"There used to be businesses up and down the street," said Marybelle Sheasley of Kittanning Township, who with husband Bill collect old postcards displaying the roadway's colorful past.
"Market Street looks so different now if you stop and close your eyes and think of how it looked back then."
Bill Sheasley, 79, remembers times as a child in the 1930s when he could visit a bustling Market Street with his four brothers on a Saturday night, see a movie at Columbia Theater, have a hot dog to eat and a chocolate milk to drink for a grand total of 11 cents.
"Roy Rogers and Gene Autry visited once a year and all you needed was change," Sheasley said. "You couldn't do that today."
County historian Bill Mateer said the Columbia, Lyceum and State theaters offered a variety of entertainment in close proximity.
"The State Theater had your higher-classed, latest movies, the Columbia Theater was especially great for children on Saturday afternoon."
Today, Columbia Theater is still standing.
"There's a beauty shop in the back," Mateer said.
At Christmas time, Sheasley said his family would travel to Montgomery Wards at the corner of Market and South Water Streets where the Coin-Op Laundromat and parking lot are now. In that parking lot at the time was Esso Service Station.
"They had eight big reindeer with big horns on them, and they would all be running all through the store," Bill said.
Along with the major department store chains, Mateer, 80, said many other attractive businesses lined the street, like G.C. Murphy Co., and Brody's Ladies Apparel.
"That was one of the finest ladies apparel stores around," Mateer said.
Brody's was run by Joe and Rose Brody. Similar stores included Reisberg's Leader and The Arcade.
"The Arcade is where the Merchant's Bank is now. It was three or four stories of ladies' fashions," Mateer said.
That business, Mateer said, had a very unique way of collecting money for their retail wares.
"They did not have a cash register," said Mateer of the business where Merchant's Bank is today.
Instead, employees devised a system in which payments were placed into a small silver canister, which climbed small electric tracks to cashiers, who sat in a balcony up off the store's main floor.
"It was there that the sales slip was filled out, and then the canister was sent back down on the tracks with a receipt or change to the floor. This was so the people working directly with the customers did not handle money."
Bill Sheasley's mother, Julia Ann, began collecting greeting cards that today paint a rare collage of the buildings that once lined Market Street, along with several other streets in and outside the borough.
"She started collecting these things, and for a long time it was in a trunk down in the basement, and it was drawing damp so I brought them upstairs," Marybelle said.
The Woolworth 5 & 10 existed where Rosebud Mining Co. does business today, and Alan's Drug Store was located across the street where K-Town Subs currently resides.
"I think Rosebud kept some of the stuff from the drug store in there, like the little old stools," Marybelle said. "There was a little snack bar with wonderful sandwiches, a few booths. It was a nice gathering place."
Equipment left behind in the Rosebud building was actually used to create a diner in the building that served as a scene in "The Mothman Prophecies" in late 2002.
Market Street also came to know tragedy during its time of prime prosperity, as the Reynolds Hotel at the corner of Market and North Jefferson streets, which lined the street with the Steim and Alexander hotels, burned down in 1978. Three people died in the blaze.
Paul's Confectionary, a candy/ice cream shop and teenage hangout, was part of the building that was destroyed.
(Used with permission. Kittanning Leader Times, June 4, 2004)
two bakeries, a barber shop, seven restaurants, five ladies clothing shops, a laundromat, a beer garden, a candy/ice cream shop, the county's first jail, Montgomery Ward's and Sears department stores, streetcars, horse carriages, three shoe stores ... the list goes on.