What Department Stores Do You Miss?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
101

I loved KMart in its prime. I spent a lot of time and money in them.

For that matter, I liked the old full price, full service department stores. Part of this is because of nostalgic memories of going shopping with my grandmother, who was a shopaholic before the term was invented. She’d insist on going to Dallas in order to go to certain stores, and we’d conduct search and purchase missions. And we’d go to the store restaurant, which was NOT a fast food chain situated inside a store, and we’d get a real meal.

102

S.H.Kress and Co.

I worked at one while I was going to High School.

103

I miss L. S. Ayres, which was subsumed by Macy’s just a few years ago. I remember when I was a little girl and they still had hair salons and tea rooms. Sigh. I kinda yearn for The Day, before my time, when you could actually spend a whole day shopping at one.

104

I remember “Monkey Ward’s” along with Sears, Robinsons and May Company, probably the place my mother loved to shop best.

At the somewhat lower level… Zody’s.

105

Hill’s is where the toys are!

I spent a LOT of time in that store. Previous to it being a Hill’s it was a Woolco that my grandmother worked at, and later it became an Ames.

I also, remember Korvette’s. The local one was torn down to build a brand new Boscov’s (coincidentally, the one they filmed Mannequin in).

The big loss, though, was Woolworth’s, with Ward’s being a close second. I went to both places regularly with my grandmother, which explains a great deal about why they both went out of business, only old people shopped there.

106

Goldsmith’s, which was bought by Macy’s(or merged with Macy’s, depending on who’s talking), but it was dying for a while before that. At one time, they had food down on the bottom floor. The last couple of years it was Goldsmith’s-Macy’s. A lot of people still call the store Goldsmith’s.

107

I have fond memories of going to lunch at Weinstock’s with my mom. The cafe was down in the basement just at the bottom of the escalator. I always ordered the grilled cheese sandwich.

108

Around here - Fort Worth area - we’ve had a large number of local department stores that folded (or got gobbled up by a bigger chain.) over the years.

Leonard’s Department Store, in downtown Fort Worth, had their very own subway! Dillard’s bought them out in the mid-70s.

Monnig’s, also in downtown Fort Worth, one of the last, free-standing holdout department stores amongst the skyscrapers. Closed in 1990.

Stripling & Cox, bought out by Dunlap’s of Oklahoma in the 90s (stock quality plummeted but retained the S&C name) but eventually closed their last locations around 2005 or so.

Sanger Harris, (formed way back when from a merger between A. Harris & Co and Sanger Bros.) Got pretty successful, spread way beyond Texas at one point, but started struggling in the mid-80s and was sold to Foley’s. Which then became Macy’s.

Montgomery Ward, not a Fort Worth original, of course, but their 7th Street store was quite the city landmark, dating back to the 1920s, and inexplicably stayed open long after most of the other freestanding department stores had kicked the bucket. They had scaled back operations of the store considerably, and used the location as a distribution center for catalog sales and supplying the other local MW stores with stock, with only the first floor open as a Montgomery Ward retail location. It took a direct hit from a F3 tornado (!!) and was only temporarily closed. The company went into bankruptcy the next year though and it finally closed in 2001.

Edison’s, another of the “Service Merchandise” knockoffs that actually got bought by none other than Service Merchandise. Or else they closed, and SM just took their building, I don’t know.

Other than those, Fort Worth had one of the last remaining Woolsworth locations (in Ridgmar Mall) that had one of the attached sit-down restaurants. It was still open well into the 90s, though heaven only knows who was eating there. It looked completely empty every time I walked by. I think the restaurant closed first, then the store, but I couldn’t say exactly when. The last time I went into the store was 1994, and it had degraded to “Dollar General” quality, at best.

We had a handful of the Mott’s Five & Dime stores left standing when I was a kid, hanging on by their fingernails. I’m pretty sure they were all gone by the end of the 80s. Seems like most of the locations wound up turning into “dollar stores”, not that they serve the same needs, exactly.

109

I moved back to Fort Worth in 1988, and there were a couple of Mott’s left for at least a few years, but they were gone by the mid 90s at the latest. I used to love shopping there as a kid, and I’m old enough to remember when they sold tiny turtles in those places.

Leonard’s was an interesting place to shop, and the subway was a real bonus. The Tandy Center kept the subway going until recently. I used to park (free parking!) and ride the subway into the center, do a bit of shopping, and then hang out in the main library. Nowadays, I make do with branch libraries.

I miss the old local department stores. Target is very convenient, but if you shop in one Target, the next one will have about the same selection of merchandise.

110

We never went shopping much at Watt & Shand - it was a bit out of our price range - but I miss knowing that our big downtown department store was there. Downtowns are supposed to have department stores, and when every city worthy of the name had its own, that one was ours. We would sometimes go in there with our mother - I usually remember that we went to the men’s haberdashery department to get things for Dad. She would make sure we were dressed more nicely for that than if we were just going, say, to Woolworth’s for school supplies.

I also remember Santa arriving by hook-and-ladder truck, up to the roof of W&S, and then he’d slide down the chimney to the toy department in the basement! These things are pretty cool when you’re four.

The gorgeous old building was supposed to be incorporated into the white elephant known as the Convention Center, but as far as I know it’s just standing there, gutted and empty. :frowning:

Later I moved to Pittsburgh, where the downtown department store was Kaufmann’s - seriously, can you choose a better name for a department store? As far as I know the old store downtown is still a department store, but like so many others it’s been eaten by Macy’s now.

111

Here’s a link for you, Lynn:

Old FW

I believe Mott’s and their turtles were mentioned more than once, LOL.