In 1847, Jacob and Michael B. Holman founded a mercantile business in Liverpool, Pennsylvania, on the Kerstetter property on Front Street. Michael soon left the partnership, and Jacob later brought his sons Park and William into the business. After the 1873 fire destroyed a block on both Front and Market Streets, the Holmans purchased 101-103 South Market Street from George Cary Tharp, built the present building, and opened a new store in January 1875. Tharp, a prominent businessman, justice of the peace, and poet, had a family store at that location for more than a generation before it was destroyed in the fire. In the 1890s, as many as nineteen teams of horses tied up in front of the store, and during holidays as many as seven clerks served shoppers. Customers were also drawn by a barrel of whisky from which they could help themselves to a free drink. For decades the business prospered and became one of the leading enterprises in the community. When the brothers retired in 1930, Weis Pure Food Markets leased the property and operated a grocery business there until 1951. In the post-World War Two era, business models shifted from clerk-serviced stores to self-service supermarkets, and after successor grocers the store closed permanently in the late 1950s. In 1971, Walter C. and Donna Willow purchased the structure and, recognizing the need for affordable housing, Walter and his son Steve remodeled it into seven residential apartments. In 1989, Steve and Carol Willow purchased the building, and after further maintenance in 2013 by Carol Willow Eckenrode, the stately edifice continued to anchor Liverpool Square as a nineteenth-century Victorian presence in the twenty-first century.