The Future of the Department Store
A century ago in cities all over the country the downtown department store was the place to go shopping. Wikipedia defines a department store as:
a retail establishment which specializes in satisfying a wide range of the consumer’s personal and residential durable goods product needs; and at the same time offering the consumer a choice multiple merchandise lines, at variable price points, in all product categories. Department stores usually sell products including apparel, furniture, home appliances, electronics, and additionally select other lines of products such as paint, hardware, toiletries, cosmetics, photographic equipment, jewelery, toys, and sporting goods. Certain department stores are further classified as discount department stores. Discount department stores commonly have central customer checkout areas, generally in the front area of the store. Department stores are usually part of a retail chain of many stores situated around a country or several countries.
The next to last sentence above is an important distinction – central checkout for discount department stores (Target, Wal-Mart, K-Mart, etc) versus a check out at in each department. As the population transitioned from streetcars to cars purchases per trip could get larger. But they’d need parking lots to hold the cars. Traditional downtown stores opened free-standing stores outside the central business district and eventually they anchored open-air & enclosed malls.
I grew up in Oklahoma City. In the early 1970s I’d go shopping with my mom at suburban locations of TG&Y, Otasco, and Sears.  Crossroads Mall opened 8 days before my 7th birthday on 2/17/1974. At only 1.7 miles from my house I would often bike there in later years. We never went to downtown. I assume a department store(s) existed downtown, I just never saw one.
Retailing has changed dramatically over the last 100 years and even since 1974. The 3-4 anchors at Crossroads Mall have all closed. Target is huge. Wal-Mart is bigger. People buy ketchup by the gallon at stores like Sam’s Club & Costco. Amazon.com is a retail force.
In the last year and a half I’ve been to the Macy’s store in downtown St. Louis numerous times. At just 10 blocks to the East it is the closest big store to me. But most often I go to visit the two restaurants contained within, not to shop. Clothing is the item I’ve most often purchased from traditional department stores. When I think of buying housewares, furniture, or electronics I don’t think of the traditional department store. But I don’t even buy clothing at these stores. Doesn’t matter to me if they are downtown or anchoring a suburban mall, the department store just isn’t the place where I like to shop. Build me a downtown Target, however, and I will be there. .
I can’t be the only one that thinks this way. Does the traditional department store, downtown or not, have much of a future?
– Steve Patterson
I would love to see an urban designed Target in downtown. Minneapolis has one and Chicago has one in the South Loop.
I still prefer the variety of shops that a mall can provide space for but have more times than not disliked how such variety is organized-presented. The open mall concept is a step in the right direction but too often is surrounded by what mall owners consider to be one of their major assets – surrounded by large-free parking lots.
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A mall called The Galleria was recently opened in Poznan, a city known as the historical center of trading (half way between Paris & Moscow) and it demonstrates how different shopping can be. First of all there is no surrounding parking lot as it was built below the ground surface and is NOT free. But get this, it is built next to a large public park with a large lake. Families can go shopping together but when the father-children have had enough, they can simply walk into a large green space and enjoy life without crossing a street! On the lake are swimmers, sail-boarders, kayaks, row boats, canoes, etc. Inside the Galleria are restaurants with views of the lake and the large green park instead of a big large asphalt parking lot serving as a heat island.
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Yes Steve you must get out and see how much better these designs are made in cultures that care more about people than cars… they make us look really inferior. In this area we have such opportunities but we lack leaders-developers with vision. Think small, live small is the Lou region motto.
I wonder how much food spoilage and waste occurs with those out-sized containers. Buying what one needs, and not what one wants, would seem to be a more prudent and practical way of supplying your household. I will never shop at a Wal-Mart. I can’t shop at an entity which has contributed to the disinvestment in our country’s industrial and manufacturing infrastructure. Of course, Target, et al, are simply hanging on to the coat-tails created by Wally World. Goods made for pennies on the dollar in China, sold at the same price, or higher, as they were when the same priducts were made here. Three million manufacturing jobs alone, were lost during the Bush years. All of those high wages, gone. Well, the vast majority of that wealth has gone back to the corporations which farmed out the manufacturing. You can’t have a consuming middle-class without wages which can buy the crap which a capitalist system produces. Henry Ford, virulent anti-Semite though he was, knew this. That’s why he started to pay his workers $5 a week in the thirties. Man, did he piss off his corporate buds. But, he was correct. Yeah, Wal-Mart, no thanks. Thrift, resale, repair, or do without. Still, resisting the corporate propaganda, ie., marketing and advertising/PR, is difficult. How do you deprogram millions upon millons of brainwashed “consumers”?
Not in its traditional form, only if it continues to evolve to meet consumers’ tastes (can you say collar stays and polyester jumpsuits)? But that holds true for ANY retailer, big or small. The list of failed brands is endless, including Venture, Circuit City, Burger Chef, Burger Queen, etc., etc. And while most of us like to dis WalMart, in the early days, all they sold was made in America. They only evolved into the retail arm for China because that’s how their customers voted, with their billions of dollars, spent there every year!
Malls, the enclosed kind, are actualy a dying breed, even around here (Crestwood and North County certainly aren’t long for this world). Nationally, I’m not sure if the number is 0, 1 or 2, but I think only one new enclosed mall opened last year (before the market crashed), and obviously nothing new will be opening this year. What’s currently “in” is the lifestyle center, like the new one out in Wentzville and what Boulevard St. Louis aspires to
Now a question for the older locals – has Catholic Supply always been at Chippewa and Jamieson, or was that structure originally built as a department store?
The Catholic Supply building was originally Biedermann’s (spelling?), a furniture retailer. Lammert’s, another furniture retailer, was located catty-corner (on the SW corner) in an attractive stylized “Georgian” building that was demolished for the present mini-strip center.
Interesting questions for sure. As a previous contract employee for a major St. Louis Dept. Store Co., One must wonder if life would have been different for them if they would have continued on the path of Venture Stores and what it brought to the table. As a child, much of my original purchases with my own money was spent at the Venture Store, later to become Kohls at Olive and 270.
In retrospect it had a similiar feel to a cross between Target and KMart, somewhat upscale. Since I didn’t see a Wal Mart until I was in my late Teens, It seems there was much time to dominate the scene. None of this was to be, Venture was later spun off and summarily died ten years later. Lack of leadership?
The same man who founded Target for Dayton Dry Goods went on to help May Co. of St. Louis get Target going and only after that did he help Sam Walton invent the warehousing concept in retailing. Makes you wonder what could have been for MAY CO. in St. Louis if this one man would have risen to a higher rank within our now defunct MAY Co.
Interesting article today on dying on malls. Surprisingly Crestwood Court, Jamestown, and Northwest Plaza are not mentioned.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Americas-Most-Endangered-usnews-1952033275.html?x=0&.v=1
I purchase the majority of my clothing Downtown at Macy’s and will continue to do so indefinitely.
Steve.. interesting post. I believe that old style department stores like the downtown Macy’s could have a future if there was a major infusion of creativity in what they did with their space. For example, at the downtown Macy’s, instead of hiding the restaurants, why not bring them down to the first floor and have dining visible from the windows. Maybe even during nice weather open it up to the outdoors. And why not have an area for local artists to create art. People could watch, and the art could be sold inside the store. That might even include local fashion. And maybe have a small fresh food area with local produce – a little farmers market.. again on the ground floor. And why not have a “children’s world” inside, with jungle gyms or things like that for the kids to play on. Maybe also have a pet area… people love coming and looking at animals. All of these things would give people things to do inside a department store, drawing them in and keeping them longer. The people running those department stores don’t seem to have had an original idea in years.
Catholic Supply used to be in a building at Hampton and Chippewa. The CS building was a smaller version of Hampton Village across the street. It and a nasty old Dobbs at the corner were demolished to make way the shiny new Walgreens and Dobbs stores. A couple of art deco apartment buildings were demolished as well.
Nice post Bill. The activity you described is similiar to the discussions I have had with people on the subject. I absolutely agree with the concept, even if the particulars of what makes up that activity are not the same as yours. Again, thanks.
“A couple of art deco apartment buildings were demolished as well.”
These were beautiful — I live behind the three that remain.
st. louis neighbor, you are wrong about the apartment buildings. They were not demolished. Thank God! That idea amazed me that Walgreens would be stupid enough to demolish those big apartment buildings with at least 12 units each. Those buildings left standing means guarenteed walk in customers. Why Walgreens thought they needed a biggeer parking lot I’ll never know. The lot they have is never filled. Just another typical big box idea where they just have one set plan and all stores and lots are built alike with no alterations to suite the neighborhood. But at least in this case they had to put up the colonial style cupola to match the rest of Hamton Village and as I said, the art deco apartments got to stay.
Bill – great ideas for the downtown Macy’s! That’s the kind of creative thinking we need to get downtown back on the right track.
Dennis – you are half right. Two art deco apartment buildings on the south side of Lindenwood were torn down. The buildings on the north side of the street remain. They were mirror images of each other, and somewhat hidden from view.
In an odd twist, while there were protests about the demolition of the art deco buildings for the new Walgreen’s, the new layout of the area increases the views of the remaining historic apartments behind the new Walgreens and Dobbs.
Here’s the history with pictures:
lost art decos
Whenever I visit my folks in Lawrence (which minus the KU stuff, it’s a pretty nice little town), we go to Weavers which is a very old family-owned department store. I have bought everything from BORN shoes to french cuff shirts for Dad to fancy perfume to kitchenware at that store. It is a great selection for “women of a certain age” and even stuff for the younger crowd. My brother told me they carry more brands that have good labor practices than most department stores.
That being said, I’ve most often gone to traditional department stores like JCPenney’s or Macy’s to buy homewares especially for wedding and baby shower gifts. And to be really honest, I love Penney’s. My dishes, small kitchen appliances, most of my work clothes, etc come from Penney’s. It’s conveniently located, carries well-made goods and I don’t have to stop at 5 different places.
I do love going shopping at Christmastime in Chicago. It’s so different than Saint Louis. I love hearing my dad recount his trips to Marshall-Fields (I even have a mug my parents scrimped to buy their first Christmas from there) and watching the trains in the window. My grandpa used to take us down to Famous Barr every year for new school shoes and to eat lunch.
@Dennis, the former space for Walgreens (now Famous Brand shoes) was just too small to accommodate the neighborhood and I think now it’s safer getting in and out of the building and I have been there recently when the lot was full.
@st louis neighbor it was unfortunate Catholic Supply had to move from that little spot next to the Cat clinic and Dobbs. Somehow the whole tenor of the store changed when they moved. They had better book buyers at the old store. It’s like when they moved, they too became corporate with an abundance of First Communion dresses and nativity sets. Don’t get me wrong; I appreciate Catholic Supply but carrying more to fill a space instead of retaining quality never works.
st. louis neighbor, thanks for posting the pictures. I stand corrected. I didn’t rmember well enogh and thought maybe it was only a two or four family flat that had been back there. Judging from the pictures it looks like as many as 24 apartment units were lost. Now just how stupid on Walgreens part was that! Build a new store but bulldoze away your nearest customers. I imagine there were quite a few seniors in those buildings and Walgreens has a special nack for sucking them right into their stores. Oh well, it’s there loss.