If you had the chance to step into Lil’s Dress Shop, you were stepping into a community built by my mother, Lil Gottlieb.
From the early 1960s to the 2000s, she ran one of the only women-owned businesses in the male-dominated Broad Street Market area of Harrisburg. This November, she would have turned 100.
Her children’s clothing store wasn’t just a place to buy a dress; it was a place of connection. Lil didn’t just sell clothes—she offered an extra pair of socks, a hair ribbon, a small gift (a tchotchke) and a warm hug. The selling space was small, no more than 700 square feet, and her business motto was simple and effective: “Stack it high and let it fly.”…