It would appear (according to this Wikipedia article) that this old store chain is no more.
I remember one (maybe more) in the 60s when I was in college or soon thereafter. At least one was in Birmingham at the time.
They had a jingle or singing commercial that I haven’t been able to locate online, but I feel confident that Brother Dave Gardner was mocking that little ditty when he did this nonsense rap (starts near 2:20 on Rejoice, Dear Hearts: Part 1) which I memorized and trot out every now and then to confound others when they seem to need such a thing.
Does any of this make any sense to you? Do you even remember Robert Hall?
I remember a Robert Hall store in my hometown up until the early 1970s when it quietly closed-no going out of business sale or signage, just open one day and closed the next. It used to stand next to the downtown Sears store. Both are long gone, demolished, and the minor league baseball stadium stands on the land where they used to be.
[I can’t seem to get the link to post here (grrrrr) today, but I googled Robert Hall jingle and got all sorts of them available on youtube]
I remember these in the 70s. There was at least one store somewhere in the Philadelphia area. One of the local schools had a building called Roberts Hall, which they jokingly called Robert Hall. That’s my entire memory of it.
I sure do remember Robert Hall – there was a store just up the street from us when I was growing up in the 60s. And I remember the jingle, which went something like this:
“Oh, the values go up, up, up
And the prices go down, down, down.
Robert Hall this season will show you the reason
Low overhead, low overhead!”
God yes, I remember Robert Hall. They had a reputation for selling the cheapest, shittiest clothes on the market. If you didn’t like a guy’s suit at work, you’d say, “Where did you get that, Robert Hall?”
I remember the jingle a little differently:
When the values go up, up, up
And the prices go down, down, down.
Robert Hall will show you the reason they give you
High qua-li-ty – E-con-o-my!
I don’t recall ever seeing their ads, but they had a store in the aging downtown area of my LA suburb in the mid 60s. I think the store died around 1975. Without much fanfare as I recall.
There was one in my neighborhood in the Bronx when I was growing up in the 1960s. I’m sure I got some of my jackets there. (I went to a parochial high school where, as young gentlemen, we had to wear jacket and tie.)
“She looks like she don’t know better
A case of partial extreme
Dressed in a Robert Hall sweater
Acting like a soap opera queen”
-Blondie
As a hijack and also a tie-in to the misheard lyrics thread, I’d never heard of Robert Hall or his sweaters until I looked up the lyrics because for years I thought she was singing “She looks like Chita Rivera . . .”
I got lucky. My mother was typical frugal-Polish and would have loved Robert Hall prices, but she couldn’t abide their disheveled stores, so we never shopped there.
Robert Hall used to advertise on White Sox games a lot. Draw your own conclusions about the White Sox fan demographic.
There was one where I lived in the late '60s. Never shopped there, but I walked past it on the way to the library and back. No idea if it was still in business when I moved to another state in '74.
I remember the radio ads, and there was one here in Schenectady when I moved up here, but I never bought anything there. There were none near me when I was growing up, and I didn’t buy many clothes when I was in college.