The Legend of the Great A&P Tea Co.

The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company is a New Jersey-based, and for the last thirty years, German-owned supermarket chain. As of today, according to their website, they operate 435 stores in six Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states (including a lone Washington, D.C. unit) under a number of different banners, including Super Fresh, Food Basics, The Food Emporium, Waldbaum’s, Pathmark and of course, A&P. The last couple of years have seen the company exit the Detroit and New Orleans markets, and after an 80-year presence there, the A&P banner is no longer to be found in Canada.

For many cities, the A&P story over the last several decades has been a sad one of retrenchment, and ultimately of disappearance. For those born in the last twenty years or so, unless they live in one of A&P’s current or recently vacated markets, chances are good they’ve only heard of A&P in passing - a brief mention in an American history class, perhaps, or a fond anecdote from an older relative.

It wasn’t always this way. As recently as the mid-1960’s, A&P was the largest retailer in America. Not just the largest supermarket chain – the largest retailer, period. Larger than Sears at the peak of its power. Larger than their nearest two competitors – Safeway and Kroger - combined. Responsible, to a great extent, for the very concept of the “chain store” itself. A part of daily life for Americans (and a fair amount of Canadians) from a multitude of communities, large and small.

The story of A&P begins in the mid-19th century, with two men, both named George, both natives of Maine, and both of whom eventually moved to New York to seek their fortunes. George Francis Gilman was born in Waterville, Maine, in 1826 to a prominent, wealthy family who owned a leather goods business. George Huntington Hartford, seven years younger than Gilman, was born in Augusta, to a farm family of far more modest means. Details on how the two men met are sketchy and somewhat contradictory in the various accounts I’ve read (not surprising given the event took place over 150 years ago, and the fact that stories like this tend to take on a mythical quality over time), but it is apparent that Hartford had worked for Gilman at a dry goods business some years prior to their arrival in New York - possibly in St. Louis. Hartford also lived and worked in Boston at one point as well.

By the 1850’s, Gilman had turned his sights from the family’s leather goods business to a new interest – the importing and brokerage of tea. Eventually, he asked Hartford to join him in the business, which consisted at first of a single delivery wagon. In 1859, their company was formally established as The Great American Tea Company. By this time, their roles were more or less set – Gilman was the financier and promoter. Hartford was the operator, though over time he would develop impressive skills as a promoter himself.

The first store was opened at 31 Vesey Street in New York City. The company’s early stores featured very ornate décor - vermilion red (sort of an orange-red) walls and gilt fixtures, oriental paintings and a plethora of ornamental gas lights. In 1869, Gilman and Hartford modified their company’s name in a tribute to the establishment of America’s first transcontinental railroad – the driving of the “golden spike” at Promontory Point, Utah, uniting the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads, east and west. Henceforth, the company would be known as “The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company”. The new name, of course, was also a not-so-subtle indicator of the company’s aspirations.

In its earliest days, A&P employed a very different marketing approach from “the most good food for the least money” philosophy upon which their fame and fortune would later be built. Prior to 1912, the company relied on all manner of premiums and giveaways to stimulate sales. Millions of “trade cards”, essentially postcards with Victorian scenes of angels, children, pets, flowers and other idyllic subjects on the face and A&P advertising on the reverse were given out. In those modest times, the cards did much to endear A&P to their customers. A high percentage of them were saved for decades, displayed for decorative use in homes. Even today, 100 or more years later, A&P trade cards turn up frequently in antique malls or on Ebay.

In 1878, Gilman retired to enjoy the New York social whirl, turning the operation of the business over to Hartford, while retaining his half ownership stake as a silent partner. By this time, the company was growing at a nice clip - according to the Progressive Grocer book “A&P, Past, Present and Future”, by 1876, A&P’s domain extended as far east as St. Paul and by 1881 as far south as Norfolk and Richmond, Virginia.

One development of the 1880’s that was no doubt unheralded (and probably little noticed) at the time would have a profound effect on A&P’s destiny well into the next century - the entry of two of George Hartford’s sons into the business. Only teenagers at the time, the sons – George Ludlum Hartford and John Augustine Hartford - would become two of the most influential figures of all time in the grocery business, and are still regarded as such today. For over sixty years they would helm A&P. The brothers were polar opposites by nearly every measure – George, born in 1864, was the guardian of A&P’s finances. Short and somewhat rumpled in appearance, he settled in a New Jersey suburb, where he lived conservatively, and enjoyed simple hobbies. He disliked taking vacations. John, born in 1872, headed up A&P’s operations and marketing. A true visionary, John’s initiatives were the life force behind A&P’s phenomenal growth in the first half of the 20th century. Tall, dashing and always impeccably tailored, as an adult he lived in grand style in tony Valhalla, New York, a member of the top social echelon. Despite their vast differences and frequent disagreements, the brothers had an abiding personal regard for each other and a strong respect for the different roles they fulfilled for A&P. As young men, to avoid confusion with the elder Mr. Hartford, the brothers were given the nicknames “Mr. George” and “Mr. John”. Long after their father’s passing, indeed for the rest of their own lives, they were referred to within A&P circles as such.

In 1901, A&P co-founder George F. Gilman passed away. It was a sad occurrence, to be sure, but Gilman’s death also had an exasperating side effect. It came to light soon afterward that no contracts or agreements of any kind had ever been drawn up at the time of the company’s founding 40 years earlier. As a result, George Huntington Hartford had no documentation to confirm his ownership stake in the company – and no way to defend it from claims against the estate of Gilman, who had no children. After a harrowing four-year court battle, Hartford’s rights were established, although a big chunk of Gilman’s estate (largely composed of A&P stock, of course) was awarded to his longtime female companion, according to the book "The Rise and Decline of The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company" By William I. Walsh. Hartford eventually bought her shares out, gaining complete control of A&P for his family.

By the dawn of the 20th century the younger Hartfords, George and John, were firmly in charge of the “Tea Company”, as insiders tended to call it, an empire that consisted of nearly 450 stores by 1912. Certainly A&P was prosperous, but John Hartford saw ominous warning signs for the future. The company’s growth had plateaued, despite the fact that A&P had begun to evolve into a true “grocery store” through the addition of hundreds of food items alongside their tea and coffee offerings. Prices and profit margins were high and the gaudy premiums were taking up half the shelf space in some locations, presumably leading Hartford to grow concerned that A&P was slowly becoming a pricey “boutique” operation, damaging its appeal to the average customer on a modest budget.

What John Hartford conceived as a solution to this dilemma – the “Economy Store”, as it was called, would not only launch A&P into the stratosphere and ultimately into legend, but also formed the basis of modern mass retailing – the “everyday low price” concept. Under Hartford’s new concept, the giveaways and premiums would become history. Profit margins would be cut to half the previous level. The fancy decor would be scrapped. The “vermilion red” walls would become simply red. (The color, not the band.)

Despite the initial objections of his brother and father, Hartford pressed on, wisely placating them by agreeing to move forward on a “test” basis, first with a single store in Jersey City, N.J., then on a larger basis with a few stores in one of the company’s New York City districts. The customer response was overwhelming, and within a couple of years, the Economy Store program was running full tilt. The traditional A&P stores began to close as the new Economy Stores opened. The Progressive Grocer book cites some impressive statistics – In 1915, 95 stores were opened in the Boston area alone. By February of that year, A&P had more than doubled in size to 938 stores, hitting the 2,000 store mark following year and 3,000 stores the year after that, 1917. Ten years later, in 1927, A&P could boast an astonishing 15,000 stores, all sporting A&P’s new slogan, “Where Economy Rules”, in a bar beneath the famous A&P “red circle” logo.

One particular group was less than thrilled with A&P’s new pricing policy. Some of A&P’s brand name suppliers, under pressure from other chains and thousands of independent grocers, were furious that the A&P Economy Stores were undercutting their suggested retail prices. Out of this morass came a famous lawsuit, filed by The Cream of Wheat Company, whose namesake product was heavily advertised nationally and was enormously popular in those days. Cream of Wheat had set a price of 14 cents per box at that time, which virtually all retailers, except A&P, honored. A&P cheerfully sold it for 12 cents a box, moving huge quantities. In 1915, Cream of Wheat filed suit against A&P to force them to stop the practice. A vigorous defense notwithstanding, A&P lost the case. The experience did much to convince A&P to invest heavily into manufacturing their own private label goods. By the end of the 1920’s, A&P was as formidable in food manufacturing as it was in retail, with factories strewn throughout the country, processing every type of food imaginable – even to the extent of operating their own fisheries and packing plants in Alaska.

In 1917, A&P’s other co-founder, George Huntington Hartford, passed away. Two years earlier, he had formed a trust that equally divided A&P ownership among his five children, but specifically placed all decision making authority with George and John.

Closing in on 14,000 stores in 1925, the task of running all aspects of the company from A&P’s headquarters was becoming unwieldy, to say the least. That year, the company shifted to a decentralized management structure which split their operating area into six regions, each with its own administrative offices and distribution centers.

When the depression hit in October 1929, A&P was in a far stronger position than most retailers. The “Economy Store” concept was a perfect fit for the times. Just two years previously, John Hartford had laid down the law to A&P’s command corps when he noticed that profit margins were starting to creep up again, past a level he considered acceptable. “The most good food for the least money” was the slogan, and would be the non-negotiable rule. Challenges would follow in the 1930’s, both from competition and from government, but for now A&P was standing strong.

The two photographs above, depicting a circa-1931 A&P store, are Property of the Holyoke Public Library History Room and Archive, and appear here by their kind courtesy. The Library’s collection, along that of several other Central and Western Massachusetts institutions can be viewed on the wonderful Digital Treasures website. Below is another A&P “Economy” storefront, from roughly the same time period, from a 1970 Progressive Grocer article. Last is a photo of a much earlier A&P store, typical of the ornate treatment (check out the sign lettering and the trellis work in the window) these stores received. Picture it in vermilion and gold. Thanks to Cynthia Closkey for the use of this great early photo. Her great-grandfather and his siblings, who operated the store, are featured in the photo.

Woolworth's - The Largest Variety Store

On an icy winter’s night in 1963, the downtown Denver, Colorado Woolworth’s provides a warm oasis for shivering Christmas shoppers. Newly expanded to a huge 174,000 square feet, this store scarcely fit the traditional five-and-ten/dime store image with gold-lettered “red front” signboards above a quaint storefront that the name Woolworth’s conjures up to this day. (This impression persists despite scores of intricate art deco-exteriored Woolworth stores that opened in the 30‘s and 40’s.) If anything, the Denver store’s clean lines and imposing scale resembled the sprawling suburban mall department stores that by 1963 had come to symbolize the American Way.

Dubbed “The World’s Largest Variety Store” upon its grand reopening in October 1963, the downtown Denver location featured the typical Woolworth’s lineup of the time, albeit more of it. The store boasted “two miles of display counters” within “58 shops and departments offering more than fifty thousand items of goods for the entire family and whole home, ranging in price from a few pennies to upward of one hundred dollars”. These departments carried apparel for the whole family, housewares and home furnishings, garden, pet, camera and music shops, and of course toys. Also in-house were a “utility bill-paying station” and total restaurant/luncheonette seating capacity of 700 (!) people. Within the restaurant area was a sandwich counter, named the “Chuck Wagon” in salute to “Colorado’s famous livestock industry”. Of course, the western theme was stretched a bit with the addition of hoagies and pizza to the menu. (I was tempted to say “git along, little hoagie”, but thought better of it.)

One thing becomes obvious when reading Woolworth’s press releases from that time. Despite having launched a new chain of discount stores the previous year, Woolco, large variety stores like the Denver unit were the company’s pride and joy. They would continue to be the organization’s main focus for many years to come. Woolworth’s main competitor, S.S. Kresge Company, took a very different attitude. Kresge made it abundantly clear that their Kmart discount chain, also introduced in 1962, would be that company’s top priority. Within just a few short years, the Kmart program would have a transformative effect on the Kresge company, as it eventually would on mass merchandising in general. By comparison, Woolworth’s approach to Woolco seemed more tentative.

The story of the F.W.Woolworth Company is deeply woven into the American cultural fabric. Frank Winfield Woolworth’s company was founded with a single store that opened in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1879. Initially known as the “Great 5-cent Store”, it wouldn’t become a “five-and ten” until the following year, when the company began to carry higher priced goods. By 1886, the company had grown to seven stores, which now featured the soon-to-be-famous “red front” facades. That same year, Woolworth opened his new company headquarters in Manhattan. By 1900, Woolworth was operating 59 stores with total annual sales of $5 million. In 1909, the first British Woolworth stores (“three and sixes” as opposed to “five-and-dimes”) were opened. Woolworth sought unique ways to be of service to his customers, and one of the more successful ones was to introduce fabrics and other fine goods from Europe into his stores, at prices the general public could afford. Prior to that time, these goods were out of the reach of many American pocketbooks.

A huge advance in the company’s growth came in 1912, when Woolworth consolidated his 319 stores with three northeastern variety chains - S. H. Knox and Co., F.M. Kirby and Co., E.P. Charlton and Co., and the stores previously held by his brother Charles S. Woolworth and by W.H. Moore. The new company was formally incorporated on January 12, 1912 as “F.W. Woolworth Company”, with a total of 596 stores across the entire country, and stock was offered to the public. The Woolworth organization was in place, and through much of the 20th century would be a dominant force in American business. Woolworth and The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company became widely acknowledged as the twin behemoths of retailing. A year later, the magnificent 60-story Woolworth Building would open in New York City, the tallest building in the world at the time. President Woodrow Wilson ceremonially turned on the building’s lights for the first time, from a telegraph key in the White House.

The company continued to prosper despite Frank Woolworth’s passing in 1919. Ten years later, Woolworth would celebrate its 50th Anniversary with over 2,200 stores and $303 million in sales. Three years before that, in 1926, the first Woolworth units had opened in Germany, which would prove to be an important market for the company. The ten-cent price cap was doubled to twenty cents in 1932, and three years later, price ceilings would be done away with altogether. Woolworth’s would begin to stock all manner of goods, even featuring jewelry in some locations.

In the 1950’s, two major changes in American retailing forced themselves on Woolworth’s, and the company was smart enough to go with the flow on both. The first was the “self-service” trend, and the second was the shift away from downtown store locations toward suburban shopping malls and strip centers. In the mid-50’s, Woolworth closed in on nearly 3,000 stores, and many older stores were modernized. Another key international market, Mexico, was entered in 1956.

Through the entire decade of the 1950’s another trend gained traction, and by the early 60’s was akin to an unstoppable train – the emergence of the large, suburban discount store. By then, the success of the northeast-based discount chains – E.J. Korvette, Zayre, Topps and many others, along with the challenges this new type of store would present to the variety chains had become the cocktail conversation of the retail industry. In a September 1961 New York Times article, Woolworth president Robert C. Kirkwood outlined his company’s plans to open a nationwide chain of department stores under the name “Woolco”. Plans for 17 initial stores were announced, with the first store to open in Columbus, Ohio in the spring of 1962. Mr. Kirkwood told the Times “It is our goal to have the largest chain of discount stores in America”.

As it turned out, Woolworth wasn’t alone in that goal.

The Woolworth promotional photos above are from 1963 and 1964. The first four depict scenes from the Denver, Colorado store mentioned above, showing the store exterior, ladies’ and mens’ departments and the “Chuck Wagon” sandwich counter. The rest of the photos are from various Woolworth stores. Shown are the home décor section, with mirrors, tasteful paintings and groovy “starburst” clocks, followed by the bedding, paint and sewing departments.

The last three photos show the only departments that would have concerned me in my youth. (Well, I guess I’d have to count the restaurant as well!) The “music shop” and record department, which features two Kingsmen (“Louie, Louie”) albums and the soundtrack to the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” film (half of that album was made up of instrumentals – I had the 8-track in the early 70’s), the very colorful toy department, and finally, the place I would have been guaranteed to spend every possible minute - and every possible dime I could wheedle out of my folks – the book department, with its fine selection of Mad paperback books. These were collections of articles that had previously appeared in Mad Magazine. If you were into those, and precious few my age weren’t, click on the enlargement and dig the classic titles – “Fighting Mad”, “Son of Mad”, “The Mad Frontier”, “Mad in Orbit”, “The Organization Mad”, and among others, my all-time favorite – “We’re Still Using That Greasy Mad Stuff”. In an affirmation of my good taste (or lack of it), this book appears in the 1966 movie version of “Fahrenheit 451”, where it's burned up along such other classics as Jane Eyre, Othello and Wuthering Heights.

I know. “News you can use”, right?

Wards, America's Cheapest Cash House

The 1872 founding of Montgomery Ward & Co. was not just the beginning of a company, but of an entire industry – one that thrives today, years after Wards ceased to be a major part of it, or to exist at all. Mail order pioneer, Chicago legend, and nationwide department store fixture, Montgomery Ward is part of the American story – mention the name “Monkey Wards” and most folks will know what you’re talking about, whether their family shopped there or not.

The company’s founder, Aaron Montgomery Ward, was not a Midwesterner by birth. Born in Chatham, New Jersey in 1844, Ward and his family “headed west” when he was 8 years old, settling in Niles, Michigan. Later on, Ward moved some 30 miles away to St. Joseph, on the shores of Lake Michigan, where he took a job as a retail clerk. Within three years, Ward was running the store. In 1866, at age 22, Ward moved to Chicago, where he accepted a position with the new wholesale “dry goods” firm Field, Palmer and Leiter, forerunner to Marshall Field and Company. After two years with the Field firm and one with another company, Ward moved to St. Louis to work as a traveling salesman for another wholesaler, calling on stores via horse and buggy. Before long, Ward was back in Chicago, working for yet another wholesale firm, C.W. Pardridge Co.

Over the previous couple of years, while in the employ of others, Ward was diligently developing his own business idea, one based on his observations of the farmers who patronized the stores on his wholesale routes. In those days, rural customers generally had to contend with high prices on a very limited merchandise selection. Ward came up with an idea for a “mail order store”, where catalogs (which were initially just “merchandise price lists”) were mailed out to potential customers far and wide. Orders would be mailed to and shipped out of a centralized warehouse. By 1871, Ward had saved up enough money to give it a go, and began to stock up on merchandise to sell though his own catalog.

On October 8, 1871, the great Chicago fire struck, destroying major parts of the city, including countless homes and businesses. While Ward’s employer’s (the Pardridge firm) business escaped unscathed, the stock of merchandise Ward had put together for his own fledgling business was destroyed. “Like the rest of the city”, as Ward’s 1972 100th anniversary publication put it, “Ward dusted himself off and went back to work”. By the following August, two of Ward’s fellow Pardridge employees had joined him, and with $1600 in hand Ward purchased new goods, rented an office on North Clark Street and issued his first one-page price list.

The rise of Montgomery Ward & Co. coincided with that of the National Grange of Husbandry, an organization dedicated to advancing the interests of the farmer. Known popularly as “the Grange”, local chapters were set up in rural areas far and near. Starting as basically a social organization, the Granges quickly gained power and political influence in their communities. Wisely, Ward closely aligned his company with the Granges, sending out price lists to each Grange Hall and encouraging members to pool their orders to save on shipping costs. For decades, even after the Granges’ influence had receded, Montgomery Ward was thought of by many as “The Grange Supply House”.

Ward received an unlikely boost from what could have been a disastrous event in the young company’s life. On November 8, 1873, the Chicago Tribune published a blistering editorial about the company entitled “Grangers beware. Don’t Patronize Montgomery Ward & Co. – They are Dead-Beats!” The rousing headline was followed with a series of charges – “Another attempt at swindling has come to light”…”they keep altogether from the public gaze, and are only to be reached through correspondence sent to a certain box in the Post Office.” Ward’s customers were caught in the crossfire as well – “it is known that a certain proportion of the multitudes of circulars issued fall into the hands of credulous fools, who place boundless faith in anything which is set up in type and printed. If such fools would only consider how easy a thing it is to start a swindle of this kind, the dead-beats who get them up would be driven to hard work, or still better, perhaps, starvation.” Ah, the journalistic restraint of days gone by! Ward threatened to sue.

The Tribune’s retraction, published in the December 24th edition, would prove to be worth its weight in gold to Wards. An early paragraph read: “The (November 8) article was based on what was supposed to be correct information, but a thorough investigation by this office satisfies us that the article was grossly unjust, and not warranted by the real facts. The firm of Montgomery, Ward & Co. is a bona fide firm, composed of respectable persons, and doing a perfectly legitimate business in a perfectly legitimate manner.” Ward was so pleased with it that he reprinted the article in its entirety in his next price list.

In 1874, Ward, now joined by his brother-in-law George Thorne as a partner, moved his business to a larger building at the corner of State and Kinzie Streets. Through the remainder of the 19th century, Montgomery Ward & Co. grew impressively, and the Wards catalog, which had evolved from the simplest type-set sheet to a 150-plus page magazine with ornate engraved covers, was wildly popular with consumers across the entire country, but especially so in the nation’s frontier heartland. In addition to clothing and farm goods, Ward carried groceries, and for a few years, liquor. In these years, Wards advocated for their customers by battling a number of industry trusts, which had attempted to fix prices on such basic needs as sugar and binding twine.

Ward and Thorne gradually turned the day-to-day management of the company over to younger men, including Thorne’s five sons, all of whom would eventually join the business. In 1887, Montgomery Ward moved to a new six-story building on Michigan Avenue, which would be expanded many times by the end of the century. In June 1889, the Ward-Thorne partnership was formally chartered as a corporation.

In 1893, Sears Roebuck and Co. was incorporated, moving their offices from Minneapolis to Chicago the following year. In just a few short years, Sears, who adapted the mantra “Cheapest Supply House on Earth” (similar to Wards’ “Cheapest Cash House in America”) emerged as Montgomery Ward’s chief rival, and what would be a century-long rivalry was underway.

1893 was a key year for Ward in a number of other ways. The company gave away tens of thousands of a special “World’s Fair Edition” of its catalog at Chicago’s Columbian Exposition. Even more important than that was Congress’ passage of the Rural Free Delivery Act (R.F.D.) which opened the door to mail delivery to individual rural homes. Prior to that, most country dwellers had to pick up their mail from a post office. As R.F.D. was implemented, Wards’ catalog deliveries and sales skyrocketed, provoking the ire of local country merchants. A number of them staged “catalog burnings”, encouraging locals to toss their treasured Wards catalogs into a bonfire - something the founder took as a true validation of his company’s success.

That same year, Ward sold his majority interest in the company to George Thorne. By this time, Ward was devoting his full-time energies to a new passion – the preservation of Chicago’s lakefront as a city park, off-limits to developers. More than anyone else, Ward deserves the credit for the priceless asset that is Chicago’s Grant Park. Ward fought for twenty years and through four legendary court battles to achieve this, losing many friends among Chicago’s business and social elite along the way. Aaron Montgomery Ward, retail and environmentalist pioneer, known in his last years as “the watchdog of the lakefront”, passed away at the age of 70 on December 7, 1913.

His namesake company continued to thrive. In 1908, Montgomery Ward opened its massive new distribution center, a 500-foot long, 9-story high, 2 million square foot colossus along Chicago’s riverfront, a facility the company would use into the 1970’s. Wards had opened its first of many branch operation “catalog houses” in Kansas City in 1904, replacing it with a much larger building in 1907. Later on, Wards would open more of these huge facilities – in Oakland in 1923, Baltimore in 1925, Fort Worth in 1928, and Albany, NY and Denver in 1929.

George Thorne’s sons had operated the company with varying degrees of efficiency in the early years of the 20th century. Today, the Thorne name is probably best known in Chicago in connection with the “Thorne Rooms”, a fascinating collection of miniature dioramas first exhibited in the 1930’s at the Art Institute of Chicago. They were conceived and funded by Mrs. James Ward Thorne, the wife of one of Mr. Thorne’s sons.

One brilliant hire they made was Robert E. Wood, a former World War I Quartermaster General, who shaped up their distribution system and advanced a new idea to help the company get the most mileage out of its gigantic branch warehouse operations – to open 40 to 50 retail stores within a radius of each “catalog house”, tapping the revenue possibilities of these facilities, adding a potential $20 million a year to Wards’ coffers. Alas, General Wood proved to be “the one that got away”, leaving Wards, whose top management was painfully slow to respond to his proposal, for Sears, Roebuck and Co. in 1924. Wood, who at Sears would become one of the most legendary retail figures of the 20th century, opened Sears’ first retail store the following year. 350 Sears stores would be in operation by 1930, drastically changing the competitive dynamic between the two companies.

By 1927, the Montgomery Ward management had come to view their lack of a retail store presence as a mistake. A decision was made to open a handful of “display stores”, under the assumption that customers would be favorably inclined to buy merchandise they could actually touch as opposed to making their decision based only in catalog pictures. The problem was, the term “display store” meant exactly that – customers could order but not bring home the merchandise! It would be shipped to them in the standard manner from the closest Wards warehouse. The goal was to rotate the selection of merchandise shown in the display stores, choosing from Wards’ then 33,000 different items carried. The first display stores were slated for “Marysville, Kansas, Plymouth, Indiana and Little Falls, Minnesota, all good mail order areas”, according to the Wards 100th Anniversary book.

The conversion of the Plymouth, Indiana store from a purely “display” store to a conventional retail store happened in an interesting way, as related in story in the Anniversary book. Although the Plymouth display store was well-received, there was a fair amount of frustration expressed by customers about the inability to buy and take home the merchandise on the spot. This led to grumblings to the effect that Wards’ display units might be superior quality to the actual products shipped, a classic “bait-and-switch”, that in this case was patently untrue. It all came to a head one day when a carpenter showed up at the store and noticed that a saw was selling for 75 cents less than he could buy a comparable one for down the street. When told of the store’s policy, the carpenter became irate, demanding to buy and take home the saw. Finally the store manager relented and sold it to him. When word of this got around, the store was besieged, and was forced to sell off their sample stock to the clamoring public.

Montgomery Ward brass, upset about this at first, began to come around when the profit potential became too obvious to ignore. A test program was put in place with eight more display stores, now allowed to stock and sell the actual products, was put in place. The following year, now satisfied with the idea, Ward’s board of directors put the pedal to the metal, approving a program to open 212 retail stores in 1928.

Were it not for that carpenter, would any of us have “Monkey Wards” store shopping memories today? It boggles the mind - almost too deep to ponder.

The photo above, from the book “1872-1972 A Century of Serving Consumers – the Story of Montgomery Ward”, depicts the Plymouth, Indiana display store discussed above. Below are two photos from the E.M. Ball Photographic Collection (1918-1969), Special Collections, D.H. Ramsey Library, University of North Carolina at Asheville depicting two early Montgomery Ward stores in Asheville, North Carolina, the first on Biltmore Avenue and the second on Patton Avenue, both circa 1930’s.