Originally a harness shop and piano store, this yellow brick building with a white brick front at 18 Chambers Street was built in 1927 by Conrad Wagner, an early resident of Bradford. The name “Wagner” appears on the top front face of the building.
Wagner, born in Germany in 1849, immigrated to the United States in 1859. He specialized in making and repairing harnesses for horses; later, as the automobile replaced the horse, he repaired automobile curtains as well.
His original shop on Kennedy Street was burned in the great City Hall fire of November 1901, and he moved his business to Chestnut Street. In 1927, at the age of 78, he erected this building on Chambers Street, sharing the space with the North Piano Company.
He was one of the best harness makers in the city. In 1928, the Bradford Era wrote “A better harness-maker than Mr. Wagner of this shop doesn’t walk the streets of your town. He began by treating the people right — and he has kept it up ever since. He manufactures his harnesses out of the best leather and those who have used it will tell you that it is better than the ordinary or mail order kind. Wagner’s Harness Shop carries a stock of harnesses, whips, robes, blankets; in fact, everything for the horse or his rider or driver. There is not a soul in this community who is not his booster.”
Wagner died in 1932, at the age of 82 and the building was put up for sale. Not long afterward, two enterprising people, Frank G. Covine and Ethel B. Marsh, both former dry cleaners with 25 years’ experience at another Bradford cleaning establishment, Paris Cleaners, purchased the building, operating Thrifty Cleaners. Their slogan “It Pays to Be Thrifty” was an apt catchword for any business during the Depression, promising ‘high-grade cleaning, pressing and dyeing.” The cost was 65 cents.
Frank Covine died in 1958; Ethel Marsh died in 1984. The dry cleaning aspect of Thrifty Cleaners closed several years ago, but one man, Benny Nuzzo, continues as the tailor of Chambers Street. He retires on Jan. 20, after 40 years.
