Happy New Year!

…and welcome as we kick off a new year of Pleasant Family Shopping, where we take a look at those places you’ll remember all your lives, though most have changed. Most forever, not for better, some are flea markets now, but some remain. I know you’ll often stop and think about them, and when you do, please stop by! (Apologies to Lennon and McCartney.)Our subject is retail chain stores of the

A Very Merry Christmas

From Christmas 1971, a beautiful night view of a Chicago department store legend – the Carson Pirie Scott & Co. flagship, a familiar sight on the corner of State and Madison Streets since 1899. (The store closed last year and is now being renovated for other uses.) The Louis Sullivan masterpiece, with its magnificent iron scrollwork façade, is a lily that certainly doesn’t need gilding. In my

Sears - Christmastime in the O.C.

“The sun is shining, the grass is green.The orange and palm trees sway.There's never been such a dayin Beverly Hills, L.A.But it's December the twenty-fourth,and I am longing to be up north”.--The usually omitted first verse of Irving Berlin’s classic song “White Christmas” Well, as you can see, it’s actually a bit overcast, but I’ll bet the grass is green. The orange groves were plowed up a

Dominick's in December - 1971

An inviting sight on a cold winter evening, Dominick’s Finer Foods, known to Chicagoans then and now as simply “Dominick’s”, was a particular favorite of our family around Christmastime, with its great holiday platters and Heinemann’s Butter-Ritz coffee cakes. Probably the biggest claim to fame for Dominick’s was its reputation for a superb selection of ethnic foods, from S. Rosen’s rye bread to

Next Stop - The Island of Misfit Toys!

…but first we need to stop and stock up on our Vitamin C for the long trip. And here’s the perfect place to do it – Von’s! Santa pops up through the corrugated chimney while two of his tiny (white, inflatable plastic) reindeer look on. They’re joined by an attractive woman sporting the West Coast equivalent of “big hair”. From 1962, exact location unknown.

A Wal-Mart Christmas, 1971

What to say about this one, my friends? Ok, how about the first three things that come to mind: 1. Those eerie Santa masks with large eye openings are great for hiding security cameras!2. The oversized promo film boxes that Kodak used to make look cool, even stapled to a wall!3. $9.94 per pound is a heckuva price for polyester!Any other ideas?

Woolworth's-America's Christmas Store

Here’s a busy scene at the downtown Houston, Texas Woolworth store, from 1964. For a great many Americans, Woolworth’s was “America’s Christmas Store”, just as the pictured Santa Claus banners say. Woolworth, like its variety store competitors, had moved beyond the 10 cents price point eons ago by this time, but most items carried were still fairly small ticket. The expanded format of the Woolco

I'll Have a Blue Christmas at Ralphs

“She thinks I don’t see her admiring that shag non-skid bath rug, the one that matches her outfit. I can hear her letting out a little sigh. She’s probably saying to herself ‘I’m sure he’ll buy me another diamond ring or a mink stole. I’ll do my best to smile and act surprised’. I pretend not to notice but I do, believe me. And this year I’m not gonna let her down. It’ll be a Blue Christmas at

New Shoes from Woolco

It's Christmas season 1966 in this Woolco shoe department. A fairly quiet scene, but maybe the rest of the store was busy. People don’t usually give shoes as gifts anyway, do they? We definitely want to look nice on Christmas Day though, so a new pair of shoes is a must. In this photo, it looks like everyone bought new outfits (including stylish hats) to shop for shoes! (at Woolco.) And you’d

A&P's Christmas in Toledo, 1926

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, so I thought I’d shift gears for a while with some holiday related posts.The photos above show the winners of A&P’s Christmas Display Window Contest, Toledo (Ohio) Division, from 1926. Up until the 1950’s, grocery stores generally featured a “window display” not dissimilar in concept to a fashion window in a department store. They usually consisted of

Kroger in the "Big D", 1965

These photos of the new Kroger at Dallas’ much-ballyhooed NorthPark Shopping Center were taken shortly after opening, which occurred in July 1965. They show the store’s entrance (the young girls are wearing outfits that don’t appear all that out-of-style today), the floral department, increasingly a standard part of supermarkets in upscale areas but by no means universal yet, the gourmet

L'Elégance du Kroger

Here is a set of photos of a beautiful lady, all decked out in the best 1957 fashions, engaging in some serious shopping. If you had seen her at home, getting into her car, you’d think she was headed to Bloomingdale’s, Saks, maybe Lord & Taylor. Actually, her destination is…..uh, …Kroger. (OK, I’m not at all sure those department stores were located in Kroger territories at the time, but

Kroger - Flossed in the Fifties

Around 1955, Kroger kicked its expansion program into high gear, going far beyond simply replacing existing small grocery stores with larger supermarkets. For the first time in a decade, the company moved back into an acquisition mode, buying three supermarket chains in three successive months. On May 13, Kroger announced its purchase of Henke & Pillot, an 83-year old Houston based chain of

The Postwar Kroger

In the decade following World War II, a number of key developments took hold in America’s chain grocery business. One was a marked increase in the amount of non-food items carried, particularly in the area of health and beauty products. Once limited to a few brands of soap and sometimes a handful of other basic personal care items, the forties and early fifties saw this area evolve into a