I’ll be mentioning a number of chains already mentioned…
Walmart wasn’t exactly responsible for killing “main street” retailers around here, IMO. In Indianapolis, discount stores as a category mostly impacted low-end department store chains, five-and-dimes, and (once supercenters became the norm) supermarket chains, and the majority of the shakeout occurred before Walmart even came to town in the late 1980s… Locally, Walmart is mainly responsible for knocking out the underperforming discount chains and a single grocer, Cub Food.
Wm. H. Block, Lazarus, and LS Ayres were the three prominent local/regional department store chains which disappeared. Block was a mid-level chain, JC Penney-like. When downtown Indy became a ghost town in the 1970s (thanks to white flight and suburban malls), all of the “flagship” downtown locations of the chains suffered. Bigger chains either closed up shop downtown or limped along with the underperforming store, but Block was small and local, and could ill-afford the financial impact, and they limped along until going out of business in the early 1980. The art deco Block tower is now a luxury apartment tower, and the suburban mall locations went to Montgomery Ward. Lazarus and LS Ayres were two nearly-identical Macy-like chains; Federated rebranded Lazarus as Lazarus-Macy’s and then just Macy’s in the 1990s/2000s, and shortly after bought out LS Ayres. In Indianapolis, since Lazarus and Ayres typically were anchors at every mall, Macy’s simply shuttered all of the Ayres locations.
Montgomery Ward came and went in about 20 years, moving into vacated Block mall locations in the mid 1980s, and shutting down ~2000. Service Merchandise had both mall and stand-alone locations from at least the 1960s until their 2004 bankruptcy… they should have shut down at least 15 years before. Sears Catalog Showrooms held on until the early 1970s, JC Penney Showrooms until the early 1980s, Green Stamp Stores the late 1970s. The Warehouse Club opened in the early 1980s, eventually being purchased by Walmart to expand their Sam’s Club chain.
Murphy Mart, Woolco, Ayr-Way, Venture, Hills, Zayre, Value City, and Ames all had local discount stores. Ayr-Way was fairly successful, a three-state regional started by LS Ayres; it was absorbed by Target (increasing Target’s size overnight by nearly 50%) and marked Target’s expansion into Indiana. Murphy Mart (run by GC Murphy) shuttered its Indianapolis sites in the early 1970s, Woolco (by Woolworth) in the late 1970s. Zayre hung on until being bought by Ames in 1990, who backed out of Indianapolis just a few years later in one of their periodic brushes with bankruptcy. Hills made a big splash when they debuted in Indianapolis in the mid 1980s, but stores were allowed to get run down, and they left in the early 1990s prior to the national chain being purchased by Ames (which led to Ames’ final brush with bankruptcy). Venture came and went in a couple of years, moving into vacated Hills stores and then closing in a couple of years. Value City just left in 2008, although the Value City Furniture spin-off is still around. (Interestingly, in small towns near Indianapolis, a chain called Alco is doing fairly well, following the same small-town-only strategy that allowed Walmart to become a juggernaut in the 1980s…)
Of five-and-dimes, Kresge (the “K” in Kmart) and Ben Franklin disappeared in the mid 1970s, while Woolworth and GC Murphy stayed until the bitter end. Woolworth hung on to their mall locations until 1997, and Murphy was purchased by Ames in 1985 and then run into the ground and sold off-- the local stores hung on until 2000 or so.
