By the early 1870s, the company store at the Bird Mansion had outgrown its space, so the Brooke interest, which had taken over the local iron business, authorized construction of a larger building on the southwest corner of Mill and Main Streets. The new structure, known as the Mercantile, was ready for occupancy in 1876 as a two-story building, but fire swept through the first floor on opening day. After rebuilding, the Brookes added a third floor, moved the company business to a site near the canal locks on Main Street, and leased the rebuilt first-floor retail area to George W. Hain, a Civil War veteran who operated a profitable general store and grocery there. Hain was politically active, helped develop properties on the south side of East Main Street near the Hay Creek Bridge, and in 1873 became the community's first elected burgess. In 1888, the First National Bank of Birdsboro opened an office in the southern half of the Mercantile, then moved into a new adjacent bank building in 1901 before returning to the Mercantile in 1967; through mergers, it became M&T Bank in 2001. Around the turn of the century, Hain's retail business was sold to the Miller brothers and later became affiliated with American Stores, Inc., whose local branch took over the large grocery in 1915 and operated it under a corporate retail system that used bulk purchasing, extensive advertising and distribution, and cashiers at exit booths rather than clerks handling final payment; that enterprise closed in 1958. Over the years, the Mercantile also housed other businesses, including the Conestoga Telephone Exchange around 1904, a meeting hall for the Birdsboro Masonic Lodge, established in 1870, and in the early 1960s Mirawall, a division of Birdsboro Steel.