The one I miss wasn’t bought up, it simply died. Fredrick & Nelson was wonderful. They had people who carried your packages to your car. They had a children’s breakfast with Santa at Christmas time. I miss the elegance.
And they had Frangos.
When they died, the basic Frangos were rescued by Marshall Fields. Unfortunately, they didn’t rescue the specialty products. They made a Frangos fruitcake that was sooo wonderful, even if you hate fruitcake.
Frangos still exist. They aren’t the same, even if they claim to use the same process.
I miss them. The new comglomerates aren’t the same, and it’s not just nostalgia.
Marshall Fields in Chicago and Jordan Marsh in Boston were local institutions. They had their own customs, styles, and ways of doing things that are obliterated in the conglomerates. The parades noted above are just one example. There was also community involvement – sponsorship, local relations, and so forth. Part of my scholarship money that enabled me to attend college came from Marshall Fields. I don’t think my daughter is likely to get any from Federated Department Stores/Macy’s.
I worked at a Kress store when I was in high school. Lunch counter, pet department, luggage, heated nuts at the candy counter! Also had a pinball parlor.
I’m not so awfully old, but I remember when L. S. Ayres still had a tea room. My grandma took me there when I was a little girl, and I felt so special and elegant. Sigh. No more tea room.
Well, to be fair, they closed it before they were bought by Macy’s.
I have happy fantasies about department stores I never knew, where there were things in the displays that you would get excited about, things you would actually… you know… buy. Marshall Field’s was the last holdout for that. Macy’s just doesn’t do it for me.
I’m still kinda sore over the loss of May Department Stores (Famous-Barr mainly), because it was one more big-company HQ that St. Louis lost. I guess the stores themselves were nothing to get too worked up over, though. I always thought of Famous-Barr as slightly upscale, and going there was usually a Christmas shopping excursion. The association with Christmas as a kid is probably the root of my nostalgia for them.
I miss the annual Dayton’s Holiday display, but that’s mostly because it’s one of those things I associate with Christmas and childhood, not because it was that big a deal, anyway.
(I moved away from the Twin Cities before the shift to Marshall Field’s took place–let alone the other stuff. And we never shopped much at Dayton’s, especially the downtown store. But visiting the annual holiday display was one of our family traditions).
When I was a kid the finer clothes came from O’Neill’s. It was a special time when mom could afford to shop for your school clothes there, instead of a thrift store. Felt like we’d finally arrived.
then they changed to Kaufman’s, now Macy’s.
and on the west coast, what happened to Nordstrom’s? same thing?
Macy’s just recently bought out Meier and Frank out here. And count me in with the Woolworth’s-missing people. Also G.C. Murphy’s, long gone, which I’m not sure was much of a chain outside western PA small towns, but it’s the first think I think of when I hear “Department Store.”
Here in Canada, I miss Eaton’s. In a lot of the shopping centres where Eaton’s had their stores, the Bay has moved in instead, it has not otherwise filled the void that Eaton’s left behind. Sigh.
It was a great store, with a long history-back to 1850! The stores had bakeies-they made the best blueberry muffins ever! Plus, Jordan’s had their own line of clothing, and the stores were lawys clean and well staffed. Several of my great aunts worked there-one for 50 years!
MACY’s are all the same… low end junk, with a few high end items. My question; why didn’t they retain the old names? Macy’s (now) doesn’t have any high-end associtaion-they look a lot like KMARTS
I really really miss Hecht’s. I’m surprised no one has mentioned it yet! It was my favorite - I have been going there my whole life. One of the local malls (Fair Oaks in Fairfax, VA) used to have a Hecht’s and a Macy’s, and now they have two Macy’s. It’s silly.
In Florida, Macy’s took over Burdines, which was the locally-grown “nice” department store. All of the Macy’s are still relatively high-end around here, though not quite as high as Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom’s.
Other than that, we still have Dillard’s, JC Penney (my personal favorite for affordable-but-nice men’s clothes), and Sears.
Hell, I’m still upset from when Snager merged with Harris in Dallas back in the 1950s!
But there were actual differences between all those old department store chains. One might have been more upscale, or a more trendy, than the other. One had a bakery, the other didn’t.
Thirty or so years ago in St. Louis, Stix (which was bought out by Dillards) had the reputation of being upscale, while Famous-Barr (later bought out by Macy’s) was more middle-class. Their various departments had different brands, styles and prices. And there was something uniquely local about the old stores. The old Italian and German populations had no trouble finding the clothes they felt most comfortable wearing.
I really don’t think Grant’s counts as one that was bought out by Macy’s. (And we’re both dating ourselves to admit remembering the store while it was in business.)
Actually, there is still a tea room: L.S. Ayres Tea Room at the Indiana State Museum.
No, it’s not the same (although they still have chicken velvet soup), but at least the state recognized that it was a historic place and should be saved, in some fashion.
I don’t miss the stores per se, but the OP makes me nostalgic for a Baltimore that was fast disappearing when I was a small child in the late '60s-early 70s. When I was 6 or so, I remember going with my mom downtown (on the bus, my mom didn’t drive them) to the Hoschild-Kohn store in downtown Baltimore. Of course she was dressed to the nines, because that’s what you did back then (although it was starting to fade even then).
I remember when my mom’s sister went with us and they were doing that trick with me when each adult grabs an arm and pulls the child off the ground, so I must have been pretty small.
I guess the other thing that bothers me a bit is that all the stores are the same now. In whatever city you go to, there are the exact same stores and restaurants, serving the exact same food and merchandise. Back in the day there probably not the array of stuff to choose from that we have now (in fact, I’m sure of it), but at least the stores were local, and reflected the city they were in, rather than the corporate culture
