Its temporary darkness (the Shane family sold it to the Berleys - Eric and Ryan - in early 2010) has not gone down well with regulars whose grandparents patronized the storybook of a shop, and whose parents did, after them.
Once upon a time, indeed, 20,000 people a day were said to stream past Shane's curved-glass entry to the foot of Market Street, commuting by ferry to Camden (or from it), a river of foot traffic that dried up, along with several competing candy shops, after the completion of the big, blue bridge in 1926.
The faithful would return, as resolutely as the Delaware's shad, generation after generation to the mahogany-trimmed place, bent on customized boxes of holiday buttercreams and chocolate-coated, handmade marshmallows (imported from the candy loft upstairs), for enrobed orange jellies and caramels and candy canes and sweet fondant Easter eggs - the inventory of the season. They were lost without it.
Which is why in recent weeks a palpable impatience has been building. Later this month, perhaps by Black Friday, or surely by early December, the masking paper will come off the front door, and the displays behind those curved glass windows will be made ready: Shane, dark for nearly two years, will ride again.
It will not be quite the same Shane of recent memory. The bones have been scrupulously preserved - and the Victorian aspect, the carved mahogany, the intimate center aisle, the curved-glass entry, funneling you in.
