WILLIAM LEONARD HURLEY is best remembered as the owner of the Hurley's, a department store chain whose home store was at broadway and Pine Street in Camden for well over 50 years.

William Leonard Hurley was born in Atglen PA on October 24, 1862 to William and Ellen Hurley, both of home were Irish-born immigrants. After receiving his education at Atglen and working on his father's farm, he moved to Camden at the age of 19, finding work at the Hussong Dye Works. In 1882 he took a position with the Singer Sewing Machine Company in Philadelphia as a collector, where he worked for two years. After working from 1884 to 1887 as a brakeman on the Pennsylvania Railroad, he found work with E. Gately & Co, of Philadelphia. He was then living at 210 Channing Terrace, which was off Mickle Street, near the site of the present Mickle Tower apartment building.

William Leonard Hurley became a partner in the concern in 1890. The new company, Gately and Hurley, opened a store at the old 

Wildey Hall, at 804-806 South 5th Street, the corner of south 5th and Pine Streets, in 1890. He was then living at 505 Pine Street. Within a few years a new building at broadway and Pine was erected, a location that would become a Camden landmark for six decades, and is still well-remembered in 2009. 

1902 saw William Leonard Hurley partnered with William J. Lorigan and his son, William H. Lorigan, who worked as the secretary of the Gately & Hurley store, in a real estate and home building venture. Their firm, Lorigan & Hurley, had its offices in the store building. That year the partners built Princeton Avenue, a block of homes between Pine and Division Streets, east of South 7th Street. They later built houses similar in appearance to those on Princeton Street on 27th Street north and south of Federal street. 

In 1904 William L. Hurley bought out his partner. The sign on the store simply read Hurley's, and until the stores closed, that was simply enough. During the 1900s and until the early 1910s The Hurley family lived at 708 Broadway. Oddly enough, by 1947 this building had become a tavern, and still is used as such in 2004, having been known over the years as the Towers Bar, Dale's Tavern, and most recently Nefertiti's. By 1914 he had built a mansion on the White Horse Pike at McGill Avenue in Collingswood NJ.

William Leonard Hurley developed his business into tone of the first modern department store chains, with satellite stores throughout South Jersey, and in in Pennsylvania and Delaware as well. He advertised extensively, and sold on credit. He hired well, and many of his top staff spent decades working at the Hurley's. Brothers James V. and Harry A. Moran worked there for over four decades. Experienced in credit and collections, he was among the first merchants to introduce credit at his stores, and sending salesmen into the country with vanloads of merchandise to sell to women who didn't have transportation to get to town.

William Leonard Hurley was a Republican, but never aspired to public office. He was an alternate delegate to the 1912 Republican National Convention. He was on the Board of Directors of the Central Trust, and was involved in the fund-raising drive that culminated in the erection of the Walt Whitman Hotel. He also was active in the affairs of the Church of the Immaculate Conception, of which he was a member. He was among the first officers of the Church of the Immaculate Conception's Lyceum Association along with John J. Burleigh, president; Michael Byrne, vice president; John M. Kelly, recording secretary; James Clark, financial secretary; and the Very Rev. Dean Mulligan. William L. Hurley served as treasurer.   

After a long illness, William Leonard Hurley passed away at Hilton Head, South Carolina on April 23, 1928. His close friend, city planner Charles Wellford Leavitt, passed away the same day at Hartsdale, New York. His son Jerome Hurley succeeded him in the business, along  with the Moran brothers.

Hurley's remained popular until its closing in 1956, brought in part by the economic downturn in Camden, but more so from the lack of a succession plan in the family.