Allen's or Allen's department store, a.k.a. George Allen, Inc., was a large store in
Center City, Philadelphia
Center City includes the central business district and central neighborhoods of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It comprises the area that made up the City of Philadelphia prior to the Act of Consolidation, 1854, which extended the ci ...
for women's clothing and accessories. It opened at 326 High Street in 1837 and moved to 1214
Chestnut Street in 1896. In 1927 it opened a full three-story, department store at Chelten Avenue and Greene Street in
Germantown, an early suburban area within the city limits. The area around Germantown and Chelten avenues became a busy suburban shopping district attracting shoppers from the northwestern part of the city and from
Montgomery County. This was one of the first suburban branches of a downtown department store in the United States, though it was not as early as
B. Nugent & Brother of
St. Louis which had done so in 1913. The Center City store closed in 1959 and the Germantown store closed in 1979.
References
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Defunct department stores based in Philadelphia
Germantown, Philadelphia