At this time of year, I get nostalgic for the big ol' multi-story department store

In My Humble Opinion
1

I watched a movie yesterday called Ladies in Black. It’s sweet, charming, and pretty much nothing happens. It’s set in a big department store in Sydney, Australia, in 1959, and you get a good look at department store culture. The title refers to the requirement that the female sales personnel wear black while on the floor.

It got me thinking about a big department store where I worked during college in the 1960s. When I first started there, the salesladies were indeed required to wear black. Later that changed, but for years, the female staff were still not allowed to wear slacks-- even a nice pantsuit wasn’t permitted. (But then at my college, women were not allowed to wear slacks anywhere on campus except in your room or on the playing field. That rule was changed in the fall of 1969.)

But I digress. In those days, before even the heyday of malls, a visit to the big department store was An Event. The ladies of the house might even have gotten dressed up with heels, hats, and gloves before venturing downtown. The visit was extra special at Christmas time, when the windows would be decorated, and there was likely a Toy Wonderland somewhere in the store that let to Santa and a chance to reveal your Christmas wishes. Even those too young to experience this will have seen it in *Miracle on 34th Street. *

There were usually several restaurants on the premises, including at least one Ladies’ Tea Room, which featured delicate chicken, avocado, mayonnaise-type dishes for the sensitive palates of the fairer sex. Not that those ladies didn’t light up their Virginia Slims and puff away as soon as the coffee arrived-- in demitasse cups, of course.

There was a festive air for the staff, too. If you had worked there long enough, you knew lots of people-- it was a village within the complex of departments, storerooms, elevators, escalators, basements… with all the attendant politics, romances (illicit and otherwise), parties, sad departures, etc.

It took only a generation for all this to be displaced by malls, which are themselves now practically obsolete. Hey-- I’m the queen of online shopping. I get amazon deliveries several times a week. But sometimes I think of “going downtown” to do Christmas shopping… and I miss it.

2

"Ground floor: perfumery
Stationery and leather goods
Wigs and haberdashery
Kitchenware and food
Going up

First floor: telephones
Gents’ ready-made suits
Shirts, socks, ties, hats
Underwear and shoes
Going up

Second floor: carpets
Travel goods and beddings
Materials and soft furnishing
Restaurant and teas
Going down"

Theme to “Are You Being Served?” - a British sitcom about life in the clothing department of a multistory department store

3

One of the highlights of the year when I was a child was going Christmas shopping with my grandmother. We would drive up from San Jose (an unrecognizably different place then) to San Francisco, and walk around looking at the animated Christmas displays in all the store windows, and we’d always have lunch at the Woolworth’s lunch counter. At that time San Francisco was always referred to as The City; it was rather a formal place, and one always dressed one’s best to go there. The climax of the trip was the City Of Paris department store Christmas tree, which rose up four stories inside the atrium of the store. It was purely glorious and very special.

4

I was thinking that I had never been to one, until I remembered that I had–in the 1980s there was a multi-story store that had once been a cotton mill–probably more of a mall than a department store, though. Only went there once, and all I really remember is a store on the ground floor that sold nothing but Clemson Tigers and Carolina Gamecocks items and also had in a display caseTV watches for sale for $500. The former mill former mall is now condos.

5

Perfect thread in which to mention Liberty Department Store and Harrods, in London.

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My mother remembers that when I was a little kid, the Macy’s store in New Haven (and the local Malley’s store next door) were the nicest places in Central Connecticut to shop. And she remembers the same thing as the OP; that people dressed up to go shopping.

Once, when I was little, about two or three years old, my parents drove to New York to shop at the big Herald Square Macy’s store in Manhattan. My father parked the VW Bug outside (this was when it was still possible to find parking in mid-town Manhattan) and they went inside, while I was asleep in the backseat. Later he came down to move the car, to find someone climbed into the car, apparently attempting to remove me from it. He yelled and scared them off. (I always said that I could have ended up adopted by the Rockefellers.)

7

Great show - miss it very much

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Just don’t ask for ladies lingerie
https://www.chronicle.com/article/He-Makes-a-Joke-She-Isn-t/243350

9

Although the City of Paris is gone, downtown San Francisco still has plenty of fully decorated multi-story department stores that have that holiday magic. I was in Bloomingdale’s yesterday, where you can take a selfie with a gigantic stuffed bear or in a giant ornament made of lights.

There are also the adopt a pet windows at Macy’s, plus plenty of lights and decorations at Saks, Neiman Marcus and other department stores that go all out for the holidays. You can’t get more festive than Macy’s Union Square.

10

When I was a kid in the '50s, there were no department stores in the suburbs, and I remember going downtown, where there were several, with my mom. She wore a hat (with a veil), heels, gloves, the whole bit. We even had lunch in one of the classy department store restaurants, which was all in art deco. I especially loved it at Christmas time, seeing all the mechanical goings-on in the store windows. I don’t remember sitting on Santa’s lap.

Years later, when I was in my 20s, I actually worked in the display department of a department store, including setting up those window displays. That job was a lot more work than people realize. You’re working in a very small space with very hot lights.

11

There is still one in Montreal, the Bay, which must be one of the oldest companies in North America (May 2, 1670 as the Hudson Bay Co.). AFAIK, Macy’s in NY and Strawbridge’s in Philly are still multi-storey dept. stores. The Nordstom’s in Bellvue Square, WA must occupy at least 4 storeys, but that is a part of a large mall which may not count. Not sure about their downtown Seattle store.

12

Most department stores near me, even in malls, are multi-story - at least 2 or 3. The ones I miss are the department stores that had everything, including books, toys and, in Macy’s, a magic shop.

They seem to have them in Europe. When I was in Berlin about 5 years ago there was one which reminded me of the good old days.

13

This reminds me of something:
In the lower elementary school grades, we had reading books consisting of lots of short stories, at complexity levels selected for each grade level. I had one such book, called “Streets and Roads”. One recurring theme was city-dwelling kids going with their families to visit Uncle and Aunt and Cousins out on the farm, and conversely the farm-dwellig kids going with their families to visit the Big City, always an exciting excursion!

In one such story, farm-dwelling look-alike twin kids visit a big department store and get lost, separated from their folks and each other. As they wander about the store, while Mother and Father and everyone else are frantically looking for them, there are repeated sightings of one or the other is far-flung places in the store, because nobody (other than Mother and Father) know that there are two of them that look alike.

In another story (I think it was a separate story), they sneak their pet kitten into the store, which of course gets loose and lost in the store. After much hunting, they notice a large crowd of people gathered on the sidewalk out front, around one of the big display windows. They find the display consists of a full bedroom set with a large bed, and the kitten fast asleep in the middle of the bed. Everybody, including the Department Store Management, is amused.

14

I’ve been to Harrods in London, and bought some new accessories for my tux. Loved the food halls, or course.

15

That rings a bell. I think I remember Streets and Roads. Both of us must be really old.

EEK! Here’s the whole series! I started first grade in 1954, so must have used a later edition of these. And it was in California, where you live.

16

I was in the advertising department of a major metropolitan department store back in the 1980s - really the last gasp of the big downtown department stores here. It really was like a small city. We had electricians, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and cooks. We had jewelry repair as well as jewelry, a complete dry cleaner (just for the merchandise, not for customers), a photography studio and darkroom, and other stuff you wouldn’t believe was there unless you were an employee.

17

I remember going shopping with my Grandmother to Stewart’s in Louisville. It seemed like a huge building to me at the time. We always ate lunch at what she called the tea room which I seem to recall was on the top floor. I was always thrilled to go up in either elevators or escalators when I was a kid. There were at least two entrances to the tea room depending on the size of your party and I always told my Grandmother which one was for us, as if she couldn’t count as well as I could.

18

Great topic for a thread.

When I first came to Boston, 50 years ago, there were five big department stores downtown: Jordan Marsh, Filene’s, Raymond’s, Gilchrist’s, and another I’m forgetting. Of course, none remain. Jordan’s was the best, a wonderful Christmas display, a bakery, even a record department not unlike the one depicted in the Marx Bros’ “The Big Store.” My girlfriend and I rode the trolley down there one day from Brighton and brought home a Jelly Roll Morton record. Later I worked in the accounting department at Filene’s, using an adding machine likethis one. I was by far the youngest and only male in the department. There were two old gals there who had known each other since childhood; one had “stolen away” the other’s sweetheart a million years ago. No love lost, but nevertheless they worked side by side all those years. Random memories…

19

Mentioning the adding machine reminds me of the pneumatic tubes that sales clerks used to send money up to the accounting department. By the time I worked there, they didn’t have them anymore (darn!). Our customers had “charge-a-plates”-- engraved metal cards a little smaller than today’s credit cards. The store had a fleet of delivery trucks and I worked in linens where the merchandise could be bulky. Customers would “charge and send,” and their sheets might be waiting for them by the time they got home. There was no lower limit on what you could send, and I can remember customers charging and sending a couple of washcloths.

20

Are there any department stores that still have elaborate mechanized Christmas displays in their windows? I miss those.

One time when I was a kid, my eldest sister took me shopping in the Loop. We went to Fields and decided to ride the escalator as high as it would go. The floors got more an more recherche as we went until finally we arrived at the anteroom of executive offices, where a pleasant but snooty lady told us we’d come too far.