North Centre Street

Here is the commercial heart of Pottsville, anchored at Race Street by John Fraser's corbeled former Female Grammar School (1863), now the home of the Historical Society of Schuylkill County. The Majestic Theatre (1910), at 209 N. Centre Street, an early design of Shamokin-born theater master William H. Lee, has been restored. The Schuylkill Trust Company (1923, Mowbray and Uffinger) at the corner of W. Norwegian Street is a typical small-town “skyscraper,” with six stories of offices above a banking hall. The blocks between Market and Mahantongo streets have several elegant commercial buildings designed by Pottsville's architect Frank X. Reilly. Each is a different composition of terra-cotta, stone, and ornamental glass. Among them are the Yeager Building (1898) at 20 N. Centre, the Green's Jewelry building (1896) at 8 S. Centre, the Miller and Miller Building (1917) at 9–11 S. Centre, and the William C. Cowen Drugstore (1915) at 13 S. Centre Street. Reilly's Union National Bank (1912) at the corner of Mahantongo embodies the heavier classicism favored by Reilly for his bank commissions. Nearby, at 2nd and Market streets, Reilly designed the narrow elevation of the Lee Building (1910), a brick and terra-cotta picture frame surrounding three stories of bay and Chicago windows.