Our Company

In 1920 Jessie Levin persuaded her husband, Sam, to establish a dignified business. She felt that peddling was inappropriate for a family with six daughters who would eventually be marriageable. What would their suitors think? That was the origin of the Levin Furniture Company in rural Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania. Originally, the store sold hardware items as well as furniture, and customers could buy everything from flyswatters and expandable window screens to three piece “parlor suites.” The store was successful from its beginning. Gradually hardware items were phased out and the furniture division expanded. An important part of the business during those years involved coal stoves, and Sam Levin had a gigantic inventory of replacement parts as Mount Pleasant had a Foundry and could custom make difficult-to-find castings. Both Jessie and Sam Levin worked long hours developing their business and it was the quintessential mom and pop store. A generous system of credit and installment buying was a basic concept of Levin’s. Sam was proud that he never removed a customer from his books during the Great Depression, often accepting chickens, eggs or other items of barter for desperately needed mattresses or furniture. In 1943, son Leonard, the first boy after five daughters, entered the business. Under his leadership a major expansion altered the history of the store. An elegant private townhouse was purchased and added to the store as an integral unit, but under the name “Colonial House.” This was a boutique store within a store and was fastidiously created in a Williamsburg-like design. The entire concept was Early American with a complete line of furniture and a large accessory department. It became so successful that it was included on bus tours and frequently, groups ranging from fifteen to thirty, would visit the various rooms and usually have an accompanying lecture on the history of furniture during that period. It was during this period that Sally Levin, Leonard’s wife, became a full participant and worked with her husband doing the buying, merchandising, advertising and adding the service of decorator and design consultant. The next great leap into the future came when Howard Levin, Leonard and Sally’s older son, entered the family business in 1978. Howard moved Levin’s into the Pittsburgh area and within seven years had opened five major, full service stores in the Pittsburgh area. Levin’s is now the largest furniture retailer in Western Pennsylvania. Upon Leonard’s death in 1989, Howard was named President and continued to expand the role he had played during the previous years. It was his dream to enter the Cleveland market as he felt Pittsburgh and Cleveland shared much demographically, and philosophically. He familiarized himself with the city, spending hours driving through all the neighborhoods and the more he saw the more he became enamored. He added an Indians’ cap to his inventory of Pirate hats. In 1992, the first Levin’s opened in Bedford, Ohio. Within months Howard had added another in the Mentor area and then, wishing to be a presence on the western side of Cleveland, opened a third in Middleburg Heights. Two weeks after that opening Howard died suddenly at age 40. Robert Levin, his younger brother, ventured from Washington D.C. to take over the duties and demands of the nine furniture stores. Today, Robert, the current president, has continued the dream of his brother and the traditions of his grandfather, father and mother by maintaining the family tradition of service, quality and competitive pricing while continuing to grow.