The building made clothes before it sold them. 350 Kennedy Blvd began as the Pittston Apparel manufacturing plant, one of the largest buildings by floor area in this small Luzerne County city, and it now holds loft apartments, offices, restaurants and a row of storefronts after a renovation of roughly 110,000 square feet. Showroom56 is one of those storefronts — Suite 5, off Entrance C, with the Susquehanna behind the building.
Owner Sally VanScoy moved the boutique into the Waterfront Warehouse and cut the ribbon there alongside Pittston Mayor Michael Lombardo and the city’s Main Street coordinator. The shop lists the space at about 3,200 square feet, and it does two jobs at once. Part of it is a contemporary women’s boutique — Free People, Dolce Vita, Chinese Laundry, Hudson denim, Steve Madden, Kendra Scott. The other part is formalwear: prom, homecoming, semi-formal and black-tie gowns, plus short dresses for everything that isn’t a full-length occasion.
On the gown side, two things are confirmed by the designers themselves. Showroom56 appears on the official retailer locators for both Faviana and Jovani, and Jovani’s own Pennsylvania retailer page names the Kennedy Boulevard store as one of its options in the Scranton–Wilkes-Barre metro. If you have been shopping those two labels online and want to try them on rather than order and hope, this is a place that stocks them.
Prom season is clearly a real season here, not a sideline. The store has run after-hours prom nights — the showroom open on a weeknight evening past normal retail hours — and its own posts describe wrapping up one of its busiest prom seasons. Northeastern Pennsylvania proms cluster in late April and May, which means the serious shopping happens through a cold, gray February and March. Go early if you care about not seeing your dress twice in the same gym.
Getting there, and what else is on the trip
Pittston sits between Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, which makes it a short drive from either end of the valley rather than a commitment to one city or the other. Pittston Area Senior High School is a few blocks away on Stout Street, so for those students this is the dress shop in their own town.
Because the Waterfront Warehouse is mixed-use, the trip does not have to be only about a dress. The Refinery restaurant is in the same building. So is LBC Distillery and a Merle Norman cosmetic studio, and the complex also includes a hair salon, a coffee and bakery spot and jewelry retail. That is unusual for a formalwear stop: you can park once and handle the dress, the hair consultation and dinner without moving the car.
Call ahead at (570) 714-1551 before you drive. Store posts have listed Monday through Saturday, 10 to 5, but hours shift during prom and holiday stretches, and it is worth asking what Faviana and Jovani styles are actually on the floor in your size before you make the trip.