In the early 1900s, civic and business leaders in Red Lion believed the borough needed to reinvent itself.
Or at least diversify the work that Red Lion residents did with their skilled hands.
Cigarmaking had marked the town as a transportation hub, attracting highway traffic, filling freight cars on the Maryland & Pennsylvania Railroad and bringing workers to town via electrified trolleys.
But the ups and downs of the cigarmaking industry presented an uneven life for the town and its families.
Women made up the largest part of the cigar rollers. So town leaders sought -- and found -- an industry that would employ men. The making of furniture soon joined the rolling of cigars in the borough.
"Thus, the members of a family would be able to engage in various occupations," a 1930 Red Lion history states, "and become less dependent upon one industry in their earnings and sustenance."
Harry E. Craley is credited with bringing the first such woodworking factory to town, aptly named the Red Lion Furniture Co. in 1907.
A moment in York County history influenced his style of furniture. Craley was a student of the American Revolution, another chapter in York County's history in which the nation's founders met here for nine months in 1777 to 1778.
The first Red Lion furniture-maker, thus, rooted and grounded his work in York County's story. As we shall see, York County's culinaryhistory would inform another entrepreneur in Red Lion a century later.
Significantly, Red Lion Table Co. followed soon afterward, and Ebert Furniture became an able and handy newcomer to Red Lion, moving operations from Philadelphia to the borough before World War I. The Red Lion Cabinet Co. and the York County Chair Co. and others followed.
By 1930, the "captains of industry," as the history calls them, believed that furniture-making would increase with every succeeding year, and the time would come that it would equal or surpass cigarmaking in importance to the community.
Their prediction was accurate.
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About a century after Harry Craley started making furniture in Red Lion, the last cigar was rolled in the borough.
G.W. Van Slyke & Horton, maker of Booger Hollow Stogies, Spanish Maid Crooks and other brands with intriguing names, shut down in 2011. Actually, cigarmaking had waned in Red Lion and elsewhere in York County for decades as cigarettes gained popularity in the World War I era.
The year 2011 proved to be significant in Red Lion for a second reason. One of the borough's longtime furnituremakers, Yorktowne Cabinets, closed its manufacturing operations. Interestingly, part of Yorktowne's decadeslong operations in Red Lion were centered in a former cigarmaking factory.
That meant that large-scale furniture-making in Red Lion had continued along the downward path of the long-closed Ebert Furniture and Red Lion Table companies. A decade later -- in the 2020s -- those two cavernous complexes would gain another life.
In one year, the making of cigars and furniture that had sustained the borough for more than a century received an economic blow.
Still, much community goodness remained: the work ethic and creativity of its workers, a strong sense of place (Red Lion appears in the name of at least eight community-wide Facebook sites) and a geographic location that had long blessed the borough.
It didn't take long for Red Lion to find a new path. Instead of a focus on making things, the town turned to providing hospitality and related services to residents and out of towners who also found the walkable borough compelling.
A splash pad, one of only about two or three such water features in the county, opened in Fairmount Park, itself one of the most engaging municipal green spaces in the region.
One of the most extensive adventure playgrounds in any borough in York County sprawls on the same hilltop near the splash pad.
And across the way from these two attractions for children, a newly renovated and enlarged Kaltreider-Benfer Library welcomes a steady parade of patrons of all ages visit at a rate of 130,000 library users a year. The library named after Red Lion's Kaltreider cigarmaking family, moved to the hilltop in 2000.
Down the hill, two pair of coffeehouses with next-door brewpubs opened: Phat Cat and Sign of the Horse on Main Street and Grounding and Black Cap Brewing Co. on Franklin Street. Both combinations are places of conversation and community.
In nearby Cape Horn, aka East Yoe, the colorfully named Double Barrel Roadhouse is a live music venue and hosts trivia tournaments and other live events.
Its owners not convinced that the Red Lion area was caffeinated enough, a stand was delivered to a Cape Horn shopping center, with two busy drive-thru lanes and a walk-up window. It's one of two coffee kiosks branded 7 Brew in Pennsylvania.
Further, a longtime downtown Red Lion funeral home, Wagner-Elfner and Burg, will relocate to the Cape Horn area, headed by a funeral director who is working to enlighten the public about the mysteries of her business. Katharine Wagner-Elfner produces short Facebook videos explaining coffin keys, an evening in the life of a mortician and other underexplored topics.
Back in town where many of the legacy industries once operated, boarded storefronts never overtook Red Lion's Main Street, and the downtown has built on this to generate as much energy as any small town in York County.
For example, Tom's Music Trade, with its vinyl, CDs, cassettes and other music-related memorabilia, has long been a destination for music lovers.
Bonkey's, popular in New Freedom, opened an ice cream parlor in a former residence for those with sweet teeth to drive to or to treat walkers coming off the nearby Red Lion Mile or Ma & Pa Community Greenway. That rail trail runs on the former Ma & Pa Railroad right of way, extended recently to measure 1.4 miles.
Across Main Street from Bonkey's, the Red Lion Area Historical Society holds a collection covering railroads, cigarmaking and other key parts of the borough's rich history in the former Ma & Pa train station. A detailed model railroad operates in the rear of the museum.
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Some of the change in the Red Lion area comes from the availability of space attractive for reuse. Thus, the Great American Saloon, surely one of the region's most popular eateries, operates in an old dairy. Artemis Venues, an attractive event site, uses space in a former cigar factory.
And importantly, apartments in the former Ebert Furniture building were constructed in the North Franklin Street complex that once touted its 3-acre footprint. The same developer, Jordan Ilyes, converted the former Red Lion Table Co., across the Red Lion Mile, into apartments.
These Franklin District residential complexes are already filled, occupied by many young adults.
This adaptive reuse covers some of Red Lion's best assets, past and present: residential complexes with parking, a location far enough from Interstate 83 that translates to reasonable rental rates and a proximity to population centers in southeastern York County and East York.
To run order through some of this change, community-focused Red Lion Roars has formed at a time when civic clubs elsewhere are searching for members.
Perhaps that connectivity comes from the breadth of this non-profit group's goals, reflecting the vibe in the town today. Its website gives this mission: "Developing and expanding opportunities for recreation, arts, music, special events and cultural experiences for all."
The art part is evident by sprawling murals on main streets and lesser-traveled alleys.
That inclusive last part, "for all," has challenged the community in the past.
In a dark moment a century ago, many York County towns embraced Ku Klux Klan chapters, with their animus toward Black people and Roman Catholics. In 1927, as one example, the Ku Klux Klan scheduled a demonstration on the Lincoln Fraternity's farm after a parade. As part of the event, classes of candidates would be naturalized into the Klan.
The Lincoln Society sold its property to a group that established the Red Lion Country Club in 1937.
Indeed, Red Lion stood apart from other communities in pridefully including such troubling exclusionary views in their history books.
For example, the 1930 Red Lion history attributed its cigar rolling prowess, in part, to this: "The labor in the cigar factories of Red Lion is strictly native American and all white."
Fifty years later, a Red Lion history unsuccessfully attempted to clean this up: "The laborers in the cigar factories of Red Lion were all native America." Those histories, thus reinforced the flawed and long-held notion that a town without ethnic or racial diversity is all the stronger for it.
Interestingly, the splash pad and the nearby Fairmount playground provide gathering sites for youngsters of all races. These offer recreational opportunities for a changing population. In 2010, people of color in Red Lion stood at 5%. In 2020, that population more than doubled, coming in at 13%.
One must lament that even with Red Lion's economic successes -- 95% homeownership in the 1920s -- that the community missed an opportunity to reach its full potential because it fought against ethnic and racial diversity.
Perhaps when a borough history is written in 2030 -- Red Lion's 150th anniversary -- a reworded sentence would acknowledge this past error and capture the contributions spawned by such diversity growing in the borough today.
This decade, various lines in the Red Lion service industry have replaced the rollers of memorably named cigars and finely constructed cathedral radio cabinets.
And no new place illustrates this more than the Franklin Street Social, a food court owned by restaurateur Ethan Greer and Ilyes, the developer, in the former Ebert Furniture complex. The two-story food hall attracted 9,000 people in its first three days, drawing from Red Lion-, Yoe- and Dallastown-area residents and tourists from the region.
Like Harry E. Craley in 1907, Greer, who owns Greer's Burger Garage in Dover and Hanover, has studied York County's and Red Lion's past to inform his own classic hamburger business menu and create Franklin Street Social. He's read up on Huntley's, Gino's, Bury's, Crabb's Tropical Treat, Red Rabbit and other storied regional hamburger franchises. In fact, Greer's menu includes a burger with Bury-inspired red sauce.
Like the Ebert family, owners of the Philadelphia-turned-Red Lion furniture-maker a century ago, Greer is a York County outsider/insider, graduating from Spring Grove Area High School in 2009 and later working as a chef in big-city eateries.
Franklin Social's interior bears local rail themes and pieces of a scrapped Spring Grove basketball court, recycled into tabletops. Meanwhile, Greer has brought in big-city idea -- subway station themes, for example -- as part of the design.
And several of the 13 restaurants offer global fare as found in a city: Thai, Latin food that combines Dominican Republic and Cuban dishes, and Middle Eastern fare prepared by chefs trained in the various traditions.
So the presence of Franklin Street Social has been an appeal to a changing Red Lion community and Greer's intentionality to bring in a global experience to the borough and its region.
Greer has a vision, he says, "to make an actual difference in creating an experience that people can enjoy."
And Red Lion's story of retooling from making things to providing services could serve as a model for other towns -- small and large -- to take to heart.
Sources: YDR files, "Pictorial Souvenir, The Borough of Red Lion," 1880 to 1930; "Red Lion, The First One Hundred Years," 1980.
Jim McClure will sign books with fellow authors Scott Mingus and Norina Bentzel from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Dec. 14 at the Belmont Bean, 18 S. Belmont St., York. He and Mingus will sign books at Brown's Orchards in Loganville from noon to 3 p.m. Dec. 21. He will present at OLLI at Penn State York on "York County in the 1800s: Witnessing Growth of Shops, Terrors of War and Construction of Factories in the 19th century" at 11 a.m. Feb. 10. For information, go to https://olli.psu.edu/york.
Jim McClure is a retired editor of the York Daily Record and has authored or co-authored nine books on York County history. Reach him at jimmcclure21@outlook.com.