These day and night photos are of a new Sears store opened in Daytona Beach, Florida in 1955. The store was located at the intersection of Beach Street and 3rd Avenue, just off of the west end of the Broadway Bridge (U.S. 92, which traverses the Intercoastal Waterway) and across from Riverfront Park. The building still exists.
The last two photos are detail shots of two of the store entrances showing the famous “Satisfaction Guaranteed or your money back” slogan, which graced Sears entrances through at least the early nineteen-seventies. Many examples of this can still be seen on Sears stores today.
This is a different kind of Sears structure than I am used to seeing. Great!
ReplyDeleteThis is more of a medium sized store, but still has very nice attention to detail. I wish the night shots were in color, but oh well.
ReplyDeleteSears stores kept using the “Satisfaction Guaranteed or your money back” slogan on entrances into the 1990s. They’re mostly gone now, as you said, but I can think of a few that lasted until about 2000.
ReplyDeleteThis store reminds me a lot of a store I had to pretty much desecrate form this era. It was a 1957 Sears Town in Roanoke, Virginia, and I was working as an intern architect on a project to expand the building. A third level was added and most of the details from the old store had to be sacrificed because the client was unwilling to pay to continue them to the third level, and not particularly excited about how the building looked originally.
It was not my proudest hour, because I really, really liked the old building, which in its heyday had a lot of the same details as the featured store, right down to the script logo.
The Rome, GA Sears was a similar sized store, only it lacked the script logo, as was the old Marietta, GA Sears. The Rome Sears was still in its location until moving to Mt. Berry Square in 1991.
ReplyDeleteThe Marietta Sears was located across from the infamous "Big Chicken" KFC, after Sears moved to Town Center Mall in 1986, the location served time as Rich's Furniture Store. The Sears Outlet in nearby Smyrna, GA in the Belmont Hills Shopping Center was an example of this format in a strip center. It survived as Sears Outlet from 1973(Sears opened in Cumberland Mall, Atlanta's largest mall at the time), until 1994 or so, when Sears eliminated its outlet stores.
These stores could have been the prototype for what Sears Essentials should have been, but instead Sears Essentials is a Kmart with a cheap paint job.
Steven - I just put on a post that includes a 1958 pic of a (and I'm assuming the) Roanoke store. Hey, you did what you had to do. No worries! :)
ReplyDeleteAnonymous - I wish I'd seen the two stores you described, especially since I have family in both Rome and Marietta. My Mom's family is from Calhoun and my Grandparents moved from there to Kennesaw in 1966. I've spent a lot of time over the past 40 years there, but sadly missed the Sears stores. I remember when US41 was the main drag before they finished I-75 in the mid-70's. I remember the Big Chicken (glad they saved it) and Munford's Majik Market, and that's about it!
Thanks for the comment-
Both stores still stand so maybe I can snap some pics sometime. I would be a chance to see what has become of them. The last time I saw the Marietta store, it had been painted green and white, matching Rich's color scheme. Downtown Rome has some interesting architechture, old JC Penneys, Kessler's, and Belk Rhodes buildings as well the free-standing ex-Sears and its close to the old Riverbend Mall, which the old Belk is the last original building in the redeveloped center.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Rome is home to the only remaining Super Kmart in Georgia, and its does fairly well and I wouldn't be surprised that it someday morphs into a Sears.
Probably the oldest Kmart in operation in Georgia is located near the Big Chicken, I think it was the third Kmart to open in the Atlanta area. Cobb Parkway and South Cobb Drive, Atlanta Street(Old US 41), and Bankhead Highway(US 78/278) provide plenty of vintage postwar suburban retail strips in various stages of decline and preservation(aka hideously renovated to appear modern).
The old Ponce de Leon Sears near Downtown Atlanta still stands, having served as City Hall East for most of the past decade and will likely become loft apartments or condos in the near future. It was both a retail store and distribution center for Sears in the southeast.
I remember shopping in that Daytona Sears for school clothes back in the early 70's when $50 could buy a ton of clothes
ReplyDeleteI remember this Sears! I used to shop there as a little girl. Penney's and Furscotts and Lerner were downtown more. They used to have toilet displays in this store, and my brother used one once. We were young.
ReplyDeleteIt's now a tag office. I liked it better as Sears!
That night shot of this Sears is absolutely gorgeous.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous - I agree - much more dramatic than the day shot.
ReplyDelete