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?

Inside the New Wards Stores, Late 50's

These are some of the scenes that greeted customers of the new Montgomery Ward stores in the late 1950’s. A far cry from the stodgy interiors that shoppers had grown to associate with Wards, they represent nice examples of fifties modern design, color styling and craftsmanship.

Just as the exterior design and materials differed from store to store, the new Wards interiors varied as well, although some common themes carried through. The elongated oval signage, visible in several of the photos (and also in the remodeled Sacramento store in the previous post) was extensively used. It kind of echoes the “long, low” trend that was all the rage in automotive design at the time.

Larger, mall-based Wards stores featured “central decorative display islands, surrounded by upholstered benches, provid(ing) a haven for the weary and a meeting place for all”. Pictured in the first photo above, these islands featured a unique motif keyed to the store’s locality – an Oak tree for the Kansas City, Missouri, Blue Ridge Shopping Center store, an Aspen tree in the Denver Lakeside Mall store, a vertical steel I-beam at the Gary, Indiana Village Shopping Center (They also were great for holding up the roof!), and a sundial in a new St. Petersburg, Florida unit. Exteriors of all stores except the last are pictured in previous posts.

There were nods to the past as well, in the form of vintage Wards catalog merchandise pictured on the walls of the furniture department (called the “Modern Shop” – how cool is that?), as shown in the second photo, the tool department (photo three) and the mens' department (back wall of last photo), among others. It was a small, early example of marketing through nostalgia, a trend that would gain much more steam in the 60’s and especially the 70’s.

Montgomery Ward still had tons of ground to make up from the “lost years”, where they were routinely trounced by Sears and later by J.C. Penney as well. These fine stores, with their long-overdue added comfort of air conditioning, did much to put Wards back in play.

For me, I can’t decide what I like better – the Airline TV and Hi-Fi department or the “Modern Shop”. I’ll take both!

Top to bottom, the photos depict: (1) a typical themed “center island”, (2) the “Modern Shop” contemporary furniture department, (3) the Power Tools section, (4) the Childrens’ Wear department, with mannequins for all seasons, (5) the “real gone” Juniors department, (6) the Sporting Goods department (suits and ties to sell golf and archery equipment – now that’s class!), (7) the Airline Hi-Fi and Television department, a strong selling brand for Wards, (8) the Shoe department, where the older gentleman is holding a strange form of payment – oh yes, of course, it’s cash - and lastly, (9) something that would certainly be hard to come by in department stores today, shown in appropriate black-and-white, the ladies’ millinery department (That means "hat department" to folks like me), seen in the foreground of the photo.

The Golden Age of Montgomery Ward

High on the list of late, lamented retail chains would have to be Montgomery Ward & Company. For nearly 130 years Americans shopped at Wards, both through their legendary mail-order catalog and at their store locations.

The early years of Montgomery Ward are well documented in history books – a young entrepreneur starts a mail-order catalog business, supplying even the remotest areas with essential goods for home and farm. Eventually, the company would open a chain of retail stores to go along with its catalog business.

And of course, most of us are familiar with the Wards of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s - the mall stores, which grew increasingly dowdy as the company desperately searched for a winning formula to succeed in the brave new retail world. (Remember the “Electric Ave.” electronics departments?)

Between those two eras is a relatively brief period that is more or less overlooked today –Ward’s massive store construction program of the late 1950’s and 60’s. In 1958 the company, having failed to open new locations for many years at that point and in grave danger of being forgotten by the buying public, kicked off a very aggressive building program. Fifty new stores were opened in the next three years, many of which were major mall or shopping center locations. On top of this, hundreds of existing smaller stores were remodeled.

In my opinion, the Montgomery Ward stores of this era, a ten-year period starting in 1958, were some of the best looking retail stores ever. Pictured above is the very first store of what can be called Ward’s “golden age” (of mall stores, at least), at Denver, Colorado’s Lakeside Shopping Center. The 120,000 square foot, two-story store’s opening ceremonies were held on August 13, 1958. In back of the Wards store is The Denver Dry Goods Co. and to the right is a Lerner Shops store.

What's the Frequency, Kmart?

The transformation that the Kresge company underwent with the introduction of Kmart was dramatic, to put it very mildly. Among the most impressive aspects were the sheer speed and scale of the rollout. Once the final decision was made to push forward with Kmart, Kresge president Harry Cunningham gave a mandate to Kresge’s real estate department that at least 60 leases be secured for new Kmart sites to accommodate the planned rapid-fire growth. As mentioned, there were 18 Kmarts in operation at the end of 1962. 35 would be added in 1963, 35 more in 1964, and 34 more in 1965. By the end of the decade, there would be over 270 Kmarts in all regions of the United States, as well as Canada and Puerto Rico.

Aside from four small-footprint stores that were used in part for development purposes (Kresge called them “bantam” K-marts), the average square footage of the earliest Kmarts was 60,000, growing to 75,000 within a couple of years and to over 90,000 square feet by the end of the 60’s. In the following decade, they would consistently exceed 120,000 square feet.

The simple, rectangular, box-like design of the Kmart stores was a definite aid in the speed at which the stores opened, with average construction time at a brief six months per store. Another key factor was Kresge’s insistence on building free-standing stores in most cases, thereby avoiding frustrating (and costly) delays at the hands of shopping center developers. Kmarts were often located near other stores, but were rarely connected to them.

Kresge sought to open at least two (often more) stores in quick succession within a given market in order to maximize advertising dollars. The first major market, for obvious reasons, was the Detroit metro area, Kresge’s hometown, where seven Kmarts were operating within the first two years. Atlanta, Denver, Knoxville, Fresno and Charlotte were among the other early multiple-store markets.

The store carried a full line of merchandise, including clothes, kitchen items, home improvement and auto accessories , sporting goods, a camera department (remember the “Focal” brand?), electronics (or “Television and Hi-Fi” as such departments were then commonly called), jewelry, and in many cases, a full-line supermarket. A number of the departments were leased, among them sporting goods, cameras and jewelry.

Most notably the supermarkets were leased, from a number of different operators. The early Kmart supermarket lessees were moderate-sized grocery firms, including Borman Food Stores, Inc., the first operator of the some of the K-mart supermarkets in Michigan, Illinois and Indiana. Even small family-owned grocers got in on some of the action. When the Benton Harbor, Michigan Kmart opened in 1963, for example, the supermarket portion was operated by John Sassano, an independent grocer based in Hobart, Indiana. The largest operator of Kmart supermarkets would be Detroit-based Allied Supermarkets, who signed on with the company in June 1964. Allied up to that point had operated food stores in the Midwest, Texas and Oklahoma under the names Wrigley and Humpty Dumpty, among others. They would eventually operate grocery units in a great many Kmart stores all over the country well into the 1970’s. The supermarket areas averaged 20-24,000 square feet and were all thoroughly branded “Kmart”, regardless of the operator. There even was a line of private label items, including Kmart potato chips!

The stores were big, fairly colorful, and most importantly featured discount prices across the board. And then there were the “special buys” (later called “bluelight” specials) to drive high-volume sales on select items. Kmart’s selling prices were set at Kresge headquarters in Detroit, and interestingly, the individual Kmart store managers were given the authority to lower prices to beat local competition, but they were forbidden to raise them. “Charge It!” banners abounded.
Customers showed up en masse, and most of them instantly became regulars. A retailing legend was born.

The photos, dating from late 1962/early 1963, show some of the earliest Detroit area Kmarts, including an exterior view (the Kmart logo would be tweaked slightly on future stores), and views of various departments. The woman shopping in the supermarket area resembles Barbara Billingsley, TV’s Mrs. Cleaver. She’s shopping the detergent aisle, and if you look carefully you can see some boxes of Tide, that most photogenic of consumer products, to her lower right. There's a mezzanined furniture area visible behind the camera department, a feature of a number of early stores. I find the last photo very touching, because it seems to feature a real-life mother and daughter, not professional models. The mom looks like the kind who would have had fresh cookies baking in the oven when you showed up home from school.

The Many Sides of Sears, 1963

The seven Sears stores pictured above were all opened in a seven-month period – from March through October, 1963. These stores – all type A “Complete Department Stores” help to illustrate the impressive breadth of architectural styles Sears employed during the period. It’s interesting to note, also, that Sears used multiple logo styles on their stores – the “script” type, which had been in use in various forms since the early 1950’s and the “serif” type, which began to appear on store facades and in catalogs and print advertising around 1960. The company used them interchangeably (which is amazing, when one considers the intense emphasis placed on having a “uniform corporate identity” today). In more than a few cases, they even used both styles on the same store!

As a company, Sears went from strength to strength during this period, enjoying record yearly sales and profit increases, with total sales of over $5 billion in 1963. The following year, Sears would overtake The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company as the world’s largest selling retailer, a position they would hold for nearly three decades afterward. Also, Sears’ shopping center development division, founded in 1960 and named Homart Development Corporation (after the company’s home office location at the corner of Homan Avenue and Arthington Street ) began to gain steam. Homart had opened its first shopping center, Seminary South in Ft. Worth, Texas (now called Fort Worth Town Center) the previous year. The company would open its second shopping center, the Hancock Center Mall in Austin, Texas in 1963. The Austin Sears store is pictured in the second photo above.

The photos, top to bottom, are of the following stores – (1) Downtown St. Paul, Minnesota, near the Minnesota State Capitol and still open, (2) Austin, Texas, at the Hancock Center mall, also still open, (3) Park Forest, Illinois, in the famous early “planned community” which was originally founded in 1948. Through the 1950’s an impressive array of stores opened up in Park Forest’s shopping plaza, including such Chicago standbys as Marshall Field & Company, Goldblatts and Jewel Food Stores, among many others. Sears finally joined the group in ’63. None of those stores exist today, though several of the buildings still stand in one form or another. (4) Montgomery, Alabama, with very cool smaller logos above each entrance, (5) Orlando, Florida, with a two-toned Sears service truck heading out, (6) Denver, Colorado, and (7) Wilmington, Delaware at Prices Corner Shopping Center. This store still exists and has been greatly expanded over the years.

The Safeway in Winter

Here’s a nice winter scene for early January – the brand new Leadville, Colorado Safeway, which opened in December 1971, is shown here in a photo taken soon afterward. There’s plentiful snow on the peaks – both the majestic Rocky Mountains in the background and the store’s own peak – the shallow, sloped roof that became one of Safeway’s stalwart designs in the early 1970’s. A simple design, but certainly very attractive in this context.

The Three Faces of Lucky

In 1959, Lucky began to expand upon their basic 20,000 square foot grocery store footprint with the opening of the first “Lucky Discount Center”, a new concept which added a variety of non-food items – clothing, small appliances, outdoor products and more in combination with their regular supermarket departments. Many of the Discount Centers featured liquor and pharmacy departments as well. These stores ranged from roughly 30,000 to 65,000 square feet.

The following year, Lucky purchased the forerunner of their Gemco membership store division. Lucky proceeded to open several more Gemcos through the ensuing years in their California market, eventually expanding in the later 60's and into the 1970's to Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Maryland, Virginia, Texas and the metropolitan Chicago area. In the eastern states and Chicago, the stores were operated under the slightly different name “Memco”. These stores sold the above-mentioned items, along with greatly expanded apparel offerings plus several leased operations – including shoe, jewelry and automotive departments, gas stations and snack bars, a cleaners and an optometry shop. The Gemco and (and later Memco) stores averaged 100 to 110,000 square feet.

These photos show nice examples of each of the three faces of Lucky. They date from 1966, a year in which the chain grew to 166 standard supermarkets, 18 discount centers and 11 Gemco stores.