By Tom Waring
Times Staff Writer
You might have seen Patrick Kelly in the aftermath of the December 2001 fire at Stein, the venerable flower shop at the southeast corner of Frankford and Princeton avenues.
“I was the guy out by the Dumpster sobbing his eyes out,” said Kelly, the company vice president.
Stein is an institution in the Philadelphia floral community. German immigrants Abraham and Bertha Stein opened the original shop on Kensington Avenue in 1887, a time when flowers were delivered by horse and buggy.
Twenty years later, the Steins moved the business to the area of Front and Dauphin streets.
Their son, Joseph Stein, eventually took over the business. In 1948, he expanded the company to a shop at 7059 Frankford Ave.
For more than four decades, he and his wife Celia were legends in the Tacony/Mayfair area. Joseph Stein worked in the shop into his mid-90s. He died in 1990 at age 97. Celia Stein, too, has passed away.
But Kelly and company president Dan Stein — Joseph and Celia Stein’s grandson — have continued to keep the business in operation, partly to honor the memory of the Stein family.
There have been some changes in the last decade.
The Kensington store closed, largely because the base of customers moved out of the neighborhood. Three years ago, Kelly opened a Stein flower shop in Burlington, N.J.
Meanwhile, the Frankford Avenue shop continued to flourish. The 2001 Christmas season was shaping up as a big one.
The crew left sometime after 9 p.m. on Dec. 21, a Friday. Kelly, in charge of the day-to-day operations, left at 10 p.m.
The next day, there was a huge delivery schedule. The place was packed with flowers. Ten trucks were set to hit the road.
They never made it.
Kelly recalls getting a phone call at about 1 a.m. that the flower shop was on fire. He raced to the building, only to find the place basically destroyed.
Fire investigators explained to him how the fire started. The blaze began in a fluorescent light fixture in the work room. It spread quickly, fueled by all the wrapping paper, candles, pine cones and other flammables.
Anyone who has passed by Frankford and Princeton for the last 50-plus years has seen the two red Stein signs and the green Flowers sign lit at night. Celia Stein always liked the corner to be well-lit.
“That’s your cheapest advertising,” Kelly remembers her saying.
The fire marshal and insurance company investigators agreed that the fire started accidentally in that light fixture, but the damage was done.
“We salvaged nothing,” Kelly said.
Paper records and files were lost, and all seven computers melted. The inventory was destroyed. The fire also claimed 60 fish, turtles, snails, tadpoles, a canary and a cockatiel, though one turtle somehow managed to escape.
The fire went through the floor boards and damaged the shipping and receiving area, the walk-in refrigerator — basically everything.
The stone on the interior of the store remained, as did the physical structure and the exterior signage.
Because of the extent of the fire, Stein wasn’t able to service its Christmas customers.
“A lot of our churches didn’t get their poinsettias,” Kelly said.
The first step was to refund all the holiday orders.
Next, Stein wanted to fulfill its wedding obligations. Since no records existed, the company needed brides to call.
Then there was the matter of the long-term future. Should Stein reopen at the same site, move to a second location permanently, or simply concentrate on its New Jersey store?
Dan Stein and Patrick Kelly decided to stay at Frankford and Princeton.
“It’s a historical business for the city,” Kelly explained. “This is where Stein’s belongs. This is Mayfair. I couldn’t move it. I wouldn’t want to move it. I have too many friends in the neighborhood.”
Kelly started in the business in 1981 as a designer before becoming a supervisor and, now, vice president. He wanted to continue the Stein family tradition, now in its fourth generation.
The fire, he said, has only interrupted, not stopped, the Stein tradition of providing fresh flowers and good service. He and his staff say they do things the same way they were taught by Joseph and Celia Stein.
The road to reopening, though, was longer than expected.
Insurance covered the damages, which Kelly said were well over $300,000.
As the Stein “business interruption” claim was being processed, Kelly closed the Burlington store. It reopened on Sept. 18.
Stein and Kelly decided not to open a temporary location, for fear that the company’s reputation for quality service would suffer.
There were delays by the city in approving building permits, and that set back the contractors. Stein stayed closed through Valentine’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day and the wedding, prom and graduation seasons. Finally, on Nov. 23, five days before Thanksgiving, the store reopened.
The company is trying to rebuild business to its pre-fire level, when there were 30,000 accounts. For now, the staff numbers 15 to 18, about half the employees who existed before the fire.
Stein lifers have returned, like Stanley Cheeks, a design supervisor who has worked there for 34 years, and Bernadette Nejman, the office supervisor on the job for 32 years.
So far, customer response has been positive.
“I almost cried when I saw the corner lit up again,” one man told Kelly.
The shop is open seven days a week, including holidays. The walls and ceilings are new, and there are plans to add a showroom, a receptionist desk and fireplace settings.
Kelly is determined to rebuild the fountain and 4-foot-deep pond and stock it with fish. He’ll decorate it with flowers and a statue and invite brides to have their pictures taken there.
It will take several months to complete renovations, and Stein plans a grand reopening.
Regular customers, though, don’t need an official welcome back. They’re already back.
“They’re so happy to see us, and we’re so happy to see them,” Kelly said. ••
Reporter Tom Waring can be reached at 215-354-3034 or twaring@phillynews.com