar and restaurant, the Green Lantern. It has since been remodeled and converted into offices and apartments, and recently was renamed Paoli Corner.

Note: We welcome additional recollections — or corrections — about the changing face of Paoli for future issues of the Quarterly.