Levy Pawnbroker's Sign

Credit LineGift of Robert Fones, Toronto, Ontario, 2021.

Object number2021.017.001

Label TextThe three gold balls pawnbroker sign once marked the pawnshop business of Mr. Isaac Levy, originally from the southern United States. His children, Louis and Hannah later took over. This business had its beginnings in the 1880s in London. Wrote author, Bill Gladstone: “The London Free Press once described Levy’s as ‘the embodiment of the pawnshops made famous in fiction…an aged, nondescript building belonging to no particular architectural period, with front windows crammed with personal effects.’ … When Isaac was the proprietor, the shop always closed promptly at 4 o’clock on Friday afternoons and remained shuttered on Saturdays, but Louis and Hannah would open it on Saturday afternoons so as not to lose the day’s trade completely. The business closed in 1983.”

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