Howard Street Jewelers closing its doors

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - Howard Street Jewelers has served some Baltimore families for generations, through engagements, graduations, Christmases and Valentine’s Days.

The store supported three generations of Levys and put the current owner Alvin Levy’s children through college. Now that the Levy family has drifted away from precious metals and six-days-a-week shopkeeping, the modest shop fronting Howard Street’s light rail lines and cobblestones is preparing to close one last time.

“This is not a mourning issue,” said owner Alvin Levy, 59, as he greeted friends and faithful customers during his going out of business sale Monday. “It’s an opportunity for us to do something else with our lives.”

Levy’s children have gone on to New York City — one is involved in social work, the other as an attorney — and his wife, Ellen, is ready to retire, Alvin Levy said. “It’s a bittersweet time. It always is when you close a business like this.”

Levy’s parents Julius and Lore Levy opened Howard Street Jewelers in Baltimore in 1945 after fleeing the Nazi regime in Germany and meeting here. His father’s philosophy, embodied in the Rudyard Kipling poem “If ...”, guided him to serve the great and lowly with courtesy, Levy said. “Whether it was Mayor Schmoke or an employee of the city sanitation department, everybody got a fair shake.”

His customers returned the consideration, coming back year after year.

“This guy is one of a kind. He and his wife both are very personable, very friendly, very professional,” said Harold Parham, 59, a milkman with Cloverland Dairy who has shopped at North Howard Street for more than 30 years. “I never came in here and felt like I had no business in here.”

Others have brought more business through the doors with them.

“I’ve gotten some stuff for my daughters, a replacement for my wife’s engagement ring,” said Barry DesRoches, 48, a title company manager from near Annapolis. “I’ve gotten at least four or five people in here for engagement rings.”

Levy and his wife plan to continue selling their stock as high as 60 percent off until they run out, hopefully before mid-January. “There’s a lot of value to be had here,” he said.

Ellen Levy said she was ready to retire, take some classes and maybe do some volunteering. “I’m going to miss the people down here.”

The Levys have shared DesRoches’s milestones — a ring here, a bracelet there, a celebration. “It was always the family place, and that sort of doesn’t exist any more,” said DesRoches.

khille@baltimoreexaminer.com

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