A Glimpse of Swarthmore’s History: Shirer Building Wrecked!

The “Drug Store and Bank” post card is from around 1908. Photo courtesy of Bill Thomas

Victor Shirer was born in Lehigh County in 1869, and he graduated from the College of Pharmacy in Philadelphia. He came to Swarthmore in the 1890s and managed the drugstore owned by Dr. Alexander R. Morton, which was located in the Hall Building at the southeast corner of Park Avenue and Chester Road. The brick building housed several businesses, and preceded the present storefronts and apartments. Shirer bought Dr. Morton’s business in 1900 and renamed it the Swarthmore Pharmacy. In 1904, Shirer purchased a building lot just a bit south on Chester Road, next to where a bank was being constructed at the corner of Rutgers Avenue. He hired Del Lewis to build a new drugstore with apartments above. The building was oddly asymmetrical, but it was all Shirer could afford at the time. It was finally expanded to its present extent in 1910.

The first floor businesses included Shirer’s Drug Store, a meat market, dry goods store, hairdresser, music store, and the post office. Before dedicated fraternity houses were built on Swarthmore College’s campus, the men’s fraternities were renting meeting rooms in the old borough hall and also at 13 S. Chester Road. After the Shirer Building was completed, Phi Delta Theta rented an apartment above the post office. Young men being what they are, someone’s “indiscrete disposal of a lighted cigarette among papers on the floor [The Swarthmore News, Dec. 19, 1919]” of the fraternity’s apartment started a fire in the early hours of Thursday, December 11, 1919.

Around 1:30 a.m., the Pennsylvania Railroad’s night watchman at the station saw flames through the second floor windows at the south end of the Shirer Building. He could not leave his post, so he fired his revolver to sound the alarm. The shots woke Mrs. Winter, who owned Booth’s Restaurant next door at 15 S. Chester Road, and she called the fire department. The Swarthmore men quickly arrived, but the fire was well advanced and additional help was summoned from Ridley Park, Media, Darby No. 1, Lansdowne, and the Hanley Hose and Goodwill companies in Chester.

All of the tenants were safely evacuated, but the firemen were hampered by ice on their ladders, and by the situation of the couplings on Media’s pumper not being compatible with the hoses from other companies. Seven firemen, including four from Swarthmore, were injured when the roof and third floor collapsed. They were treated at the scene by Dr. Roxby, who ran over from his home on Cornell Avenue.

Mrs. Winter and her husband Jack kept the firemen supplied with hot coffee throughout the freezing night. By dawn the flames had finally been put out and everyone left, but hot embers reignited and the Swarthmore men had to return at 10 a.m. to do a final extinguishment.

The south end of the Shirer Building is shown later the same day as the fire, December 11, 1919. Photo courtesy of Bill Thomas

The roof was gone and the top two floors were wrecked, while the first floor businesses lost nearly all their Christmas inventory due to smoke and water damage. Vic Shirer’s loss on the building and his drugstore was estimated at $25,000, but the other shops were able to temporarily reopen at other locations. Fred Pine arrived to find all his meats “smoked,” and his Sanitary Meat Market moved to the big display window at the Swarthmore Garage on Dartmouth Avenue. Clara Marsh’s Utility Shop moved to one side of the Marot Flower Shop at 415 Dartmouth, and Mae Jeffery somehow squeezed her hair and manicure business into Booth’s Restaurant. Jane Wilson’s music store lost its grand piano and a large quantity of sheet music. In the post office, however, the mail and equipment were saved and postal operations moved to the auditorium in borough hall.

The reconstruction of the Shirer Building was completed in March 1920. Shirer’s Drug Store now had a larger display window, eight new apartments, and at the back of the property was the “finest...and most attractive garage in Swarthmore.” 

—BL

Present-era photo from 2015.