3200 N 2nd St, Harrisburg, PA

Original Grocery Tenant: Miles D. Fry
Address: 3200 N 2nd St, Harrisburg, PA

Opened: by 1921

Closed: by 1925

Later Tenants: assorted independent grocers
Photographed: August 14, 2022

While walking around uptown Harrisburg, I spotted this house with the telltale box built out of the side of it. This is a classic design for old grocery stores, primarily built from around 1900-1930, as the owner of the grocery store would also own (and live in) the attached house, or sometimes house with apartments rented out. While this was not a grocery store in any recent history, it was in fact a grocery store in the 1920s. Between 1921 (the earliest record I can find online of this address) and 1925, it was owned by Miles D. Fry, then R.E. Hoverter in 1925. By 1930, the space had been taken over by Harry Loper, who ran a pharmacy at the corner store. (In 1932, the attached house advertised an apartment for rent.) And as recently as 2014, the remnants of a Family Pharmacy sign were still visible on the post outside the house, although the pharmacy has been closed for a long time (and the sign has since been removed and replaced with a blank white panel).

Uptown Harrisburg has very few supermarkets, but there used to be quite a few more around this part of the city. Tomorrow we're headed to The Market Report to see a small supermarket about a mile south towards downtown!