Category: Retail

Behold a marvelous menagerie of Americana — a curated cornucopia of century-old curios and Victorian age sensibility.

Stroll the sepia-toned rows of travel-worn valises and towering top hats. Cast iron railway signs and old pub mirrors. Dime store novels and Gilded Age comic strips. Handcrafted, model pond yachts and leather-worn sporting relics. Glamorous art deco advertisements and dreamlike Jazz Age prints.

Endless architectural embellishments, like terra cotta cupids and stone lion heads, ornamental arches, columns, mantels, and fine wooden sideboards culled from the English countryside or rescued from bygone wrecking balls.

All of it carefully chosen and displayed for its taste and excellence by Hadassah Zuberi, 80, a lioness of architectural salvage, who for decades sold architectural vestiges, rare memorabilia, and period props to Philadelphia’s grand department stores — including Gimbels, Strawbridge & Clothier, and Wanamakers — as display furnishings.

And all of it, once again on South Street.

Confident of change

In May, almost 22 years after shuttering her storied showroom — Gargoyles ltd., which she operated in a pair of South Third Street storefronts, steps off South, for nearly 35 years before closing in 2004 — Zuberi returned home to Philadelphia.

Her store’s latest incarnation is located at 340 South St., former home of the Hurricane Alley bar, and across from the iconic Eye’s Gallery. It has quickly become a popular staple on the famed, if perpetually embattled, Philly thoroughfare that now sprouts signs of rebirth after quality-of-life issues and nuisance businesses.

“We’re going to elevate the character of the street,” said Zuberi on a recent afternoon, perched in her oversize leather shop chair as classical music played. “It’s been run-down. I’m confident it’s going to change.”

Zuberi had relocated her business to the arts enclave of Kingston, N.Y, amid rising property taxes and the shuttering of national department stores.

The move comes after Rick Milan, former owner of the legendary South Street punk store Zipperhead and now a board member of the South Street District, who owns properties on the street, including the former Hurricane Alley space, lobbied Zuberi to come back to Philly.

A former customer, who once bought vintage ski equipment from Gargoyles as home decor, Milan serendipitously wandered into the Kingston shop during a vacation in 2024.

“I knew right away this was the Gargoyles from Third Street,” he said. “South Street is currently going through a big vintage surge. And I really wanted to recruit Hadassah back to South Street.”

Preserved vestiges of old Philadelphia

More than a half century had passed since Zuberi, born and raised in Jerusalem, opened her original Philly shop, a joint venture with her first husband, Richard Serbin.

Studying graphic design at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design — Israel’s oldest and most prestigious school of art, design, and architecture — Zuberi moved to Philadelphia in 1967 at the age of 21.

At the time, Philadelphia was busy remaking itself.

“Nineteenth-century Philadelphia was falling away,” she said. “They were tearing down incredible mansions, which was criminal. They demolished some amazing landmarks.”

Designing a home of their own, the newlyweds hired prominent Philadelphia architect Adolph DeRoy Mark and began to purchase the architectural salvage of stately Philly residences, public buildings, and churches destined for destruction. They filled the shop — massive twin storefronts at 512-514 S. Third St., which Zuberi’s father-in-law purchased for $18,000, and which is now a rowhouse — with preserved vestiges of old Philadelphia, including a specially made gargoyle.

“We got a whole bunch of amazing ironwork and Tiffany stained glass windows,” she said. “Cherubs. Magnificent columns. We had a couple thousand door knobs that were brass and copper. Just fantastic stuff.”

South Street to the pyramids

Enjoying the earliest days of its renaissance by the late ‘60s and early ’70s, South Street was a near-deserted strip, an empty canvas fast filling with hippies, hipsters, and hucksters. Transforming into a stronghold of bohemia, the neighborhood was still touch and go, Zuberi remembered.

“We had one of our employees who would go to the front door with a baseball bat because he didn’t know who was going to come in,” she said.

Selling architectural remnants to restaurants and hotels — and local eateries, like Downey’s Irish Pub, Saloon Restaurant, and the Borgia Tea Room in Headhouse Square — the shop became one of the East Coast’s largest dealers in antique architectural embellishments. The couple traveled through England and Belgium, filling department store orders and printed catalogs for national chains.

“My mother was at the pyramids in Egypt and she had a Gargoyles bag,” said a laughing Zuberi of the Philly heyday. “And someone was like, ‘Oh, I was at the store in Philadelphia.’”

The shop outlasted her marriage. On her own in the shop, and raising children, Zuberi embraced a newfound sense of artistic freedom, buffeting her inventory with vintage memorabilia and curios she found inspiring, and more of her own artwork and paintings.

“It was passion,” she said. “This idea that you can take anything that has some semblance of design and use it anywhere. No rules.”

All the while, South Street rose and fell, embracing its bohemian roots and transforming into a vibrant punk and counterculture stronghold, and eventually battling corporate encroachment and abandonment.

By 2004, developers were buying buildings for investments, losing sight of the character of the neighborhood, Zuberi said.

“It lost its magic touch,” she said.

Back on South Street

“What the hell are you doing here?” she remembered Milan asking, when he happened into her Kingston store in 2024. “Listen, I want you back on South Street.”

While Kingston brought more success from locals and New York City tourists, Philadelphia, where she still kept a home, never stopped calling.

“I was homesick,” she said. “Philadelphia has all the culture in the world.”

Earlier this year, after selling her New York building, she called Milan, who envisions Gargoyles as a one-of-a-kind legacy business that can help attract life to South Street. The Hurricane Alley space — which still includes the old wooden bar — made for a match.

“It’s a lovely shop, and she’s a lovely woman,” he said.

On a recent afternoon, Zuberi, elegantly reposed in her leather chair and framed by a favorite portrait of Elizabeth Taylor, warmly greeted a steady stream of customers.

She is glad to be back in Philadelphia, surrounded by her treasures, and encouraged by the view of the changing street outside, she said.

“This is my la la land,” she said, over the strains of a concerto playing on the speakers. “If I want to pretend the world is beautiful and everybody has taste, all I have to do is look around and avoid the rest.”