Shoe salesman Mahlon Haines apparently owes his success in the footwear business to a series of shrewd marketing moves.
One, his shameless, self-promoting tenacity led to his running in an election for congress. Though he lost the election, he admitted it was great publicity for his business.
Two, he drove his shoe store to customers who couldn’t drive to him.
Three, he built a giant shoe house five stories high to promote his shoes like a roadside billboard. It could be seen for miles down what is now old Lincoln Highway.
That supersized shoe became a legacy of 75 years and running.
Mr. Haines betrayed his sales savvy early on. He arrived in York, Pennsylvania, in 1905, at age 30, and reportedly sold his own engagement ring to buy 10 pairs of shoes. He then turned around and sold those at a farmer’s market, and soon his upstart business was launched.
He would die a millionaire, having once owned over 40 shoe stores statewide and in Maryland; he owned land and a hotel, to boot. He even had a fleet of mobile shoe stores that could drive to you if you couldn’t come to his shoe shops.
But, some say, the huge Haines Shoe House along old Lincoln Highway is his true legacy. Built in 1948, the mega-sized shoe is modeled after his best seller: Mr. Haines’s high-top work shoes. He reportedly handed a picture of them to an architect and gave the order to design it.
The shoe house got his message across loud and clear: remember to buy your shoes from Mr. Haines!
The five-story Shoe House is built of stucco and wood. It’s 25 feet high, 17 feet wide, and 48 feet long, with a little over 1,500 square feet inside. All snuggled together in the toe are a living room, master bedroom, and bathroom. The second bedroom is tucked under the shoelaces, with a slanted ceiling echoing the diagonal slope of the shoe. A third bedroom rests behind the heel tab. While a kitchen curls up inside the heel. At one time, a drive-through carport hid under the arch.
Mr. Haines neither lived in the shoe nor used it as a shoe store, though for a time, he let seniors and honeymooners bunk up in the couple’s suite in the toe. A chauffeur and maid who doubled as a cook lived upstairs and took care of the guests.
The Haines Shoe House changed hands several times over the years, following his death. It was bequeathed to his employees, who sold it to a dentist, who plugged an ice cream parlor in the shoe’s arch and allowed tours. It later fell into a state of extreme neglect and disrepair, until the late 1980s when Mr. Haines’s granddaughter Annie Haines Keller bought the house and restored its former glory.
In the 2000s, several couples owned the house: the Millers, the Farabaughs, the Schmucks, the Browns. Tours continued. It was transformed into a museum dedicated to the Haineses though no visitors were allowed to stay overnight yet. There were new refurbishments with paint and stucco redone. A “shoevenir” shop was added. Until, finally, in 2022 it was fully revamped with all-new décor as an Airbnb—as it now remains.
Speaking of why someone would choose to live in a shoe former owner Carleen Farabaugh told her realtor she had no interest in a shoe house but two days later was the owner of the shoe house. “I didn’t pick the shoe house, the shoe house picked me,” she told SpacesTV in 2013.
Today, you can stay inside one of three renovated bedrooms: “Shoelace Space,” “Instep Suite,” and “Ankle Abode.” The interior is teeming with shoes and shoe decorations and memorabilia collected over the decades.
Inside the shoe, you can even gaze out through the original stained glass windows featuring Mr. Haines’s face, proclaiming him the “Shoe Wizard” as he holds up his footwear—the shrewd shoe salesman was never shy about self-promotion.
And if you look out, you can still spot old Lincoln Highway, now overgrown with saplings, where travelers once surely saw the house and thought of buying new shoes.
