A Merry Christmas to All

Another evening of Christmas shopping winds down at one of America’s earliest and most famous shopping centers. This is Framingham, Massachusetts’ Shoppers World, pictured here all-decked out for the season in the early 1970’s.A two-story outdoor shopping center, opened in 1951 and anchored by a magnificent “flying saucer-like” Jordan Marsh department store on one end (which is visible in the

It's Beginning to Look a Lot...

… like Christmas!Ev'rywhere you go -Take a look in the five-and-tenglistening once againWith candy canes and silver lanes aglow It's beginning to look a lot like ChristmasToys in ev'ry store But the prettiest sight to see is the holly that will be On your own front door A pair of hopalong boots and a pistol that shootsIs the wish of Barney and Ben Dolls that will talk and will go for a walkIs

The Nativity at Sears, Early 1960's

An elaborate nativity scene tops off a Northern California Sears store, in a circa 1962 photo from Display World magazine. King Herod’s palace looms in the background. In real life, the Herodium, as it was called, was only three miles or so away from Bethehem, so the artistic depiction makes sense. It’s a very nice contrast to the typical Santa/Christmas Bells/Snowflakes themes most often seen on

Christmas at Chris-Town, 1962

Eight-foot tall toy soldiers guard the facade of one of America’s most fondly-remembered malls, Phoenix’s Chris-Town, in this 1962 photo. The soldiers (and the candles, also eight feet tall) represent a type of decor element that is seen less and less today. Both the soldiers and the candles were manufactured by General Plastics Corporation, a Marion, Indiana-based firm that supplied Christmas

'Tis the Season of Good Taste!

A pastoral holiday scene adorns the backwall of an IGA supermarket, circa 1968. It’s a tasteful depiction of a snow-flocked, apple-bearing cypress tree, standing proud while a lone reindeer looks askance from the side.Clearly, good taste wasn’t strictly confined to the holidays at this particular IGA - just look at the clean lines of the clock/light fixture/directory sign to the right. I’d love

Save At Venture...Save With Style!

A new field of study has emerged in the past several years. Our most esteemed institutions of higher learning – Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Triton and others - have been uncharacteristically slow to recognize it and develop the appropriate degree curriculums for it. This lack of formal recognition has not deterred those who carry on this vital work, however.I’m talking about the Retail

It's the Montgomery, Not the Ward

“Well the first thing you knowMobil had some bucks to spare,Kinfolk said "That drillin’s such a bear!"Said "Stores and catalogs are where you oughta be"So they loaded up the stockAnd they bought Montgomeryyy…Ward, that is…..”(With apologies to Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. And anyone still reading this post.)To be sure, the biggest story of the 1970’s for Montgomery Ward was their

"Have A Nice Day" at Wards!

“Like, wow, Montgomery Ward!” read the headline in a March 1970 Business Week article. The article chronicled Wards’ quest for relevance with the coveted 18 to 34 age bracket, and by all appearances they were starting to break through. These efforts encompassed both of Wards’ main lines of business – the legendary catalog and the (now almost exclusively mall-based) stores.On the

The Newly Repackaged Wards

More than eight years had passed, and during that time Montgomery Ward had been largely successful in reinventing its image. Once best known for dowdy downtown stores with green awnings, few services and a highly eccentric company president, the public perception of Wards now reflected an operator of large, modern stores with auto centers, charm schools and fashion shows - a good fit for

A Well Planned Safeway, 1966

Many of the retail chains featured on this site were known for an iconic look – a combination of architecture, signage and interior decoration that made their stores instantly recognizable. While this remains largely true today, one could argue that it reached a peak during the 1960’s.Among the foremost of these would have to be Safeway, with its “Marina” design. They had a handful of other

The Subtleties of Signage

I don’t know about you, but I find the gaudy retail signs of recent years to be a real turn-off. Today's four-foot tall wooden eyesores or stacked-stone monstrosities always leave me longing for a simpler time - when understatement was the word of the day.Take the sign shown above, for example. Notice how the gentle earth tones, orange and green, blend seamlessly into the surrounding landscape.

A Charming Day at Wards

A brief look inside some typical Montgomery Ward stores of the mid-60’s, as shown in some official publicity photographs. They’re staged, of course, but they provide a nice feel for the Wards shopping experience of that era. Much has been said and written about the services that most “fine” department stores once provided to their clientele. Home delivery (for even the smallest orders),

Wards in Huntington Beach, 1966

The circa 1965 artist’s rendering above shows the Montgomery Ward store that opened the following year at Huntington Center, an indoor shopping mall located in Huntington Beach, California, at the intersection of Edinger Avenue and Beach Boulevard, near the San Diego Freeway. Huntington Beach, located in Orange County, is officially nicknamed “Surf City USA”, a nod to its 8.5 mile long beachfront

Ah, 4th of July Memories!

One of the great things about our national holiday is the opportunity to enjoy a picnic meal and play games in the great outdoors. Something about that fresh air combined with the smell of good food – you just can’t beat it. Our family is no different – we love it!And where do you think we went yesterday – some lame state park or other place like that? No way!We went right down to our local

The Fair Comes to Wards

For 85 years, Montgomery Ward had been a landmark Chicago institution. The irony was that after all those years, the company maintained only one retail store within the Chicago city limits (inside a portion of their home office complex) and a minimal presence in the greater metropolitan area (a medium-sized store in La Grange and a few others). In 1957, with Wards in an expansion mode for once,

Wards Strikes Up the Band

The weather couldn’t have been better on this sunny, sparkling Southern California afternoon. Excitement was in the air as the crowds gathered in. A speakers’ platform was in place, replete with the American flag and a group of men in suits, ties, carnations and broad smiles, beginning to take their seats near the dais. Soon the customary civic welcomes and corporate pledges would take place

Good, Better, Best...at Wards!

Thought I’d give linear thinking another shot and resume this long-suspended series on the history of Montgomery Ward. We left Wards just prior to 1960, when they were a couple of years into an exciting new building program, opening sharp-looking stores in new shopping centers all over America. This burst of activity followed a disastrous 17-year period in which the company opened not a single

A Trip to the Jewel Grand Bazaar

It happened only once, so despite the passage of time it stands out in my memory. It was the night our family broke from the routine. The night we ventured out and tried something new. The night we threw our grocery-shopping inhibitions to the wind. It was The Night of the Jewel Roadtrip.Sure, we had a Jewel Food Store right in the center of town. It was a late-fifties remodel,

The Room With The Finast View

Here’s an idyllic view of the model 1957 kitchen. Everything is perfect - the gleaming, modern dishwasher, the sleek metal cabinetry and Formica, the diamond-pattern curtains – right down to the pink Telechron clock on the wall.The table and counters are laden with the finest Finast foods – proud house brand of First National Stores, the late, great New England (and select other regions)

Ralphs Granada Hills Reloaded, 1965

I think most people would agree that where movies are concerned, sequels are rarely better than the original. Oftentimes they aren’t nearly as good. They tend to do well at the box office, however, because they usually feature well-loved characters and/or tried-and-true themes. Once in a while, though, a sequel will rise above the norm by adding a new, exciting dimension to the

A Truly Scintillating Publix

"1. The neon pylon and background wipe on and silhouette the letters." "2. When the wipe on is complete, the letters scintillate.""3. Then the neon wipes off, leaving only the scintillating letters.Scintillating letters go out and the cycle repeats."Yup, born too late.This is the Publix Super Market at Britton Plaza, 3838 Dale Mabry Road in Tampa, Florida, as depicted in a 1959 ad for

I'll Be All In Clover...

…and when they look you over, I’ll be the proudest fellow in the Easter Parade. *The “softer side of Sears” is very much in evidence here, many years before they adopted that as an advertising slogan. These photos, from Display World magazine, depict two of Sears’ 1961 Easter Season window displays as they appeared at the company’s larger stores (called class “A” units internally), which by

"First In Line" at Kmart

From 1975. Of course, three weeks later, these folks were covered with a foot of snow. But when the new Kmart finally opened, doggone it, they were first in line!You have to admire that kind of tenacity.

I'll Pick Up the Tab...at Jewel!

Here’s a Chicago-area night scene from the late 1960’s as depicted in a Foster and Kleiser promotional photo. Foster and Kleiser was a major outdoor advertising company. The billboard shown was hand painted, as many were as late as the 1980’s. Before that time, it was a very common thing to see billboards in various states of completion as one drove by.The product advertised was Tab, a

A&P in The Big Easy!

If any grocery store could lay claim to the term “landmark”, the one pictured above would certainly qualify. It’s the legendary A&P at the corner of Royal and St. Peter streets in the “Vieux Carré” (known to most of us as the French Quarter) section of New Orleans. Untold numbers of shoppers – locals and tourists alike – have filed past that red marble corner column through the decades.The store

Putting the "Pacific" in "A&P"

On May 2, 1930, A&P opened nine stores in the greater Los Angeles area, their first units on the West Coast. Seventy years after the company’s founding, the famous name – The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company – became a statement of fact, and of the long-awaited realization of a dream. An article in the previous day’s Los Angeles Times quoted A&P president John Hartford, who had

The Last of the Melting Snow - A&P '67

At last - the snow is all but melted, save for a few somewhat dingy looking piles here and there.Oh, I don’t mean today, when half the country has been covered with record snows. That could go on for weeks yet! I’m referring to the scene above, a 1967 snapshot photo (thanks to Mark) of the A&P supermarket in tiny Millerton, New York. Millerton is some 60 miles northwest of Hartford, very close

The Other Side of Harlem

...Harlem Avenue, that is. The photo above, from a 1976 issue of CTA quarterly, shows a group of people about to catch a southbound West Towns bus as it stopped on Harlem Avenue, directly in front of the North Riverside E.J. Korvette store and across the street from Berwyn’s Cermak Plaza. As mentioned in a series of Korvette posts on this site a while back, as a kid I found this circa-1965

The Art and History of Cermak Plaza

What in the world would ever cause a strip mall to become famous? Thousands of them have been built over the last 60 years. Because of their utilitarian nature and the relative ease of facelifting, remodeling or expanding them, a high percentage of them still stand. Over time, the "lucky ones", if such an analogy makes sense, continue to house "Class A" retailers - well-known

2009 : A Retro-Retrospective

Last year at this time, one of the sites I follow on a regular basis, Jess Cliffe’s Vintage Seattle, ran a very cool retrospective highlighting the more popular posts of the previous year. Upon reading this, the second thought that came to my mind was “Wow, he’s covered some great stuff this year!” The first was “Dang, I wish I’d thought of that!”So in the interest of originality, here goes – a

Happy New Year!

Happy 2010, and welcome as we launch a brand new year of Pleasant Family Shopping, where we take a look back at the destinations of everyday life – supermarket and discount store chains, department stores, and maybe even one or two of those wild new "indoor malls"!The thing is, even the “everyday” can be fascinating, when you look back at it and see how much even basic things have changed through