Suit Corner finds a new home

It was a year ago last Thursday that Gary Ginsberg stood on Market Street and watched his life go up in flames.

All those suits in Crayola colors, all that polyester, all those luminous shirts and wonderfully fat-knotted ties, all that imitation gator skin, just disappearing in the fire. All that family history. Gone.

Suit Corner was burning.

It had been a cruel stretch.

A month earlier, Gary's mother, Linda, had passed. Weeks later, Gary was measuring a customer when across the street his Uncle Marvin's store, Shirt Corner, sold and under demolition, collapsed.

No one was hurt by the raining bricks, but just like that, Shirt Corner, with its giant red-white-and-blue facade that had blared above Third Street for decades, was rubble.

Now this.

They were opening the store when a customer ducked inside and shouted: "Yo, there's a fire in your window!"

The Ginsberg family tradition was gone - and with it a Philly institution. The home of the $98 suit. The outfitter of generations of prom-goers, working men, and churchgoers who preferred their fashions flashy and their prices low. A place where time passed, but the fashions remained.

With news cameras pointed at him, Gary broke down.

"Everything just went down the drain," he said, as the ruins smoldered. (Faulty wiring, the fire marshal would later say.)

This being Philadelphia, who soon rode up to the scene on his bicycle but Jerry Blavat? The Geator would often buy suits from the Ginsbergs for his Kimmel Center shows.

"Don't worry, Gar, I got a store for you," Blavat said.

I wasn't there, but I'm pretty sure that at some point Blavat smiled and said, "My man!" mostly because the Geator is always smiling and saying "My man!"

Gary looked at the Geator in a daze.

The next few weeks were a blur.

Gary felt as if he were going to have a heart attack. The store was the only thing he knew. Business that previous winter had been awful with all the snow. He was counting on the boon season of Easter, prom, and graduation.

Plus, the competition was calling, wanting to know his customers' favorite brands - so they could scoop them up.

"No way," Gary told them.

Jerry Ginsberg's advice to Gary and Gary's sister, Stacey, who co-owns the store, was simple: Go find a new location. Now!

"Your customers are looking for you," he told them.

Gary walked the length of Market Street.

Then, he visited the Geator at his storefront studio near Seventh and Market. The space next door was available, Blavat said. This being Philadelphia, the building's owner is the wealthy developer Richard Basciano, who also owned the building in the fatal Market Street collapse. It was hard to get Basciano on the phone, but once Gary did, things moved quickly.

The property was once a bank, then a Dollar Store. It wasn't a corner, but it was close enough. Gary had the sign out front painted red, white, and blue, and called his manager, Robert Siter Jr., who has worked in the store for 30 years, and his salesmen, including Verrone Romeoletti, who has worked with the Ginsbergs for 25 years.

They opened in July - the dead season. But there were good omens. A Century 21 moved down the street. Then, a garish electronic billboard appeared on top of the Lit Bros. building, which Gary thought looked good.

Gary felt smack in the middle of things. By Christmas, the store was humming with old customers.

On Thursday, the Suit Corner crew had a store party to mark the anniversary - how far they had come. As they celebrated, the lights went out. It was just some electricians doing work. They came back on.

Business was brisk Friday. Steve Williams, of West Philly, plopped down a red blazer with a sharkskin gleam. His father had shopped here before him. Steve's heart was broken when it burned down. "Nobody has this stuff anymore," he said.

Gary beamed.

215-854-2759 @MikeNewall