Old Department Stores

Do you miss old department stores? I do. I remember as a kid having to follow my mother and aunts to the department stores in downtown Philadelphia: Gimbel’s, Strawbridge & Clothier, Lit Brothers…Wanamakers… I miss those stores today.

When I first moved to Washington, DC, in the 70s there were Woodward & Lothrop (Woodies), Hecht Company, Kleins…and others. My first real apartment was furnished almost exclusively with stuff I got at Woodies. They had everything and all of it was quality at reasonable prices. The stores were luxurious, spacious, clean, well staffed with knowledgeable and friendly people. Macy’s has bought most of them out and I’m not impressed with Macy’s. There’s still Lord & Taylor and Neiman Marcus but NM is a bit pricey and Lord & Taylor is kind of spotty depending on which one you go to. It seems we’re missing the good middle class stores now and all we have left are the high end stores like NM or low end stores K-Mart and whatever. I do shop a K-Mart but only for stuff like the garage or a pair of boots now and then.

Oh, and don’t forget Sears, they were a standard in my family when I was young, they sold good solid products with their own brand names from vacuum cleaners to furniture to clothes and everything in between. I still get my tools there but you have be smart about that as they now sell a quality Craftsman brand and a throw-away Craftsman brand.

The old Miller & Rhoades in Richmond, VA. This was a great department store, and I use to frequent it often with my Mom while growing up. It had a bakery, and a soda fountain. I loved this place. Miller & Rhoades was THE place to go for the Christmas season. Opened in 1885, closed 1990.

It is now apartments.



2014

There was an old local department store in Devine Texas. It was Loggins & Lillies. The one side of their big turn of the century two story building had painted on the side of it advertising they sold "Everything from a rat skin to a ranch!"

Yeah, Christmas at the grand ole department stores was great!



From "Christmas Story"

Hibbard & Co. They opened in 1892, then moved to this new building in 1924. They closed in 1996, but the building is still there as you can see! It had a elevator, with an operator and the old brass cage doors. It was where you went to get your Cub and Boy Scout uniforms.

Ah! The forerunners of Walmart. Ain't history grand? I grew up partially in the '50s, and remember the five and dimes well. There were many of them all across the country, many well known in only some parts of the nation. I remember J C Penny with their (probably a regional thing) signature two or three stories with the stairway in the middle of the store, and Woolworth (I think it was) and their lunch counters, among others. One of my favorites was S H Kress, who I believe eventually morphed into K-Mart. One side-note about S H Kress was that they sold a line of records under their own label of Romeo Records. They are some of the best music from the mid '20s to the early '30s (the records continued through the '30s, but I never collected late '30s records). Among my more than 2000 78 rpm records are almost a hundred Romeo labels and not a clinker in the bunch. I even have a promotional Romeo Record that has an announcer on one side extolling the values of S H Kress stores. Near the end of his 2 1/2 minutes, he tells you that "on the other side of this record" is one of the latest recordings (as best I can recall it). And it is a good, hot, jazzy number.
Grass Valley has several stores and businesses that are like a step back in time. I am sure many small towns do. For nearly four years I lived in Ferndale Califunny. They have (had?) a store that really feels like a hundred years ago. They even sell hats and collars off original era store displays (the hats and collars are mostly new, but fairly good stuff). I think I need to go shopping. We should all frequent these type of stores more often.
Drive carefully, and enjoy, W2

I was eating my lunches at the Newberry's lunch counter well into the 1990s -- ours was one of the last to die. Our big, high-class department store was called Senter-Crane's, and had four floors of merchandise reached by a hand-operated cage elevator. It was killed off within a year of Wal-Mart's arrival here in the early '90s, and I still have a few of the display racks and shelves sold off as part of the final liquidation. The building is still extant, but is home to a non-profit institute that does something that somebody thinks is important, but is of no signficance to anybody I actually know. The ground floor is a gift shoppe related to the institute which sells dried starfish and artisanal sea-glass key chains to gawping tourists who've never seen the ocean before.

The big deal when I was growing up was Freese's in Bangor, a gigantic place boasting what was, at the time, the only escalator north of Portland. They also had a restaurant, a beauty parlor, and a Santa Claus who always smelled like Mentholatum. The arrival of the mall killed that store in the '80s, and the building has been the most elephantine of white elephants ever since. Currently there's a children's museum on the main floor, an assisted living center, and condos for rich young arrivistes who want to look out their windows and have a front row seat for all the downtown drug-dealing action.

I remember going to a small department story in Grass Valley with my Mom back in the mid 1960's to go shopping for back to school clothes. What I remember most is that the building had a wooden floor in it. I can't remember the name of the store, but it was in the middle of the block with the movie theater.

LizzieMaine said:

I was eating my lunches at the Newberry's lunch counter well into the 1990s -- ours was one of the last to die. Our big, high-class department store was called Senter-Crane's, and had four floors of merchandise reached by a hand-operated cage elevator. It was killed off within a year of Wal-Mart's arrival here in the early '90s, and I still have a few of the display racks and shelves sold off as part of the final liquidation. The building is still extant, but is home to a non-profit institute that does something that somebody thinks is important, but is of no signficance to anybody I actually know. The ground floor is a gift shoppe related to the institute which sells dried starfish and artisanal sea-glass key chains to gawping tourists who've never seen the ocean before.

The big deal when I was growing up was Freese's in Bangor, a gigantic place boasting what was, at the time, the only escalator north of Portland. They also had a restaurant, a beauty parlor, and a Santa Claus who always smelled like Mentholatum. The arrival of the mall killed that store in the '80s, and the building has been the most elephantine of white elephants ever since. Currently there's a children's museum on the main floor, an assisted living center, and condos for rich young arrivistes who want to look out their windows and have a front row seat for all the downtown drug-dealing action.

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Now with Walmart and Target and all the others we seem to have lost a lot of the upscale to midscale stores - and products. It says something about how our economy and culture have changed but I'm not sure just what that is. I do know the general discussion is that many of the popular stores like Gimbels, Strawbridge & Clothier, and Woodward & Lothrop closed due to a declining middle class and subsequent contraction of the economy.

It's hard to believe that Walmart originally had a Buy American policy. Of course that was way before it became the Sinoporium that it is today.

I remember this place when my parents and I used to go on vaction to the Monterey Bay area. It had been there forever but Holman's was later bought out by Ford's Department store in about 1991 and by 1993 the place was shut down. It is now an antique mall......
http://youtu.be/gbhNO4lBUUA

While I was in college, I plied my time at Rike's, in Dayton. Not at the flagship downtown store, but the more modern version at one of the now-defunct area malls. This was in the early to mid 80s. Rike-Kumler and Elder Beerman were the premier department stores in Dayton, and we had other top-notch clothiers in the Metropolitan and Donenfeld's, among others.

While I worked there my name tag changed from Rike's, to Shillito-Rikes, to Lazarus. The stores are now The May Company and the flagship store was imploded to make way for a new performing arts center several years ago. Prior to closing, they sold out to the bare walls, including fixtures. My wife and I walked through on the last day and it was depressing. That store was a magical place, especially at Christmas. Rike's downtown was where the real Santa was (the malls just had Santa's helpers). Their window displays at Christmas were legendary, and still survive to this day in the performing arts center. I'll never forget the last Christmas it was open, I danced with my mom to a small band they had playing on the mezzanine, right there on the floor of Rike's. Working there as a young man was pretty good. I worked summers and during college breaks when I came home - they were great for us part-time, seasonal guys. I sold everything from cameras to furniture to, well let's just say I was put in the lingerie department during one Christmas rush. That was fun.

You got service at these places, too, and it held on at least while I worked there. We'd go out of our way to make sure people got what they wanted. Heck, I use to call Beerman's to see if they had something we were out of. That customer always came back to me. It was a good experience, and it translates to how I handle clients in my current position. Can't beat top-notch customer service!

LizzieMaine said:

I was eating my lunches at the Newberry's lunch counter well into the 1990s -- ours was one of the last to die. Our big, high-class department store was called Senter-Crane's, and had four floors of merchandise reached by a hand-operated cage elevator. It was killed off within a year of Wal-Mart's arrival here in the early '90s, and I still have a few of the display racks and shelves sold off as part of the final liquidation. The building is still extant, but is home to a non-profit institute that does something that somebody thinks is important, but is of no signficance to anybody I actually know. The ground floor is a gift shoppe related to the institute which sells dried starfish and artisanal sea-glass key chains to gawping tourists who've never seen the ocean before.

The big deal when I was growing up was Freese's in Bangor, a gigantic place boasting what was, at the time, the only escalator north of Portland. They also had a restaurant, a beauty parlor, and a Santa Claus who always smelled like Mentholatum. The arrival of the mall killed that store in the '80s, and the building has been the most elephantine of white elephants ever since. Currently there's a children's museum on the main floor, an assisted living center, and condos for rich young arrivistes who want to look out their windows and have a front row seat for all the downtown drug-dealing action.

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One of my favorite things to do as a kid was go with my grandmother "to town" when she did her grocery shopping every Thursday - we lived in the country so going into town on Thursdays and Saturdays was a big deal for us. First we'd go to pay the bills, my grandparents never had a checking account, so she would actually go to the electric company or gas company and pay cash for whatever they owed. Then we'd walk around the shops on the main street in town. But the best part was going to Newberry's to have lunch. They had the best hamburgers ever - cooked just right, which was well done for me, juicy, big and thick, with lettuce, tomato, ketchup, and always served with a dill pickle chip held by a toothpick on top of the bun - for some reason I always saved the pickle chip to eat last. I always got an order of fries and Coke served in an actual Coke glass with my burger. If my aunt's friend was working the lunch counter, sometimes I'd get an extra pickle chip because she knew how much I liked them.

I don't know if anyone had a McCrory's, which was akin to Newberry's but in my child's mind to a lesser degree because their lunch counter food wasn't up to par with Newberry's. My only reason for ever wanting to go McCrory's was if you bought a banana split they had balloons tied around the lunch counter that you could pop and whatever the paper inside had written on it was the price you paid for the split. Supposedly there was one paper that had "free" on it, but I never met anyone who ever got that one. To this day, I'm suspicious there ever was a "free" one.

Our little town thought it had become a big city when we got a Kmart in the early 70s. I remember buying some of my Dawn dolls in that Kmart and I was also introduced to fried clams in their restaurant. While I loved going shopping in those days, now days I loathe having to go to any of the malls in our area. So much traffic going in and out, searching for a parking place, rude people pushing and shoving - how I long for those golden days of life in small town America. We actually knew the people who worked in the shops when I was little because they were neighbors, friends, and sometimes even family - my grandfather worked at the local sporting goods store. I really do miss those days.

Growing up, the standard that by which all other department stores around here were judged was written by Marshall Field & Co. For a kid, the Loop flagship store was one of the best places in the world to visit. Their toy department was absolutely awesome: they had stuff there that I would not have even dreamed of asking my parents to get me at Christmas: a kid sized hovercraft is the one I most keenly remember. They had the best Santa in Chicago as well. And nothing topped off a Christmas vacation day visit there better than lunch in the Walnut Room at the foot of the huge tree.

Field's got sold several times before it was eventually bought out by Macy's. I remember when the New Yawkuhs put up a sign right after taking over, noting the way to "Randolph Avenue:" the thought of it still makes me angry. (It is Randolph Street, TYVM.) They still sell Frango Mints, but they taste nowhere near as good.

My grandmother always had deemed Macy's in Manhattan a "junk shop" compared to Field's. Not sure about that, but no one bested Field's in the area of customer service. The customer really was always right there: I had an aunt (whose chutzpah is still the stuff of family legend) returning a refrigerator from Field's after six years of service... and obtaining a full cash refund.

V.C. Brunswick said:

It's hard to believe that Walmart originally had a Buy American policy. Of course that was way before it became the Sinoporium that it is today.

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Geez ain't it the truth? I an remember when most things in Wal-mart were made in America. Not so much anymore.

Vivid pictures created by these posts... GREAT...
I too remember going to Bamberger's, S Klein (on the square), Hahne & Co, Kresge and Orbach's as a small youth with my Grandmother and Mother... had to wait outside the fitting rooms while they tried on garments... ( of course I'd hope to see a lady in her slip and bra through an opening door...)
It was then on to Woolworths 5&10 for a hot dog and orangeade...!!!
And oh yes... taking the bus to downtown Newark by tossing change into those wonderful clanging fare machines...

We had a dept store in Alabama called Pizitz. Pizitz was a major regional department store chain in Alabama, with its flagship store in downtown Birmingham. It was founded in 1899 and in 1989 (I think) it was sold to McRae's.

And, as we all know, if there are no pics, it didn't really exist Lol!

Some pics:

Belk . . .

Dennis Young said:

[...]
It was founded in 1899 and in 1989 (I think) it was sold to McRae's.
[...]

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Who was subsequently bought out by Belk in 2005.

V.C. Brunswick said:

It's hard to believe that Walmart originally had a Buy American policy. Of course that was way before it became the Sinoporium that it is today.

Click to expand...

I remember when Wally World got called on that Made In America campaign. Turned out that much of their merch was actually made in China. I think the company never put any country of origin, the tags just had something like Your Local American Walmart Store. Customers never even flinched, they just wanted cheap prices. I think this all went down in the 80s.

In my youth, there were several nice Department Stores in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. The May Company, Higbees, Halle Brothers, and Taylors. This was before shopping malls so you had to go downtown to shop there. Of course, Sears Roebuck, Federals and JC Penney were alive and well in the 'burbs. Giant Tiger and Uncle Bills were the first sort of discount department stores. When the malls were developed, the downtown stores declined rapidly. Woolworths and Kresge's were considered "five and dime" stores, but they carried lots of goods as did WT Grant. These were the stores I remember from the 1950's and beyond.

By the way, KMart was derived from the SS Kresge stores in case you aren't old enough to know. But, they're all gone now, all the stores I remember replaced by the GIANT AMAZON.