Recently in shoes Category

One hundred years ago stylish shoes were just as important as they are today. A large illustrated ad for the B.A. Shorb Shoe Co., 24 West Market Street, appeared in the York Gazette in the fall of 1907.

Good leather shoes were a substantial investment. No cheap plastic--oops, “man-made material” was available. Featured footwear for both ladies and men ran up to $5 per pair. The average wage of household bread winner in 1907 probably wasn’t more than

That’s what the York County Shopping Center (now York Marketplace) on East Market Street was offering in celebration of its Second Anniversary fifty years ago.

Does anyone know who won the brand new 1958 rear-engine Renault Dauphine automobile? It was a 4-door, 4-passenger sedan and you could enter the giveaway every time you visited the shopping center that October. It was a reasonably priced car (around $1,650) and reportedly got over 39 mpg. But, who cared in those cheap-gas days?

You can get a good idea of the cost of living in 1957 by comparing the following specials offered by other York County Shopping Center merchants:

50 years ago, in 1957, Lawrence B. Sheppard, President of Hanover Shoe Company, opposed a Hanover council proposal to limit parking on Carlisle Street from Park Avenue to Library Place to three-hours. Mr. Sheppard warned that such an ordinance “... would force the factory owners to move from the community.” The regulation, which had been proposed to provide more parking for shoppers, was then tabled. However the parking regulations played out, the shoe company continued to prosper in Hanover.

Sheppard was the son of Harper D. Sheppard, who, with his partner Clinton N. Myers, built a struggling shoe factory into a nationally-known maker of quality shoes. The web site of the Sheppard Mansion, an inn and fine dining establishment opened in 1998 by Sheppard descendants, states that Sheppard and Myers built their shoe empire on selling the best possible shoes for one price ($2.50 in 1899) and by selling directly to the public.