The New York Store
The Jewish Encyclopedia
of Western Pennsylvania
A project of the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center
Evans City is a borough in Butler County. Thomas Evans laid out the village of Evansburg along Breakneck Creek in 1838. The village grew with the opening of a Pittsburgh & Western Railroad station in 1879. Evans City was incorporated in 1882.
Although the overall population of Evans City increased each decade through the 1980s, the borough never attracted a cohesive Jewish community with independent communal institutions. Even so, it retained a small Jewish population for most of the 20th century.
Barney H. Eber immigrated to the United States from Russia in 1890. He brought over his wife, Libbie, and their three daughters in 1895. The Eber family ran the Pittsburg Bargain Store with branches in Evans City and Mars. In 1916, their daughter Sarah Eber married Louis Abels, a young merchant in the Fifth Avenue wholesaling district in Pittsburgh. The Eber family appears to have relocated to Pittsburgh by 1920.
The brothers Joseph and David Zeman immigrated to the United States from Lithuania in 1883 and peddled across Pennsylvania before opening the New York Store in Evans City about 1890. During the early 1930s, while Joseph ran the store, his son Bernard worked as a road salesman for a Fifth Avenue wholesaler. After learning about a Jewish merchant in Nanty Glo who had an eligible daughter, Bernard made a sales call on the town and eventually married the young woman, named Dora Donofsky. Bernard and Dora Zeman took over the Evans City store in 1935 and changed the name to Zeman’s.
With their son, Allan Zeman, the family made regular trips to Pittsburgh to visit the Fifth Avenue wholesaling district for commercial and communal needs. “Fifth Avenue was probably my first exposure to what might be called a ‘Jewish community,’” Allen Zeman said in a 2007 oral history. Zeman’s remained a fixture in Evans City until Bernard died in 1955 and the family sold the store rather than continue for a third generation.
Solomon Sacks started Floraldale Farm for convalescents as early as 1933. It later became known as S. Sacks & Sons poultry farm. His son Dr. Louis Sacks remained on the farm in Evans City while teaching in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Pittsburgh. Louis’ wife Fannie Sacks was the first teacher at Yeshiva Schools of Pittsburgh 1943 and became its principal starting in 1955.
Isaac “Ike” Levy (d.1940) opened a dry goods and general store in Evans City in the mid-1910s after working as a merchant in Brownsville and Mt. Pleasant. In Evans City, Levy was a charter member of the local Rotary Club and became involved in the local Republican Party. An obituary noted, “He was conceded to have considerable political power in political circles both in the county and state and it was through his efforts many people from this section received favors from county and state administrations.”
I. B. Weinstein (d. 1965) was born in New York City and later came to Western Pennsylvania. He studied at Grove City College, Geneva College, the University of Pittsburgh, and Columbia University. He was an early advocate for bringing music education in public schools. He joined the faculty of Evans City High School in 1924 and organized the school band. The band placed in statewide contests in 1937, 1938, and 1939 and won in 1941. The 50-piece student band took first place that year in the second division of the National Regional Music Contest in Atlantic City. Weinstein left Evans City in 1941 for a position in the Ellwood City school system. He was active in the Pennsylvania Music Educators Association. He retired to California in the early 1960s.
Samuel and Lizzie (Daniels) Rothenstein moved to Evans City after their wedding in 1939 and operated the Rialto Theater (later the Evans Theater) until his death in 1951.
Maurice Teplitz (1883-1961) worked for the U.S. Postal Service in Pittsburgh. He moved to Evans City some time after retiring in the 1940s and remained until his death.
Philip Plottel lived in Evans City in the late 1980s.
The Evans City area was home to several Jewish camps. The Emma Farm Association “fresh air” camp occupied a site north of Evans City near Harmony, Pa., from 1922 until 1972, when it moved to its current campground in West Virginia. The unrelated Camp Kadimah operated in Evans City from 1937 until around 1958. The Hebrew Institute purchased the Camp Kadimah grounds in 1958 for use as an all-day camp.
