Mount Union borough

Dave Saxe Breaks Ground, 1915

On November 6, 1915, the Mount Union column of the Harrisburg Telegraph reported that Dave Saxe had bought the lot next to the Beers Hotel, 40 by 50 feet, for $8,000, and that a large force of men had gone to work that day digging a foundation. The hotel is gone now. The National Register nomination for the Mount Union Historic District places it at the northwest corner of Shirley and Jefferson streets.

He planned a three-story building, with the first floor kept for his own "modern clothing and ladies' furnishing store."

A month later, on December 4, the same column said Saxe had been in New York City "in the interest of his new store," and that a clerk had taken a position in "the Saxe department store." It did not say where that store was, or whether it was already open.

On March 6, 1916, a classified ad in the Telegraph offered a storeroom for rent, "suitable for high-class restaurant, confectionary, fruit, groceries, or millinery store," with inquiries to Dave Saxe at Mt. Union. The ad did not name the building.

By that fall the paper was writing of "the new Saxe building." On November 2, 1916, it reported that a hall had been secured there for a lodge of Masons soon to be organized in Mt. Union. Two days later its Mount Union column said a dance would be held soon in "the Dave Saxe new hall" for the benefit of the war sufferers.

In June 1917, when the businessmen of Mount Union met in the high school auditorium and formed an organization, Dave Saxe was among the directors chosen. In December 1936, the Democratic Watchman of Bellefonte listed Dave Saxe of Mount Union on the nominating committee of the Juniata Council, Boy Scouts of America.

Checked against the record. We read each of these newspaper items on the page image in the Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive, and the hotel's location in the National Register nomination. The November 1915 notice prints "adjourning," which we read as adjoining. The December 1915 item calls him David Saxe and the others call him Dave. We take them to be one man, including the Dave Saxe of 1936. We also take the new Saxe building of November 1916 to be the building begun in November 1915, and the new hall to be in it, but no notice we read says so outright. Still open: when the store opened, and whether Saxe was already in business in Mount Union before the new building, since the paper names a Saxe department store only a month after the digging began. The notice does not say which side of the hotel the lot was on or what street it faced, and the 1916 ad does not say where the storeroom was. We did not see the Mount Union papers of these years, which are not in the online archives we use, or the deed for the lot. We have not confirmed the store's later addresses or its later history, so they are not told here.

Sources

Checked 2026-11-01 · Primary sources and the Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive

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