225 Ferry
Urban Elegance
Headquarters of Platform Five real estate, this three-story space exudes an urban elegance with exposed brick walls, concrete floors, and steel beams. Built in 1847, the stone building was first used as a church by the First Universalist Society of Easton until about 1860. The building was apparently vacant in 1862 when according to news accounts Union soldiers heading to fight in the Battle of Gettysburg spent the night in the church before boarding the train in Easton for Harrisburg.
In 1885, William H. King opened a dry cleaning business in the building after purchasing it from the Universalists. When King died in 1918, his obituary reported that King’s Cleaners was “the largest and best known of its kind in this section of the country.” The property changed hands again in 1924 when it was sold to Alexander Sandor Friedman, who had immigrated from Hungary to New York City as a young man and had become an early pioneer in the dry cleaning business.
For the next 83 years, people continued to drop off their shirts and pants, sweaters and suits at the Ferry Street location before the business closed in 2007.
One could say the 9,800-square-foot property was given a fresh start with Platform V’s purchase of it in 2016. Following a major two-year renovation of a structure without so much as heat, plumbing, or electricity, the high-end office space is now a gleaming testimony to Platform V’s dedication to historical preservation.