Wednesday, August 2, 2023

The Haines Shoe House, Hellam Township, York County

I'm a day late and a dollar short, but I did finally remember to get the August newsletter up and out! Subscribers, be sure to check your email. If you're not a subscriber, get on that you can click here and read it.

Last week I shared with you my adventures with bff Andrea as we attended the marker dedication for the Haines Shoe House in York County. As promised, now I'm going to tell you about the house itself.

So the man behind this curious vision was Mahlon Haines, known as "the Shoe Wizard." Who called him that? Himself, mostly. 

He was born in Ohio on March 5, 1875, and his birth name was actually John Nathaniel Haines. However, his father died before he was a year old, so his mother had his name legally changed to be Mahlon Junior in her husband's memory. Elizabeth Ann Morrison Haines was a powerful entrepreneur; she moved her family to Washington, D.C. and purchased a store, where her son worked for most of his youth. This paid for his college education, and while he was at what is now the University of Maryland, Elizabeth bought a bigger department store and advertised it as "the largest store in the world, built, owned, and controlled by a woman." (An ad for the store can still be seen in the rec room of the Shoe House today.)

After spending a few years in California working as a clothing store sales rep, Mahlon moved back to Ohio. He was engaged to be married, but the relationship ended before it reached the altar. So he hopped on his bicycle and started pedaling his way back to his mother in Washington, but the bike broke down in York. The year was 1905 and he was thirty years old. He hocked his ex's ring and used the money to buy ten pairs of shoes, which he then sold at a profit. This enabled him to rent an apartment on Market Street in York. Although his first business venture bankrupted him, his second - again, selling shoes - took off like gangbusters, in part thanks to Mahlon's gift for gimmicky sales pitches. By 1922 he owned thirty successful stores, and by 1931, Haines was the largest shoe store chain in the entire country. He was, indeed, the Shoe Wizard.

As much money as he brought in, our friend Mahlon had a tendency to give it away. He donated land for a fire company, and offered free land plots to homeless citizens of York after the Great Depression. He gave generously to organizations like the Boy Scouts, and often provided free entertainment venues for the public. But it was in 1948 when he pulled off his most enduring shoe wizardry, and that of course was the Shoe House. The Lincoln Highway, the country's first transcontinental road, had been established in 1913 and stretched from New York to San Francisco. Part of it ran through York, and Mahlon had the idea to create something eye-catching that would be seen by those driving past and tell them about his shoe stores.

The story goes that Mahlon handed one of his shoes to architect Fred J. Rempp and said, "Build me a house that looks like this." And he did. The original blueprints can still be viewed on the house's official website. It features a living room in the toe, a little kitchen in the heel, and three bedrooms. The topmost bedroom was shared by the house's live-in maid and female chauffeur. Custom windows featuring shoes (and one featuring a portrait of Mahlon) were done by a local stained glass company. On the roof is an outdoor seating area, and fire escapes were added in the 1960s. A matching doghouse was built next to the structure for Countess, Mahlon's Great Dane, who would keep visitors company.

Once it was completed, Mahlon began providing free weekends in the house to senior couples and honeymooners who were affiliated in some way with his shoe stores. Sometimes these were the winners of giveaways at his stores; one winner in particular received an entire week at the house, all expenses paid, including a free pair of shoes.

Mahlon's first wife June, the mother of his three children, died in 1951. He remarried six years later, and he and his second wife Grace eventually built a home across from the Shoe House. He died on October 31, 1962, and is buried in York's Longstown United Methodist Cemetery in a family plot with June and their children. His obituary called him "York's most colorful and certainly its best publicized citizen".

Following the Shoe Wizard's death, the house passed through several hands. I promise there will not be a test on this. First, the house was given to his employees, but they sold it two years later to a dentist. Over the next twenty-odd years it served as a combination museum and ice cream parlor, with tours being given of the house and the ice cream being sold in the instep (which had previously been a parking garage). In 1987, one of Mahlon's grandchildren, Annie Haines Keller, bought the house back and renovated it. She kept it until about 1995, but found herself unable to maintain it any longer and sold it to Charles and Ruth Miller. They continued providing tours for the next eight years, then sold it to Ronald and Colleen Farabaugh, who gave it fresh paint and some light renovations, then in 2015 sold it to Jeff and Melanie Schmuck. After Melanie died in 2019, Jeff sold the property to Waylon and Naomi Brown, the current owners, who rent it out for short term stays.

The house is iconic for two reasons. One is its association with the Lincoln Highway; since it was first built, it has been a landmark, delighting those traveling the highway in both directions. The other is the fact that it's an incredible example of something called programmatic architecture, also called novelty architecture. This is when a building is designed to look like something very un-building-like, such as an animal, a statue, a piece of fruit, or - yes - a shoe. As such a distinctive icon, it's been featured on a number of television programs, including The Amazing Race in 2005 and What's With That House? in 2007. It's also one of the locations featured in the 2022 board game Zillionaires: Road Trip USA. Although tours are no longer available, you can see the inside in countless pictures around the web - or by renting the place for a weekend through the official website. It's a truly one-of-a-kind place to stay.

As a final note, my new friend Tom Davidson, who got the house its historical marker, asked me to share with my readers that the Pennsylvania chapter of the Lincoln Highway Association has another event coming up at the end of August. Everyone is welcome to attend the "Retro Reunion" in Bedford County from Friday, August 25th to Sunday, August 27th. Details can be found on their Facebook page - just click here.


Sources and Further Reading:


Stuff That's Gone Channel. "Haines Shoe House York PA historical marker dedication and additional sites." YouTube video, July 19, 2023.


The Haines Shoe House at the Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress



Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.

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