Bloom Brothers Department Stores

The Old Reliable Dry Goods Store, Conn and Bloom, Proprietors, opened on April 24, 1897, at 84 South Main Street in downtown Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.

Having grown too large for its inaugural space, the Chambersburg store moved in April 1903 to its second location at 83 South Main Street on the northwest corner of Main and Queen,[13] where the company began a tradition of offering seven departments of wares to the public: dry goods, men's furnishings (including shoes), millinery, clothing, china, household furnishings, and carpets.

[14] Thanks to the company's aggressive discounting, the frugal farmers and merchants of the surrounding Pennsylvania and Maryland countryside, many of them Amish and Mennonite, crowded Bloom Brothers' aisles every Saturday, and the Waynesboro store, having outgrown the first floor of the Old Town Hall, moved to a double-storefront at 23-25 West Main Street in March 1903 (see pictures), where it would remain for the duration of its existence.

[10] Then in 1939, the store moved to its final location in the Keefer Building on the southeast corner of Queen and South Main, occupying three even larger floors.

[23] Isaac H. Bloom, childless and gifted with seemingly boundless energy, divided his time from 1912 until 1926 between the stores and a newly founded national bank.

[25] In 1929, the bank moved permanently to a storefront on downtown's North Avenue Baltimore[26] and remained there until Isaac Bloom's death in June 1955, meeting once a week on Thursday evenings to review loan applications.