My friend Michelle found this sign waiting for her today when she stopped in Ardmore to #shoplocal at Viking Pastries
So has progress in Lower Merion Township’s downtown Ardmore put yet another tradition, another long-standing business out of business? Or is it something else? Or something related? Or just simple economics?
Viking Pastries appears to be done as in dead as per this hand lettered sign.
62 years…*POOF* ??
How many of us who grew up on the Main Line had memories of Viking Pastries and Walter’s Swiss Pastry which was located in Bryn Mawr and closed years and years ago? (Can’t remember exactly when.)
Those were the bakeries of many of our childhoods – Viking Pastries and Walter’s Swiss Pastries. My mother always bought our annual Christmas Bûche de Noël complete with it’s chocolate bark and meringue “mushrooms” from Walter’s. She also bought things from Viking too.
Both bakeries had fierce loyal and devoted followings once upon a time. Now they are but memories of a Main Line that used to be.
In 2013 Viking Pastries was part of a bakery makeover show called Save My Bakery. Save My Bakery was a show in the Nancy Glass Glass Productions Stable and appeared on Food Network and/or DIY Network. (Click here and see some of the original makeover.)
This was covered extensively at the time by local media. It was wonderful.
But maybe this wasn’t enough to save Viking long term? Don’t forget the bakery’s family has seen horrible tragedy in the form of the still unsolved disappearance of Richard Petrone. Richard Petrone and Danielle Imbo vanished without a trace leaving a Philadelphia bar in 2005.
This family and bakery were always part of local events. When I was on the Main Line, if there was a local fundraiser or get together, you could always count on the generosity of Viking Pastries. I worked on many events where they donated boxes and boxes of their delicious cookies.
When Viking got their fancy T.V. makeover, we all had high hopes. But still there were kerfuffles. Like the August 2017 temporary Department of Health closure as reported by Main Line Times. Here is an excerpt:
“It was a plumbing issue caused by the construction across the street,” said Viking Pastries owner Marge Petrone of One Ardmore Place being built on the former Cricket Avenue Parking lot. “That [project] has been a nightmare.”
According to Petrone, water from the construction site flowed into a hole left in front of the store and straight into the bakery’s basement. “We had an inch or two of mud there. There was low water pressure – we couldn’t flush the toilet.”
Petrone paid for a Port-a-Potty to be placed outside the back of the shop, but ultimately, she aid, “if you can’t use the bathroom, the county is a stickler about that” and will shut you down.
Except my opinion, personally? I also have to wonder about the Ardmore Tartification Effect on old school businesses like this? As Lower Merion Township has strived for decades at this point to make Ardmore what they envision, the old time businesses have fallen off one by one, haven’t they? Some say, when the movie theater closed and they didn’t get a new theater chain in that THAT was the beginning?
Ardmore has had peaks and valleys. I had high hopes when parts of the Main Street business community were saved from eminent domain for private gain, but now? Sadly, today, I barely visit a place I used to be in practically every other day for years and years. I live just far enough away that getting there is a hassle with regard to never much parking and crazy traffic. That and the site of towering apartments rising up on Cricket Avenue behind what was the movie theater to overshadow everything and everyone like Godzilla.
Who owns Viking’s building?
Who is 35-39 Cricket LLC?
Who has owned the building over the years and years?
These are all public records off Montgomery County and PA’s corporation database. County court dockets sadly show open items so is this closure in part financial? Sadly I did also find landlord tenant and other things going back a few years, so is the economy as much to blame? Also as the property changed hands did the rent just keep going up?
Whatever has happened, it’s a crying shame. It represents the death of another small business with a long history in a Main Line Community.
RIP Viking Pastries. Thank you for all the wonderful years you gave your customers.
(the photo array is assembled from a couple of my photos and ones I found on Google)