I miss Service Merchandise, and an Indiana chain that was similar called Tepe’s.
I also miss a local drug store/five and dime called Harvey Mart.
Not Service Merchandise… they only used the SMC name. I was a manager for the “Sight and Sound” department (electronics) for about six years at a couple of their stores.
I loved it there for the most part, but the grind of retail got to me. I finally snapped when a store manager who lived in a trailer busted my butt for not building all the pre-fab furniture (while wearing a suit) for display along with everything else in running a department and said “you can do much better than this”… meaning I could run a store… just like him, that I realized I could do better. Within a month I was working for 50% more with incredible benefits in a totally different industry. 23 years later I haven’t looked back.
Every Friday after Thanksgiving I make it a point to relax somewhere in a Hot Tub and raise a toast to Mr. Compton in thanks for his advise.
Not quite a department store, but when I was a kid I thought Children’s Palace was much better than Toys-R-Us.
Ben Franklin’s, amazingly, isn’t defunct. It still exists.
http://www.benfranklin.com/default.aspx
Although, sadly, the one on Main Street in my home town has been closed for a few years now. As has every other one of their stores in New Jersey
Wanamaker’s, Wilmington- the Bear on the Swing! I hear tell he’s still around somewhere. I miss him.
Woolworths, more for a bizarre story involving my mother than any services it provided that Sears coudn’t provide.
(My mother was driving in downtown Lexington and had pulled up at a stoplight when an Egyptian woman lunged into her car. She yelled “My legs won’t go!” Mom drover her around the block a couple times before she figured out that the woman wanted to go to the old Woolworth store to buy towels. She had a son who was studying at the University of Kentucky and was worried about his housekeeping skills. After helping her get the towels, my mother dropped her off in a place where she could safely get back to her son’s dorm. )
Us kids were rather surprised when we got home from school and Mom said “Guess what! I got kidnapped by an Arab!” I’ve still got a picture of that old Woolworth.
Growing up, the place to shop was Spiegler’s. They had it all - clothing, housewares, and even a Scout Shop where everyone in town would go for their uniforms, canteens, and whatnot. Chances were excellent that Mr. Spiegler himself would attend to your needs in that department.
Back then, Sears & Roebuck was a Destination, and pretty much reserved for those times when Dad needed a tool that the local Ace Hardware did not have.
Looks like the Spiegler family has died off and the store closed for good in 1992.
Cleveland: Higbee’s and Halle’s. Also O’Neil’s, which was acquired by Kaufman’s which was acquired by Macy’s.
In Canton there was Stern & Mann, a very fine, high-quality store founded in 1887. They closed in the early '90s.
I’m from Youngstown, but came to Cleveland periodically with my grandparents as a young lad.
Which of these two had the wooden escalators? Having only seen the metal variety, these fascinated me. I also recall eating in the massive restaurant on the upper floor of one of them…I think that was Higbees, and the special youth meal they served that was brought in some kind of a weird little chest of drawers (seriously, I’m not making this up!).
In Youngstown, we had two large department stores downtown, Strouss and McKelvey’s. Just as with O’Neil’s, the former was acquired by Kaufmans, who closed the downtown store and concentrated on the mall locations sometime in the 1980s. (By the way, Mahoning Valley residents inevitably referred to this store as “Strouss’s,” never Strouss.)
McKelveys also began under local ownership but was eventually bought out by Higbees and closed. Both of the downtown stores were wonderful, six-floor affairs (Strouss also had a mezzanine) that carried just about everything. I have fond memories of going there as a young lad with my mom, riding the elevators and escalators, getting “lost” and having my name announced on the P.A. system so Mom could come and find me (this seemed no great cause for concern at the time…can you imagine the panic it would bring today?).
Definitely Service Merchandise.
When I was a kid, though, we used to go to Meyer’s Thrifty Acres. I remember they had scavenger hunts for kids where they’d give away goldfish. I miss that.
Not that I really miss them, but here are some I remember liking to shop at:
In Nashville:
Harvey’s
Cain-Sloan
Castner Knott
Spartan
Zayre
In Birmingham:
Pizitz
Loveman’s
There’s an old thread I started sveral years ago about “dime stores” that mentioned some already listed in this thread.
Before there was Service Merchandise, at least in my neck of the woods, there was Sam Solomon Co.
It was an interesting place to shop.
I can confirm this. There’s an open Ben Franklin about ten miles from where I live.
Toys R Us was originally called Bargain Town 'round these parts.
And Service Merchandise isn’t completely gone; there remains a vacant SM, complete with intact sign, not far from me.
How about Forest City / Handy Andy?
Builder’s Square?
Wrigley’s?
A & P?
Chatham?
Great Scott?
Packers?
Topps?
Might be fun comparing notes with Dime Stores started 02-10-2007, 10:39 AM.
I remember Grant’s in fact we still have couple of LPs with their price tags on the cover $2.98. I also miss Masons which is not on the linked list from Wiki, maybe that chain was too local in nature.
Meijers Thrifty Acres is still going strong although they seem to have minimized the “Thrifty Acres” tag.
BTW, I mentioned Service Merchandise upthread and described it as a catalog showroom, but it occurred to me that some people here may not be familiar with those types of stores. Service Merchandise had a print catalog, of course, and you could order stuff from there for delivery. But they also had their showrooms, in which each item from the catalog was on display, but the merchandise you could actually buy wasn’t on the floor. Instead, they had clipboards throughout the store with order forms on them. You filled out the order form and submitted it to the cashier. Once you paid for the item, they sent the order to the back room where the merchandise was kept. (I think originally they used pneumatic tubes to get the orders to the back, but later switched to computers. Pneumatic tubes were more fun though.) Then you waited by the order pickup desk to receive your merchandise, which came down a long convener belt from the back room. It was actually kind of exciting to see the stuff you’d ordered coming down the belt.
According to Wikipedia, one advantage of this business model was the lower amount of shoplifting, since the merchandise was unavailable until it was paid for.
Circuit City originally operated on a similar system.