The Foster / Gentzel Building

Built in 1894, the Foster Building, later the Gentzel Building, was State College's first apartment building and is credited as the first property to change from a wooden sidewalk to a concrete one. Its commercial space housed the first post office in its own quarters, the first store devoted to children's clothing, and the oldest continuously operating bar. Known as Foster's Corner, it offered four apartments to State College families at a time when rentals had previously been in private homes. At the front of William LeFevre Foster's building were his general merchandise store and the post office, which received incoming mail from the railroad station in Lemont by wagon. In 1913, Will Foster sold the building to Perry Homer Gentzel. From 1929 to 1967, the post office space was occupied by The Children's Shop, opened by Myra S. Breon and owned for 36 of those years by Verda and Ross Edminston. Pennshire Clothes, managed for many years by Les Pooler, remained there until 1984, and the Kids Clothesline opened in 1985. Around 1930, the Foster store location became Pop and Viola Flood's Campus Green Room; below it, in 1933, was the Green Room Rathskeller and Gardens, later C.C. Doggie Alexander's All-American Campus Restaurant from 1946 to 1973. The Old Main Restaurant followed, and Spats Cafe and Speakeasy opened in 1987. The upstairs apartments are still rented.

State College, Pennsylvania · United States