The Ornament Gamble: How the Lancaster Woolworth Sparked a Christmas Tradition

On a crisp autumn morning in 1880, a German traveling salesman entered a small but bustling shop on North Queen Street in Lancaster. The shop’s proprietor, a young businessman named Frank Winfield Woolworth, was already drawing notice for his unusual retail model: selling everyday goods for a fixed price of five cents. When the salesman displayed his wares—fragile glass baubles meant to hang from Christmas trees—Woolworth was skeptical. “What purpose do they serve?” he asked. “They’re literally useless.”

Still, he took a chance. “I’ll take one box,” Woolworth said, “but only if they can be sold on a sale-or-return basis.” Within an hour of being placed on the counter, every ornament was gone. A fad had taken root. What began as a small gamble in Lancaster would reshape holiday traditions worldwide.

Lancaster was not Woolworth’s first attempt at retail. Earlier that year, he had opened “The Great Five Cent Store” in Utica, New York, his first foray into fixed-price selling. The experiment failed, but Woolworth remained convinced of the idea. When a friend suggested Lancaster, a thriving Pennsylvania Dutch market town filled with thrifty, bargain-loving shoppers, Woolworth decided to try again.

On June 21, 1879, he opened his “Great Five Cent Store” at 170 North Queen Street. From the very first day, the shop was a sensation. By closing time, Woolworth and his clerks had sold 30 percent of their stock. Unlike earlier dry goods stores, where merchandise was kept behind counters, Woolworth put his wares out on open shelves for customers to handle themselves. The approach felt liberating, and it worked.

Though Woolworth would go on to found a global retail empire, he always remembered Lancaster as “holy ground.” This was the place where his unorthodox idea took hold, where a failed salesman became a visionary merchant.

Woolworth’s Lancaster experiment flourished, but he dreamed bigger than a cramped storefront. By the turn of the century, he unveiled plans for a new building just down the street at 21–27 North Queen. Working with Lancaster’s leading architect, C. Emlen Urban, Woolworth erected a five-story Victorian “skyscraper” crowned with domed towers and a rooftop garden.

Inside, the new store dazzled. Customers could shop for bargains on the ground floor, then ascend to the rooftop for dining, concerts, and theatrical performances. The building became a downtown showplace and a social hub, showing that Woolworth was more than a shopkeeper; he was a developer, an innovator, and a man of means.

The Lancaster skyscraper became a dress rehearsal for Woolworth’s most famous project: the Woolworth Building in New York City. Completed in 1913, it was the tallest building in the world at the time, paid for entirely in cash. But the roots of that ambition can be traced back to Lancaster’s North Queen Street.

The ornament gamble of 1880 soon paid off in spectacular fashion. Impressed by the sales in Lancaster, Woolworth traveled to Lauscha, Germany the following year. Lauscha was home to the world’s oldest blown-glass ornament factory, dating to 1830. There, he ordered 100,000 sets of ornaments to sell in his stores.

Although ornaments had been sold before, they were often expensive and inaccessible to most people. Woolworth’s decision to buy directly from German glassblowers and sell cheaply through his stores transformed Christmas. Suddenly, families of modest means could afford to decorate their trees with glittering baubles.

By 1909, Woolworth had brought the ornaments to Britain, where they caused a sensation. Within a generation, glass ornaments became synonymous with Christmas on both sides of the Atlantic. Today, it is difficult to imagine holiday trees without them, all because of a decision made in a small Lancaster shop.

Did You Know?

Woolworth often called himself “the world’s worst salesman.” His solution? Design stores where “people could sell to themselves.”

Planning Your Visit

The buildings that once housed Woolworth’s Lancaster stores are gone. The original shop at 170 North Queen has been absorbed into Lancaster Square, while the five-story 1899 skyscraper was demolished in 1950 and replaced by a modern two-story structure that shut down, along with 400 other Woolworth operations throughout the country, in 1997.

Today, Fulton Bank occupies part of the block. Yet the site at 25 North Queen Street remains an important hidden landmark. Here, in the heart of Lancaster, Woolworth proved that affordable goods and imaginative risk could reshape both commerce and culture.

25 North Queen Street, Lancaster, PA

Learn More

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