Tube City Almanac

December 28, 2009

How Green's Was My Valley?

Category: History || By

(It's rerun time again! After all, it's the holidays. The following originally appeared in Tube City Almanac on May 25, 2005. --- Editor)

. . .




Old photo time at Tube City Almanac! By my recollection, 2005 marked the 20th anniversary of the demolition of the old H.L. Green Co. store at the corner of Fifth and Walnut in Downtown Our Fair City.

Green's was a chain of variety stores --- five-and-10s --- much in the manner of G.C. Murphy Co. or F.W. Woolworth Co. Founded by former auto company executive Harold L. Green, it arrived on the dime-store scene fairly late --- 1932. (Most of its competitors had roots that went back to the 19th century.)

Green's, therefore, was never one of the largest variety store companies, but it was very successful and profitable for a number of years, and it grew quickly by absorbing a number of other chains.

. . .

This made the demise of the H.L. Green Co. name all the more ironic. Green's, through a subsidiary, acquired a large share of stock in two of its competitors --- McCrory Stores and McClellan Stores.

Through a complicated series of stock swaps, all three chains wound up merging, but the McCrory Stores gained control of the operation. But Green's executives continued to rise to positions of prominence in the new organization, which for a short time was known as "McCrory-McLellan-Green." Indeed, one of the last presidents of McCrory Stores was a former H.L. Green store manager J. Philip Lux.

Besides being a leading executive in the retail business for many years, Lux was also a minor footnote to major American history; he was the manager of the Green's store in Dallas, Texas, in 1964, and was subpoenaed to testify before the Warren Commission that his store had not sold Lee Harvey Oswald the rifle used to shoot President Kennedy.

(Of note to McKeesporters: Lux also was the man who years later engineered the purchase of the G.C. Murphy Co. five-and-10s from Ames Department Stores in 1989, which led to the final closing of the Murphy office in Our Fair City.)

. . .

In any event, I don't have any idea when H.L. Green opened its first store in Our Fair City, but I've seen reference to an earlier "Metropolitan Store" being located Downtown, which was one of the chains that Green's purchased.

In the mid-1940s, the Green's store burned down. Green's then cleared several buildings on the north side of the 200 block of Fifth Avenue for one of the company's largest stores. It opened in 1949. (These photos are from a 1950 feature in the magazine Chain Store Age.)

The corner entrance was (naturally) at the corner of Fifth and Walnut. The long side of the store, with the display windows, was along Fifth Avenue, Our Fair City's main commercial thoroughfare for many years. At the time the store opened, the other corners would have been occupied by People's Union Bank, the then-closed White's Opera House, and First National Bank of McKeesport.

White's was torn down in the mid-1950s to make way for Cox's, which was itself torn down 40 years later.

. . .

Green's closed their McKeesport store in the early 1980s, and the property was sold and the relatively-new building was torn down so the lot could be used as a Sheetz convenience store. Sheetz didn't last long, selling the store to Belle Vernon's Guttman Oil Co. for use as a "CrossRoads" convenience store, which was transformed into a "GetGo" a few years ago. But when it first opened, many people considered Green's to be a nicer store inside than the G.C. Murphy store and the F.W. Woolworth in the next block!




Of course, I may be biased; my maternal grandmother was a longtime sales girl, assistant manager and floorwalker at H.L. Green's, retiring a short time before the store closed.






Your Comments are Welcome!

Green’s had a couple of stores in the DC area back in the day. IIRC, one was in downtown Silver Spring on Colesville Road, one of the two major shopping thoroughfares through town. When I was a little kid, I got confused as to why I couldn’t buy things with Green Stamps and H.L. Green’s. I got disabused of that notion pretty quickly. ;-)
ebtnut - December 29, 2009




I remember going with my mom – a G. C. Murphy secretary and later buyer – to Greens for ice cream. There were balloons strung horizontally all along and above the lunch counter. After you bought your banana split, you popped a balloon and a piece of paper with the price fell out, anything from “free” to full price.
Harry (URL) - January 03, 2010




I’m late to this entry, but it’s another reminder to me that America, like Pittsburgh and McKeesport, will never be the way it used to be. We have seen our best days and torn most of them down. When the last department store in downtown Pittsburgh goes — and that can’t be too far off — it truly will be the end.
Seeing Eye - January 04, 2010




Nothing personal, but it’s phrases like “our best days are behind us” that make it so. After all, we are using a technology that didn’t exist 10 years ago to talk about the subject. It may not be as warm and fuzzy as “the good old days”, but the good old days were just old…and mostly not all that good.
Dan - January 13, 2010




I worked as stock clerk and then Ass’t Manager Trainee at the McKeesport HL Greens from 1961 to 1962 after getting out of the Navy, I have many fond memories of the store and remember a number of times when we employees would go on picnics at Keystone Park. I would love to get in touch with other friends I worked with then. I now live in Mesa, AZ.
George DeVirgilio (URL) - February 11, 2010




I worked downstairs at Green’s. At Easter time different colored baby chicks were sold in the pet department.I worked there 1972-73 when I was 18 yrs old. Mr Mac was my manager.
Christmas time , Santa gave really nice gifts to kids from our toy department. I wrapped the gifts. My uncle moonlighted there as security, he was a McKeesport policeman. Green’s was a nice place to work.
Nancy Solomon - January 26, 2011




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