I believe JohnWanamaker’s earns a couple of links and special recognition as a once iconic retail establishment of the highest order, with many innovative “firsts” to its credit. My only regret is that I was born a little too late to experience Wanamaker’s early to mid-20th century heyday, as did my grandmother—often rhapsodizing poetic her frequent center city Philadelphia jaunts, by trolley, perhaps stopping off for a bowl of egg custard at Horn & Hardarts, to fuel up for the main shopping event. She’d spar with Gimbel’s, Strawbridge & Clothier and Lit Brothers before taking on the Heavyweight Champ, John Wanamaker.
Meeting “at the eagle”, passing through the Grand Court, listening to the magnificent Wanamaker Organ, eating in the Crystal Tea Room, bringing the kids to see the Christmas Light Show…this was the zenith of department store shopping, folks. Actually, it was not so much a mere place to shop, than a transcendent event destination where one also had the opportunity to purchase merchandise of interest, at their leisure.
I’d gladly be more frugal in saving money and make do with less stuff in general, if I could go back to the time before the ubiquitous discount mega-shopping boxes infested our suburban landscape. I long to return to the golden age of downtown department stores, where you were more likely to see fellow shoppers dressed to the nines than in curlers, t-shirts and stretch pants not quite containing super-sized buttocks.
Anyone know the current status of the Wanamaker organ? Sad to see it fall victim to the chain’s demise.
Woolworths, despite its collapse in the US long ago, only went out of business in the UK last December but has since resurrected itselfas an online-only business.
A few of the local branches were bought from the administrators and re-opened as Woolworth clones, including:
Like most such stories, apparently not really true:
There was an E.J. Korvette’s in North Brunswick, N.J. I used to get books there. They had a GREAT toy department – they had a long, plexiglas-covered display inside where theyt unpacked toys and put them on action display, especially around Christmas time.
I grew up in west Texas, and there was a chain (don’t think it was very large) called Gibson’s. For years, any empty building in my hometown was going to be a Gibson’s.
Anthony’s is another one that seems to have disappeared. Beall’s looked dead for a while, but seems to have replaced all the Anthony’s stores.
Hudson’s was bought out by Marshal Field’s, which eventually was bought out by Macy’s.
I think the general consensus was that Hudson’s turning into Marshal Field’s was a step down in quality, but MF turning into Macy’s was a step up again.
K-Mart is still around, but is in dire straits these days.
My mom worked for them for over 20 years and still was there when they went under. Venture was pretty cool from what I remember, pretty much a precursor to modern Target. And mom got to go to sample sales and come home with trash bags full of random stuff from Venture for a few dollars; that was always fun. Value City is in liquidation so I guess they’re gone. The one by our Target is closed. That place kind of sucked but it had it’s purpose. And now there is just a huge empty building.
one store not listed in that Wikipedia list was Modell’s Shopper’s World. Not to be confused with the current Sporting Goods store (although this site claims the Sporting Good place was an outgrowth of the original department store: Modell's - AbsoluteAstronomy.com ), this was a full-line department store, including a Supermarket. They erected one such store in East Brunswick, N.J. around 1970, and it was huge. It had an enormous parking lot, and on one side had one of those conveyor belt-like set of roller racks so you could send your goods out without a shopping cart into a protected area and simply drive your car over to pick them up.
It might have succeeded, except that
a.) It was located out of sight in a big Hole In The Ground
b.) It was surrounded by well-established department stores and supermarkets. In particular, Two Guys operated a giant department store-cum-supermarket right across Route 18.
There was also Consumers Distributing, which wasn’t really a department store but sold most of the same things. That went belly-up, which I suppose is good because it did so before it would have had the indignity of a miserable demise in the Internet era.
There are still at least a couple of stores that carry the K-Mart name. There’s one near where I work. I’m sure they’ll be gone before long. K-Mart has the same low-class reputation Wal-Mart has; they can’t possibly compete.
K-Mart’s other competitors, Target and Meijer, are more middle-class, and are much nicer places to shop.
I grew up in Johnstown, PA, which seems to be somehting of an elephant’s graveyard for chain stores, plus I had relatives in both the east and west of the state, so I remember the Pittsburgh and Philly-based chains as well. Ones I’ve actually been in and remember from my formative years (and later) include:
Ames (Zayre’s)
Fisher’s Big Wheel
Foleys (spent a bit of time in Houston as well)
Glosser Bros. (later Gee Bee)
Hills
Horne’s
G. C. Murphy
Kaufmann’s
Penn Traffic
Service Merchandise
Value City
Wanamaker
W. T. Grant
Woolworths
This thread, for some reason, is depressing me, apparently due to thinking about all the lost shopping opportunities. I kid you not, between my mom passing away in May '08 and Johnstown’s Value City closing later the same year, my former hometown is dead to me.
For many years in Utah we had a chain of department stores called Z.C.M.I (Zions Cooperative Mercantile Institution). It was actually started by the Mormon pioneers under the leadership of Brigham Young, because a lot of the merchants in those days refused to deal with the Mormons. It prided itself on being “the oldest department store in America.” The flagship store in downtown Salt Lake City was a local landmark.
Unfortunately, in 1999 the stores were sold to the May Corporation and renamed as Meier & Frank, then when May merged with Macy’s, they became Macy’s stores.
That causes confusion sometimes, because there is a locally owned chain of grocery stores all over the state called Macey’s (with an e), so you have to be careful if you tell someone you’ll meet them at Mac(e)y’s.