Remembering Korvette's Eugene Ferkauf

Last year saw the passing of one of the most influential figures in retailing history, one who deserves more recognition than he receives today, I’m afraid. Eugene Ferkauf, founder of the legendary E.J. Korvette chain of promotional department stores, passed away on June 5, 2012 in New York City at the age of 91.

In the early sixties, Ferkauf found himself the subject of a fair amount of media attention as his company ascended. By all appearances, E. J. Korvette looked to be on the verge of breaking out into a national chain. As the decade rolled on, however, things changed drastically – the company ran into trouble, the dreams were scaled back, and with Ferkauf’s departure in 1968, “Korvettes” (as it was then officially known) began to wane rapidly. His influence continued, but more on the discount industry as a whole rather than on the company he founded.

The origins of E.J. Korvette, which have been discussed to some extent here before, fall squarely within the realm of the bootstrapping American dreamers of the mid-20th Century:  Eugene Ferkauf, a young man from Brooklyn, seeks a career in retail upon his discharge from the Army. Offered a slot in R.H. Macy & Co.’s training program, he turns it down and instead follows in the footsteps of his father, opening in 1948 a luggage store in an East 46^th Street  second floor walk-up (for you non-New Yorkers, that means “building with no elevator”).  Breaking away from his father’s approach, he sells at reduced markups and starts to move large volumes of product, selling everything from a simple “traveling case” for a college-bound son or daughter to 20-piece top-grade leather luggage outfits for U.N. diplomats.

Along the way, he decides to stock some small electric appliances - virtual red meat to ravenous postwar consumers eager to upgrade their lifestyles now that The War was over. (Not that the words “upgrade” and “lifestyle” were common to the American vocabulary in those days. They weren’t. Mostly, folks were just eager to toss Grandma’s old wind-up clock in favor of a nice, self-starting electric Telechron.) The appliances are marked well below “manufacturer’s suggested prices”, and sales go through the roof. Ferkauf begins to open to open more stores in the city – in first floor locations.

His employees are his friends – high school pals from Brooklyn, with a few Army buddies peppered in - the people Ferkauf feels most comfortable with, and whom he trusts above all others.  They start as sales clerks and shelf stockers in the early stores, and many move into executive positions as Korvette rapidly grows into a full-blown corporate entity. Even then, they continue to call each other by their adolescent nicknames – “Doodie” and “Schmultzie” being two examples cited in Time Magazine’s 1962 profile of Ferkauf.  Within a few years, many of these guys acquire another nickname - “millionaire”, as a result of their association with Korvette.

The roots of the company name itself extend to Ferkauf’s Brooklyn boyhood. “E.J.” stands for Eugene (Ferkauf) and Joe Zwillenberg, friend and Korvette employee from the very beginning, and “Korvette” is inspired by the Corvette, a class of World War II warships operated by the Royal Canadian Navy. A popular, and false, story behind the name’s origin soon arises - that E.J. Korvette stands for “Eight Jewish Korean War Veterans.”  (Where the myth started remains a mystery, but it endures to this day. Evidence of that turned up in NBC Nightly News’ report on Ferkauf’s passing, where Brian Williams made mention of it and briefly outlined the name’s true origin. Personally, I was just delighted to see the story covered on network news.)

By 1953, five years on, Ferkauf has four more stores – on Third Avenue and 42^nd Street in NYC, in White Plains, at Rockefeller Center, and in Hempstead, Long Island.  These stores share common characteristics with the first (sans the “second floor walk-up” aspect) in that they’re “noisy, cluttered, and so pressed for space that they have lapped over into annexes next door or down the block”, as Fortune magazine would put it in November 1956. The next store, however, Korvette’s first suburban “shopping center” location near Westbury, Long Island, would be markedly different.

And that’s where the legend of E.J. Korvette and its founder, Eugene Ferkauf, really began.

The late author David Halberstam, in his masterwork The Fifties, an essential read for anyone interested in that decade’s massive effect on late 20^th century American culture – consumer, popular and otherwise, devotes an entire chapter to the rise of E.J. Korvette.  Halberstam sets up a memorable scene: “As Ferkauf looked at the potato fields of Westbury, he experienced a vision of the new suburbia: a sparkling, huge new store with vast parking facilities.” (Surely you’ve heard of “Westbury potatoes”, just like Idaho or Maine potatoes, right? Well, no one else has either; that’s why they built a shopping center on top of the place.)

    

More of Halberstam’s vivid picture painting: “There would be no more taking whatever real estate agents gave him and adapting buildings that could never be made to fit his needs. In fact, he had always wanted a store that was not merely successful, but also beautiful – like Lord & Taylor, a showplace the customer would also admire. Westbury would be the site for that store; there was plenty of space, easy access to the highways that connected Long Island to New York City, and best of all, it was only ten minutes from Levittown.”

Korvette’s “Westbury store” (actually located in Carle Place, L.I., on the corner of Westbury Avenue and Glen Cove Road), constructed on an insanely short schedule and opened just in time for the Christmas 1954 selling season, soon validated Ferkauf’s line of thinking, grossing $2 million in the month of December alone, and $28 million the following year. Ferkauf was “one of the big boys now”, as Halberstam put it.

The Westbury store was the first of what would become known as “Korvette Cities”, integrated shopping complexes comprising a general merchandise discount store, a supermarket, and (eventually) carpet and furniture centers. The supermarkets were only marginally profitable, but they drew customers in. And Ferkauf had no desire to go into the carpet or furniture business himself – the turnover was “too slow”, and these items “require(d) too much after-sale service” according to the 1956 Fortune article, so he franchised the Korvette name to two outside firms.

A popular feature was the beloved pretzel vendor, stationed just outside the main entrance at Westbury at $800 a month rent. These would soon become a fixture at Korvette stores and other discounters throughout the region. (800 bucks a month in the 50’s. That was a bunch of pretzels.)

In the ensuing years large, beautiful Korvette stores popped up regularly in major suburban areas all over the Northeast: West Islip, Long Island in 1956, followed by Springfield, Pennsylvania and North Brunswick, New Jersey in 1957, Scarsdale, NY in 1958, Camp Hill and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1959, Audubon and Trenton, New Jersey and Huntington, L.I. in 1961. As Ferkauf’s fame reached a new peak in 1962, new suburban Korvette stores were opened in Nanuet, New York, West Orange, New Jersey, the Baltimore suburbs Towson and Glen Burnie, Maryland and at the massive new King of Prussia Mall in suburban Philadelphia. And of course, the famous Fifth Avenue store, covered numerous times here, opened in June of that year.    

The timing for Ferkauf’s push into the suburbs couldn’t have been better, and it put his company in a rarefied position to capitalize on the sweeping changes taking place in American life.  One trend was fairly obvious, of course – the hordes of families actually relocating to the suburbs from the cities and naturally desiring convenient places to shop, but there were other factors at work.

A brilliant 1962 Fortune magazine article about the discounters, “The Revolutionists of Retailing” by Charles E. Silberman, touches on several of these reasons. For one thing, the suburbs were “changing character”, and not all of the new suburbanites were high or middle income families. Through the 1950’s, many of the country’s best known main line department stores began to open branch stores in the suburbs. As often as not, these branches were stunning from an architectural and design standpoint, but many were missing a key component of their downtown flagships’ success – the “basement store”, where bargains and discontinued items sold in volumes.  “During the flush years of the early postwar period, however, (department) store managers became infatuated with the explosive growth of the middle income group and the consequent possibilities for “trading up”…(but) they failed to see that their basement customers were moving to the suburbs, too. As a result, they left unsatisfied a substantial demand for low-priced staples and semi-staples – children’s clothing, sheets, towels, women’s lingerie, men’s sport shirts, etc.” said Silberman. In doing so, they created a huge opening for Ferkauf and his fellow discounters.

As far as “trading up” is concerned, the article goes on to note an interesting countertrend that also benefited the discounters. While many middle income consumers were indeed trading up, equally significant, maintained Silberman, were those consumers who were “trading down.”  The consumer culture was now running at full tilt, the article noted, and “Far from being sated with goods and services…Americans are finding it difficult to accommodate all their desires even with their rising incomes, so they stint where stinting is possible. Consumers who want a new car, a boat, a trip to Paris, and a college education for their children are likely to go out of their way to save 10 to 20 percent on the children’s underwear.”  So the discount store was finding its place even among the well-to-do, and those who felt they were.

But the discount stores’ appeal went beyond price: “strange as the notion may seem to devotees of Marshall Field’s or Neiman-Marcus, a good many Americans actually enjoy shopping in discount houses.” In a survey cited in the Silberman article, “Convenient location, good parking, self-service, and the opportunity to browse without being browbeaten by a clerk” all ranked above price concerns. (Funny how the notion of “being browbeaten by a clerk” seems almost quaint today, even in full-service department stores. “Spending less than 20 minutes searching for a clerk” might be more applicable now.)

And at the forefront of all this, according to Silberman, was Eugene Ferkauf, “due to the chain reaction he helped set off.” Undoubtedly the most prestigious endorsement, cited in this article and numerous others, came from Malcolm McNair, professor of retailing at the Harvard Business School, who in 1962 declared Ferkauf among the six greatest merchants in history, alongside Frank W. Woolworth, John Wanamaker, James Cash Penney, General Robert E. Wood of Sears and Michael Cullen, founder of King Kullen, widely credited as the first supermarket. Three of the group had long since passed on and two others, Penney and Wood, were in the “Chairman Emeritus” stage of life, leaving Ferkauf as the greatest contemporary retailer. And you know you’ve made it when you’re profiled in a children’s book, as Ferkauf was in “Famous Merchants for Young People”, a 1965 title by Sigmund Lavine.  (Rumors that the book is being re-released as “Famous Hedge Fund Managers for Young People” are unconfirmed at this point.)

Arguably it was the opening of Korvette’s Fifth Avenue store in New York City, on March 15, 1962, that prompted the brightest spotlight on Ferkauf and his company. Though untypical in many ways – a stately, seven-story Roman columned building in the heart of Manhattan’s toniest shopping district as compared to Korvette’s standard sleek, sprawling suburban shopping cities (need more “s” words, there, don’t you think?) – the sheer boldness of the move caught the media’s fancy.  

There was a Business Week cover story on February 10 - “Korvette’s Eugene Ferkauf pits his brand of discount selling against the carriage-trade tradition of Fifth Avenue”, featuring a cover photo of Ferkauf, looking natty in a trench coat on a dark, rainy New York day. In April, Ferkauf and Korvette figured prominently in “Rise of the Superstores”, a Dun’s Review piece about the tidal wave of discounting and its effect on manufacturers –“few indeed can match Ferkauf’s performance in retailing –a field where only a new concept, carefully nurtured, can bring in the millions.”  

But probably the most coveted media prize in those days, long before the decline of print sales and the rise of the “Google Doodle”, was the cover of Time Magazine. Each week the Time cover featured a top national or international personality from the area of government, science, sports, the arts or business, and on July 6, 1962, it was Ferkauf on center stage in a painted portrait, (as most Time covers were then) amid a downdraft of discounted-price tags and a lamppost bearing the address of his new flagship store.

The Time article itself is a fascinating account of Korvette’s history up to that point, and it offered considerable insight into Ferkauf’s thoughts on his company and its place in the retail world. On Korvette’s role in the marketplace:  “If Macy’s, Gimbels and Carson’s are selling at lower prices, it’s because we’ve inspired this competitive situation. We have done more to stretch that buck than anyone in American distribution. I don’t know by what percentage we’ve increased the purchasing power of the American dollar, but I know it’s significant.” On Korvette’s lack of stockholder dividends:  “As long as I have anything to do with this company…all the profits will go to expansion. The hell with the stockholders. (and, grinning) …don’t forget I’m the biggest one.” On the future: (and “not wholly kidding”, as Time put it) “All we hope for this company is that it should do all the merchandising business in the U.S.”

It also afforded an interesting glimpse into his unconventional working style: “He has no office, no secretary, no personal files. He has never dictated a business letter or made a speech…He shuns credit cards; he regards them as a temptation to spend company money. He never goes to cocktail parties or conventions; they cost time.” And into his family life as well: “No matter how far he must travel to inspect one of his stores, whether to Hartford or Harrisburg, he is always home before the children bed down. Only six nights during the past 14 years (since Korvette’s founding) has Ferkauf spent away from home, and four of them were on a recent business jaunt to Italy.” Not a lot of us can say that.

For the next several years, Korvette’s growth continued on the trajectory the magazines had raved about. New stores were opened in 1963 in Paramus, New Jersey next to Bergen Mall (and a stone’s throw from Garden State Plaza) and in Trumbull, Connecticut. Then came the company’s first stores to be built outside the “Northeast Megalopolis” (Boston to Washington, DC, or in Korvette’s case, Hartford to DC) – by the end of 1964, Korvette had four stores in the Chicago area – in Oak Lawn, Elmhurst, Morton Grove and Matteson (a fifth area unit would open in North Riverside in late 1965), three in suburban Detroit – Southgate, Roseville and Redford Township, and two in greater St. Louis – Sunset Hills and Cool Valley. Back in the megalopolis, two D.C. area stores - Rockville, Maryland and Baileys Crossroads, Virginia opened around this time as well.

But as the mid-60’s approached, problems began to surface. Some of these were rooted in the company’s increasingly upscale approach to the market (read: fancier stores), a progression that started with the first suburban Korvette locations in the mid-50’s and accelerated after the overwhelmingly positive reception to the opulent Fifth Avenue store. Business Week succinctly described the concerns of retail observers: “How, they ask, can you operate a palace on a discount base?” Despite the prettier (and more costly) stores, the additional services offered, and a newly expressed preference for the phrase “promotional department store” over “discount store”, Korvette president William Willensky took pains to reassure them: “…when it comes to pricing, we are a discount house, no ifs, and(s) or buts about it.” Eventually, however, these moves began to take a toll on Korvette’s profits. As long as volume grew it wasn’t a huge concern, but they stood vulnerable in the event of a sales downturn. Also, they were now closer than ever to direct competition with Macy’s and other full-line department stores at the same time these firms were finally grasping the new rules of the price game.

Another issue concerned the company’s “Western” stores in the expansion markets of Chicago, Detroit and St. Louis. On the whole these stores (all massive “Korvette Cities”) did reasonably well, but the results fell short of those Korvette enjoyed a few years earlier upon entering Philadelphia, where they virtually crushed the competition, or of their very strong showings in Baltimore and Washington, DC. Things were particularly contentious in Chicago, a land rife with discount stores as it was, but also the home turf of Sears, a name that rhymed with “unassailable retail powerhouse” in those years. They “met Korvette’s incursion head on”, as Fortune magazine put it in February 1966. But Ferkauf, quoted in the same article, had no regrets: “I’m glad we went in when we did. Today we’re enjoying the fruits of the move.”

A major hassle occurred when Korvette’s longtime furniture lessee, the H.L. Klion Company, imploded. Lacking the infrastructure to cope with Korvette’s continuous expansion and crippled by two labor disputes, Klion’s furniture deliveries became hit-and-miss, resulting in a whopping $2 million in customer order cancellations in 1964, many of those with custom-ordered upholstery. The crux of the matter, of course, was that the signs all over the department read “E.J. Korvette”, (the customers most likely never even heard of Klion), so Ferkauf and company were compelled to act in order to preserve Korvette’s good name and to attempt to ameliorate the damage.  In August 1965, Korvette took over the Klion operation, and around the same time bought out their carpet lessee, the Federal Carpet Company, as well.

But the most vexing problems stemmed from the Korvette supermarkets. For all of their mastery at selling appliances and other products for the home, and despite their growing experience in affordable fashion and other relatively new areas, when it came to running supermarkets Korvette was light on expertise. By the mid-60’s that part of the operation was raining red ink. For one thing, there was no central warehousing capability, “(so) close day-to-day control over the inflow of goods was impossible – a fatal flaw in the low-margined food business”, said Fortune in 1966. Especially affected were the supermarkets “in the unfamiliar land of Detroit and Chicago, to which Korvette could not profitably ship staples from the East, and where it had no experience in the local purchase of meat and produce.” They soon leased off the Detroit and Chicago supermarkets to other operators, with several in the latter market going to Dominick’s. The issue continued to plague their core Eastern markets, however, and food store competition there continued to intensify, complicating the matter.  Ultimately these problems led to a merger that, in sad hindsight, would mark the beginning of the end for Korvette.     

According to former Korvette vice president Eve Nelson, Ferkauf was prone to “crushes” on companies, an assertion well supported in his 1977 autobiography “Going Into Business : How To Do It, By The Man Who Did It”. (Half Korvette history, half tutorial for aspiring retailers, it’s a fun and informative read.) From the moment Korvette hit the big time in the early 50’s, it seems he was constantly involved in merger talks with one firm or another, often multiple companies at once.

For the most part, Ferkauf pursued the talks with a singular goal in mind: to bolster Korvette in areas where it was weak, creating a combination where both parties brought complementary strengths to the table. In the early years, when Korvette was strong in appliances and other hard goods but lacking in soft goods experience, he focused on department stores with an emphasis on fashion at discount prices.

Three of these were based in New York – J.W. Mays, Ohrbach’s and Alexander’s. Ferkauf had great respect for the merchandising acumen of Joe Weinstein, head of J.W. Mays, a Brooklyn-based retailer with a few suburban branches, despite obvious reservations about Weinstein’s personal manner. (He relates a story where during one meeting, Weinstein sneezed into Ferkauf’s lasagna, “…and I was hungry.” Thus ended the merger discussions for that day.) J.W. Mays’ arch rival, the Bronx-based Alexander’s, had some years back moved into suburban White Plains. When George Farkas, who controlled Alexander’s, opened the company’s huge, attractive Rego Park, Queens branch, it set off “an undeclared war” with Mays.  Nathan Ohrbach, who took a fatherly liking to Ferkauf, opened his flagship store in NYC’s Union Square in the early 20’s (later moving it to 34^th Street) and in subsequent years opened several branches in area suburbs. Ohrbach’s eventually flew its flag in California as well, with a very elegant location on Wilshire Boulevard opening in 1948. For a while, Ferkauf held out hopes a four-way merger with the above named firms, and went to great effort to orchestrate negotiations (seating Weinstein and Farkas on opposite ends of the table, of course) towards that end, but a Mays-Korvette-Orhbach’s-Alexander’s combination never materialized. In 1955, Ferkauf did acquire a 43 percent stake in Alexander’s for just under $10 million, but was never was allowed to buy the additional shares needed to wrest majority control from the Farkas family. In 1968, the Alexander’s interest was sold for more than double what Korvette paid for it.

Others entered the picture, including City Stores, who owned the department stores Lit Brothers (Philadelphia) and Maison Blanche (New Orleans), the variety store chain McCrory, and New York specialty stores Oppenheim Collins and Franklin Simon. When City Stores’ financier, Albert M. Greenfield (“who reminded me of Sydney Greenstreet”, said Ferkauf), made the magnanimous offer to buy out Korvette for half of the going stock price, the prospects there came to a swift end.

Later, there was even a brief flirtation with Montgomery Ward, following Korvette’s move into Chicago in 1963-4. Wards were several years into a major expansion drive by then, opening large, modern stores in malls and shopping centers across the country, but they had alarmingly little presence in their home base of Chicago. There, they were saddled with The Fair, a staid department store operation and perennial fourth or fifth-fiddle to Marshall Field’s, Carson Pirie Scott, Wieboldt’s and erstwhile others. Eager to open mainline Montgomery Ward stores (direct competitors with Sears and Penneys) in Chicagoland, they saw the (then four) area Korvette stores – brand new, attractive, well-located and the right size, as an ideal way to accomplish that. But Ferkauf considered Montgomery Ward’s consistently sluggish profit performance, despite years of investment in exciting new stores, to be “far from satisfactory”, and while the possibilities discussed ranged from a merger to simply selling off the Chicago area Korvette units to Wards, nothing ever came of it. Wards ended up converting The Fair units to standard Montgomery Ward stores, and would go on to anchor a number of Chicago-area malls in the ensuing decades.

And finally (in many ways), Ferkauf’s quest to merge with a supermarket chain, an endeavor that also began early on. First up was Penn Fruit, a very successful Philadelphia-based company that Ferkauf considered “one of the finest food supermarket chains in the United States”. (And that I consider to have had “some of the best-looking stores in history”.) Ferkauf was keenly interested in them and some talks were held, but Penn Fruit’s banker ultimately nixed the idea. Then came years of exasperating, often humiliating talks with Food Fair, another Philly-based food titan, which mercifully came to an end with Food Fair’s 1961 purchase of the Boston-based J.M. Fields discount chain. Ironically, it was Ferkauf they would turn to for advice (much more humbly this time ‘round) when J.M. Fields started to incur serious losses, and he was glad to oblige. 

The “one that got away”, according to Ferkauf, was New Jersey-based Supermarkets General, a member of the Shop-Rite cooperative and later the operator of Pathmark supermarkets. In his book, he professes great admiration for SG and Pathmark (ironic in light of Pathmark’s reputation of recent years but completely valid at the time), and describes the missed opportunity in failing to pursue a merger with them in very emotional terms. The failure, it turns out, was all based on a misunderstanding. As it happened, SG executive Herb Brody had told Ferkauf in an early 60’s meeting that “Shop-Rite will never merge with anybody”. But he meant the cooperative, not Supermarkets General itself, Brody clarified - a good decade later.

As mentioned, by the mid-60’s Korvette’s “supermarket problem” had reached a critical point, but at the end of 1964 it seemed the solution lay right in Korvette’s backyard.   Hills Supermarkets, a Long Island-based operator of 40-plus stores (mostly located on the Island) was growing fast. Best of all, they had recently opened a state-of-the-art distribution center smack dab in the middle of Korvette’s core territory. The song of synergy, complete with harps and celesta, was in the air, and in February 1965 a merger between the two companies was consummated.  Nelson Riddle couldn’t have arranged things better, it seemed.

But it proved to be a disaster from the start, with zero personal compatibility between Ferkauf and Hilliard Coan, Hills’ former chairman, and their respective teams. With Coan installed as chairman and Ferkauf as president and CEO of the combined organization (still under the name E.J. Korvette, Inc.), things bumped along uncomfortably for just over a year. It all came to a head in May 1966, when Coan tried to force Ferkauf out of the company.

Ferkauf, still Korvette’s largest stockholder by a wide margin, hastily put together a meeting with his friend Charles Bassine, the chairman of Spartans Industries, Inc., with the goal of merging the two companies. The net effect, of course, would mean a shift in the balance of power at Korvette. Spartans operated two discount department store chains, Spartan and Atlantic Mills. They also owned a huge garment manufacturing operation in Tennessee (Bassine’s original business), which annually churned out zillions of men’s sport shirts (connoisseurs’ items for today’s thrift-shopping hipsters) and other clothing items for their own discount stores and just about everyone else’s.  In just about a month, the deal was done. Korvette was now a division of Spartans Industries, and Coan and his deputies were shown the door. The Hills/Korvette food stores would soon be sold off altogether, most to Pueblo Supermarkets.

Ferkauf, who sold his Korvette stock at the time of the transaction, stayed on briefly in a largely advisory role, but by 1968 he’d had enough and decided to retire. A historic chapter was now closed. Sadly, in the midst of the tumult of Korvette’s previous few years, Harvard’s Malcolm McNair had removed Ferkauf from his “greatest merchants” list. But I submit that he still belongs there, for several important reasons:

He played a large part in defeating the “Fair Trade” laws. These were basically a form of legal price fixing, in which retailers were obligated not to sell products below the manufacturer’s set price. The very idea of not being able to shop for a bargain price has been unthinkable for eons, but through the 1950’s, Korvette was sued by company after company for daring to breach their sacrosanct list prices . When this happened, Ferkauf either brought in another product line or just defied them. One by one, the manufacturers rescinded these policies, and when General Electric finally caved in 1958, it was over.  The laws were repealed. Public sentiment had won, and discounting was now legal.  

He was early to see the potential in the suburbs. I know. You can read this site and innumerable other sources dealing with retail history, and after a while you get the sense that everyone and their Aunt Martha led the charge into the suburbs. But Korvette’s Westbury store opened in 1954, and that was early.

His management style was ahead of its time in many ways. In 1982, the book In Search of Excellence, by Peters and Waterman, was published to wide acclaim, and it’s still regarded as one of the most important business books ever written. One of the core principles of the book was described as “management by walking around”, which meant exactly that  - spending time on the floor, listening, interacting with employees , seeking their opinions and inspiring the troops where needed, as opposed to  hiding out in a corner office waiting for status reports and issuing directives. This is de rigueur among well-run companies now, but Ferkauf excelled at it decades before it was standard practice.

Also, Korvette arguably had the most powerful female executive in retail in the 1950’s and 60’s, with Ferkauf’s hiring of Eve Amigone Nelson. She was the company’s director of advertising and promotion during the halcyon years, and was given free rein to shape their marketing program, with magnificent results. There was little discussion of a “glass ceiling” back then, in an era when women were rarely even allowed on the floor. Ferkauf played a part in helping to change that.

He keyed in on the entertainment culture like no one else.  It was reported that one of the eulogists at Ferkauf’s funeral related the story of buying his first Beatle record at E.J. Korvette.  No doubt this story rings true for legions of record-buying fans (of the Beatles and every other artist imaginable) in those years. He hired a record producer, David Rothfeld, to run the operation, and throughout the 1960’s and beyond, Korvette easily had the top-selling record departments of any mass-marketer in the country.  Rothfeld’s group also developed a hugely successful electronics line under the house brand “XAM”. (If you’re curious as to what that stood for, it was “Max” spelled backwards. Max was Korvette’s audio equipment buyer’s cat. Now you know.)

Well, Professor McNair passed away in 1985. Maybe someone will create a new list at some point.

In any event, the pioneers tend to move on. They spend more time looking forward than looking back, and with the exception of writing the “history” portion of his book, that’s exactly what Ferkauf did in the years following his departure from Korvette. There would be other retail ventures – Bazar (not to be confused with “Baza’r”, the West Coast-based discounter), a Pier 1-style import store, Clubmart, a New York-area membership discount operation, and Sunbelt Department Stores among them. In 1976 he set up his own retail consulting practice, Penfield Retail Services, where he worked with a number of high-profile clients including The Southland Corporation (7-Eleven), Playboy and Citibank. The legendary New York Times retail writer Isadore Barmash dubbed him a “doctor for companies” in a 1981 article.

Better known than any of his post-Korvette retail endeavors, however, was his philanthropy. In addition to their charitable organization, the Eugene and Estelle Ferkauf Foundation, in the mid-1960’s, Ferkauf and his wife became the founding benefactors of the highly acclaimed Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, part of New York’s Yeshiva University.

In the fall of 2008, I wrote a series of short posts on the history of E.J. Korvette. I’ve received many responses via site comments and emails from folks who worked at Korvette since the posts first appeared, and over the years they’ve continued to come in. For quite a few of them, it was one of their first jobs, where they worked in high school or college. Some worked there for just a year or two, yet looking back now from their late fifties or sixties, virtually all consider their tenure at Korvette to be among their happiest experiences. If their stories are any indication, it’s safe to say that Ferkauf was very well-liked and respected by his employees.

And the Ferkaufs’ generosity even extended to me, in an unexpected, personal way. About a year after I’d done the series of Korvette posts, I heard from Mr. Ferkauf’s wife, Estelle, saying how much she and her husband enjoyed them. Not long afterward, I received a warm email from their daughter, Bobby, as well. Even the most successful business stories fade with time, but people tend to remember how they were treated along the way, and these acts of kindness underscored everything I’d read and heard about them.

Now, a few words about the photos that appear a couple of miles above this paragraph. They’re vintage Korvette publicity shots of early suburban stores, all of them sporting red signage, whereas on later stores it was typically blue. (Note my steadfast avoidance of dropping any Prince song titles here. Sheer willpower.)  The first, circa 1961, shows the historic Westbury store, the original “Korvette City” prototype, packing ‘em in some seven years after its opening. The second, also from that year, is an unknown location to me. Third up, from 1958, is the Springfield, Pennsylvania store, the first in Korvette’s very successful launch into the Philly area. Last, also from ’58, is what Korvette officially called their “Westchester store”, which bore a Scarsdale address but was actually located in an unincorporated area of Greenburgh at the Midway Shopping Center. This store has the rarer block letter signage in lieu of the well-known script.  In a fun side note, one of these signs was uncovered in 2010 when the former Korvette building in nearby Pelham was redeveloped. 

Roosevelt Field Shopping Center, 1965

August 1965 was a hot, tumultuous month for the New York metropolitan area. For one thing, the city was in the midst of a historic water shortage, so severe it was officially declared a disaster by the federal government on August 18. The New York World’s Fair, the last of its kind, was in the midst of its second and final season. Save for a few trademark structures, the Fair would be completely dismantled just a few months later – Disney’s popular “It’s a Small World” exhibit, for example, originally commissioned for the Fair by Pepsi-Cola, was packed up for shipment to its permanent home at Disneyland.

Further along the cultural front, two of the most famous concerts in pop music history took place then and there. On August 15, The Beatles played to a deafening, sold-out crowd of 55,000 people at Shea Stadium, unwittingly inaugurating the ‘stadium rock’ era. The show was filmed, with the boys later overdubbing vocals and guitar in places because of crowd noise, for broadcast on the BBC and later on ABC Television here in the states. On August 28, Bob Dylan played to a crowd of 14,000 at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium. After a seven-song acoustic set, Dylan left the stage and reappeared with a four piece electric band (The Hawks, later known as The Band) - a delight to half the audience present and a heresy to the other half, who signaled their disapproval of Dylan’s startling new sound with jeers and catcalls. History, as it usually does, sided with the delighted. Five bucks and an early ticket order would have gotten you into either show.

And those who lived “on the island” participated in it all. Commuters who worked in the city paid 10 cents a glass for normally free water in restaurants. Families spent one more weekend at the Fair, trying to take it all in before it closed for good. Thousands of local “youngsters” (Ed Sullivan’s term for anyone under the age of 31) attended those soon-to-be-legendary concerts. Of course, there were everyday pursuits as well – boating, little league games, family picnics…and lots of shopping.

If you lived in Nassau County (The non-New York City portion of Long Island is split into two counties, Nassau and Suffolk. Nassau County is closest to the city.), you certainly had your choices where shopping was concerned. Within a ten-mile radius were three of the largest malls in the country – Green Acres Shopping Center in Valley Stream, Mid-Island Plaza in Hicksville, and the biggest (at the time) in the entire country, Roosevelt Field Shopping Center, located 2 ½ miles from Garden City and 5 miles from Hempstead. The photos above, from original slides I recently purchased, depict Roosevelt Field as it appeared in August 1965, some nine years after it originally opened.

Roosevelt Field was named for the airfield that once occupied its site. “Roosevelt” in this case was President Theodore Roosevelt’s son Quentin, an aviation hero of World War I who was shot down over French skies in 1918. In 1927, Roosevelt Field was the launching point of Charles A. Lindbergh’s history-making flight across the Atlantic to Paris’ Le Bourget Field, an event that was wildly celebrated on both sides of the pond. More than a few Americans at the time, especially younger ones, considered “Lucky Lindy’s” flight the most significant national event of their lifetimes. Roosevelt Field would remain an airport until 1951.

In 1950, the Roosevelt Field property came under the ownership of Webb & Knapp, a prominent New York City-based developer. Webb & Knapp was controlled by William Zeckendorf Sr., a colorful, larger-than-life figure who stood out in a city known for colorful, larger-than-life figures. “…the outstanding phenomenon of present-day real estate operations”, the Wall Street Journal extolled Zeckendorf in 1956 - “(he) parlayed Webb & Knapp from a tiny consulting firm, $12,000 in the red, to a publicly-held realty empire with assets of $193.4 million”. Columnist Tyson Freeman quotes from a 1954 Fortune magazine article about Zeckendorf – “...a gifted man. He has a mind of unusual caliber in intuition, rough calculating ability, and resourcefulness; and an imagination that can take fire without appreciable loss of discipline.”

Zeckendorf spearheaded the effort to assemble the land for the UN headquarters along the East River in New York, where slaughterhouses stood, believe it or not, until the mid-1940’s. He designed an automated parking garage, a sort of storage-and-retrieval system for cars, a novel idea for a city where parking places have always commanded high premiums. He bought the Chrysler Building. And he saw the potential for something special in a soon-to-be-defunct airfield his firm bought, a 323-acre chunk of industrial land “in the heart of Nassau County”, if only there were better access to the property.

Better access, as it turned out, was coming. Not long after Webb & Knapp’s purchase of the Roosevelt Field property, plans were announced to extend the Meadowbrook State Parkway to form a connection between two high-traffic area thoroughfares, Northern State Parkway and Southern State Parkway. This new four-lane highway, which would border the property on the east side, would be complete by mid-1956. Zeckendorf made his move, starting out by convincing America’s most prestigious department store firm to take the plunge along with him. A November 10, 1953 Wall Street Journal article announced that “R.H. Macy & Co. and Webb & Knapp jointly announced plans for a $55 million center at ROOSEVELT FIELD, LONG ISLAND N.Y.”, “scheduled to open September 1, 1955”. The actual completion took over a year longer to accomplish.

The shopping center would be the world’s largest – (a massive) “1,387,000 square feet of retail selling space” according to a July 16, 1956 Time magazine article. It would contain Macy’s largest branch store, indeed “the largest branch operation of any department store in the New York area”, as the Journal put it in April 1955, “compris(ing) 300,000 square feet on three floors, plus a 20,000-square-foot outdoor shop”. The Roosevelt Field Macy’s store would be designed by Chicago-based architectural powerhouse Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. Roosevelt Field would be the company’s fifth location in the Greater New York City area, joining their venerable circa-1902 Herald Square flagship -“The Largest Store in the World”, and suburban branches Parkchester (Bronx, 1941), Jamaica (Queens, 1947), Flatbush (Brooklyn, 1948) and White Plains (Westchester County, 1949). A sixth metro area location would open in May 1957, eight months after Roosevelt Field’s debut , at Garden State Plaza in Paramus, New Jersey, albeit under Macy’s New Jersey nameplate, Bamberger’s.

Responsible for Roosevelt Field Shopping Center’s overall design was Webb & Knapp’s director of architecture, I.M. Pei, who came to the U.S. as a student from China in 1934 and was recruited by Zeckendorf in 1948. In 1955 Pei established his own firm, I.M. Pei and Associates, and would go on to design such landmark facilities as the National Gallery of Art’s East Building in Washington , D.C. and the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, two examples among many in one of modern architecture’s most important bodies of work. As such, it’s easy to think of Roosevelt Field as a relatively minor item in Pei’s portfolio.

In the mid-50’s retail world however, it wasn’t minor. A 1957 Architectural Record article, “Suburban Shopping Can Be Fun!” (Exclamation point added by me.), hailed the center’s design as having “interesting variety within a skillfully organized, dominant architectural pattern”, and “an assuring, human scale everywhere – not easy in the world’s largest center; there is visual intrigue and delight – changing, colorful but always under control; and there is an ordered, easy-to-learn traffic flow for pedestrian and driver. In short – it’s fun to shop here.”

I.M. Pei, in the same article, described his design thusly: “The site plan is essentially a free-flowing ring road surrounding a central building group. The stores form a compact cluster, minimizing walking distances and heightening cumulative drawing power. The relatively narrow malls encourage cross-shopping, double the presentation of merchandise, and heighten the impression of activity. The shopper’s route leads him through streets (Dave’s note: “streets” actually means sidewalks here. With fountains and benches, that is.) of different widths and varying architectural treatments, affording a variety of experiences. Trees, flowers, music, fountains, gay awnings, and bold use of graphic art combine to make the retail atmosphere”. There was a strong unifying theme throughout as well – “a modular system of dark-brown steel frames, rough-faced off-white brick and glass”. And at the opposite end of the center from Macy’s – a skating rink!

On April 26, 1955, The New York Times reported the groundbreaking and official start of construction for Roosevelt Field. As the 16-month construction period rolled on, the rest of the shopping center’s tenant lineup fell into place. Women’s Wear Daily columnist Samuel Feinberg reported that there would be two 37,000 square foot variety stores, Woolworth and Kresge, two 30,000 supermarkets, Food Fair and Grand Union, a number of specialty stores including Hartfields and Oppenheim Collins, men’s stores Wallach’s, Howard and Ripley, and 10 (count ‘em!) shoe stores – “Regal, Father & Son, Buster Brown, Flagg, Florsheim, Thom McAn, Kitty Kelly, Baker and Chandler”. There would also be a 15,000 square foot Walgreens and a Horn & Hardart restaurant. And according to The New York Times, the center would also feature “Tepee Town, sellers of Western, Indian and copper items, including clothing, relics and rugs”. On August 22, 1956, Roosevelt Field Shopping Center opened for business to an adoring throng.

Gigantic as it was, Roosevelt Field was but one of three large regional shopping centers to open in Nassau County that year. Two months later, in October 1956, the other two opened. First was Mid-Island Shopping Plaza (known today as Broadway Mall), located in Hicksville near the Wantagh State Parkway and boasting just under a million square feet. The major draw at Mid-Island was its huge branch store of Queens-based Gertz, a unit of Allied Stores. There was also a J.C. Penney store, Newberry’s and Kresge variety stores, Food Fair and First National supermarkets, a Walgreens and many of same shoe stores and specialty shops as could be found at Roosevelt Field. In 1964, a large “Class A” Sears store opened across the street from Mid-Island Plaza. Within a few years, Hicksville became Sears, Roebuck & Company’s highest volume location in the entire chain. Third in the “Nassau triumvirate” was Valley Stream’s Green Acres Mall, itself built on a former airport site. Here Gimbels was the main tenant, with Penney, Newberry, Woolworth, Walgreen and more of yet again the same names rounding things out. Both shopping centers, like Roosevelt Field, were originally open-air facilities that were later enclosed. And like Roosevelt Field they still exist, with a different “starring cast” of course.

And there were other competitors as well. E.J. Korvette, the great “promotional department store”, was just across the way at Carle Place. S. Klein was “On the Square” (as they always were) a few miles away in West Hempstead. Moving up the retail scale, Lord & Taylor was in Manhasset. Stern’s was in Great Neck in the former John Wanamaker location. Abraham & Straus, B. Altman, Peck & Peck, Best & Co. and W. & J. Sloane were just some of the other (now long gone) big names that were nearby. Despite all this, Roosevelt Field did reasonably well.

It soon became obvious that some tweaks would be needed, however, the first major one concerning Roosevelt Field’s two supermarkets. Less than a year after the center opened, as Women’s Wear Daily columnist Feinberg put it, “it was clear to supermarkets and landlord alike that the two together weren’t rolling up more sales than one should have been doing”. In 1958 Food Fair was allowed to break its lease, turning its location (the more desirable of the two) over to Grand Union, whose former space would be subdivided “into non-food stores”. This action was part of a larger agreement between the two competitors in which Grand Union also agreed to change the name of 25 unrelated “Food Fair” supermarkets they owned in the Washington D.C. area to the Grand Union name, releasing the naming rights to Food Fair, who previously had to operate their own D.C. area stores under a different name –“Food Lane” in this case. (Are you confused yet?) Food Fair also took over a Grand Union location in Richmond, Virginia as part of the same agreement.

A much more serious problem was a consequence of the shopping center’s layout. The original I.M. Pei-designed site plan called for two major department stores, one each at the north and south ends, to create a draw at both ends of the center, maximizing the flow of shoppers through the mall areas where the smaller stores resided. As it was, Macy’s was the only anchor, “drawing a swarm of shoppers to the southern end (of the center)”, while “a number of stores in the northern end have been forced to close”, a Wall Street Journal article later put it. Eventually, the problem resulted in a startling 30% vacancy rate. Something had to be done.

From the start, developer William Zeckendorf “hoped that someday Gimbels would join Macy’s” at Roosevelt Field, a January 1963 Chain Store Age article stated. He had other irons in the fire in the event a Gimbels deal didn’t materialize, however. He approached Ohrbach’s, a New York institution since its early 1920’s founding. Ohrbach’s specialized in mid-priced apparel and had stores in the greater New York/New Jersey area along with a handful of stores in Los Angeles. According to the Chain Store Age article, Zeckendorf and Orbach’s were “just about agreed on a 150,000 square foot store within Roosevelt Field” and had received the requisite blessing from Macy’s when the agreement fell through over “technical hitches”. Ohrbach’s would later open a store in neighboring Westbury.

Another company Zeckendorf reached out to was Alexander’s, a fast-growing New York-based discounter with an upscale “promotional department store” image along the lines of Korvette. In this case, Alexander’s was offered a tract of land nearby due to a clause in the Macy’s agreement that barred discounters (er, I mean promotional department stores) from operating within the center itself. Things progressed to the point where a preliminary lease document was signed and a press release issued – on October 30, 1961, the Wall Street Journal reported that an $8 million, three-story Alexander’s would open on a 27-acre site “across Meadowbrook Parkway from the main shopping center”. Then the deal “blew up”, in the words of Chain Store Age. Alexander’s would indeed come to Roosevelt Field, but not until fully ten years later.

As it turned out, Zeckendorf would finally get his prize. Gimbels agreed to build at Roosevelt Field, setting the stage for a hoped-for duplication of the “profitable battleground like Manhattan’s Herald Square…(where) Macy’s and Gimbles’ (sp) main stores face each other across a street to which they have drawn armies of elbowing shoppers of decades – and a number of surrounding stores have prospered from the heavy traffic”, as another 1961 Journal article put it. This arrangement had already proven out well at Garden State Plaza (again, with Macy’s operating under their Bamberger’s nameplate) in Bergen County, New Jersey. Concerns that the new Gimbels unit was too close to their existing stores at Green Acres (Valley Stream) or Great Bay Shore Shopping Center (Islip, Suffolk County) were allayed by the fact that Roosevelt Field had the best access and widest trading area in the entire region.

While Macy’s approved of Gimbels’ presence at Roosevelt Field, they also had the contractual right (which they exercised) to limit the size of Gimbels’ store to roughly 75 percent of their own square footage, a restriction that would also apply to future expansions. After well over a year of negotiations, impasses, parking lot “reshufflings” and other complications, an agreement was reached and construction was started. Designing the Gimbels store would be a team of three firms including L.A.-based Welton Becket and Associates (designers of the Capitol Records tower, the Beverly Hilton hotel and a host of very cool retail facilities), which added yet another marquee name to Roosevelt Field’s architectural pedigree.

On August 20, 1962, the Roosevelt Field Gimbels store opened with a ceremonial ribbon cutting attended by company chairman Bernard Gimbel, Webb & Knapp’s Zeckendorf and Nassau County executive Eugene H. Nickerson, among others. With 250,000 square feet, three stories and a stylish exterior of “white ceramic glazed brick”, the new store provided a most attractive bookend opposite Macy’s. Equally important, it helped to improve the center’s finances and occupancy rate in short order. Whether the two anchor stores killed each other with kindness à la “Miracle on 34th Street” – (“No madam, we don’t have that, but I believe Gimbels can help you!”) is a matter of conjecture.

The following decade brought about many changes. After teetering for a few years, William Zeckendorf Sr.’s empire, Webb & Knapp, was forced to sell its interest in Roosevelt Field, one of many holdings dumped in an (unsuccessful) attempt to stave off the firm’s devastating collapse in early 1965. In early 1967, the center announced a plan “to enclose its more than 100 stores under one roof with ‘controlled weather’ within” said the Wall Street Journal on March 10th. At the same time, the article went on to state that J.C. Penney would construct a new store there. As it turned out, the Penney opening was five years away, in 1972, on the site of the former skating rink.

The long-awaited Alexander’s store had opened slightly earlier (in 1971) within the mall itself, a reflection of how lease policies have moved towards a “the more the merrier” stance. Also, 1971 saw Roosevelt Field lose its “largest mall” status to Chicago’s new Woodfield Mall, my favorite place in the world at the time. Recent years have seen usual tilt-a-whirl where store names are concerned – Alexander’s became an Abraham & Straus which became a Bloomingdale’s. Gimbels became a Stern’s and is now split between Dick’s Sporting Goods (under the name Galyan’s before their merger), Bloomingdale’s Furniture Gallery and a fitness center. Nordstrom built on in 1997. JCPenney is still there, nearing its 40th anniversary at Roosevelt Field. And Macy’s, the center’s first tenant way back in the beginning? Still there. (Did you have to ask?)

Let’s go back to that August 1965 day, when the sun still shone on Roosevelt Field’s walkways, as seen in the pictures above. These are clearly amateur slides, but they provide an interesting look at a classic shopping center that was no longer quite so new. (To see Roosevelt Field in its pristine 1957 state as photographed by the legendary Ezra Stoller, click here and search "roosevelt field".) Despite the chips in the fountains’ concrete and the oxidation of the “dark-brown steel frames” and strip lighting fixtures, the place retained a degree of charm, in my opinion.

A few points of interest stand out. The first photo, for example, depicts Roosevelt Field’s flagship Macy’s store. Interestingly, though the store was only nine years old, its signage had already been replaced. The original signage featured the (to my mind, very good-looking) upper/lower case typeface that was common on their California division stores and in their print advertising. At some prior to the taking of this photo, the signage was changed to the all-caps style that many other New York division stores used. Next, a couple of pictures show the Howard men’s clothing store and an unidentified lamp store next door. Note the blue “kiosk” to the right in the second photo. In the shopping center’s earlier days, this surface was typically filled with promotional posters done in a European style.

The fourth photo, showing the Marine Corps Recruiting Center at the edge of the Roosevelt Field parking lot, is especially poignant in the context of the year it was taken, 1965, the first year of major escalation of the Vietnam War. In March of 1965, 3,500 Marines arrived in Vietnam – the first U.S. combat troops to be deployed there. By the end of 1965, more than ten times that amount were there. Most eventually came back home, but far too many didn’t. Something to reflect back on for the 4th of July.

On a (much) lighter note, the fifth photo depicts one of Roosevelt Field’s many fountains in front of the Woolworth, Thom McAn, Buckner’s Bridal and Formal Salon and Ripley’s men’s store. The Buckner store replaced Stevens, a women’s apparel shop that was previously in that space. Then, a close-up of what the 1957 Architectural Record article called a “squatty mushroom” fountain (The fountain in the previous photo was called a “high jets” fountain. Both types featured “amber, blue and green underwater lights...“for nighttime use”. This photographer dug fountains, no?)

The next three views look toward the sleek, grooved storefront (which unfortunately just peeks out in these photos) of the still fairly new Gimbels store. Note the ladies in their bright summer dresses. There are bicycles in the background, a reminder of a time long ago when a parent’s chief concerns could be summed up in two phrases – “Don’t spend all your money!” and “Don’t be late for dinner!” The red neon of the Walgreens sign can be seen to the upper left of the bicycles.

The last photo shows a yellow sign pointing to the “Continental Court” off to the left. This area featured a fountain with granite bench seating and “music from hidden sources”. What type of music do you suppose they played – The Beatles? No, it was a good ten years before Top 40 rock songs would typically be heard at your local mall. Dylan? Hardly. Muzak versions of those artists? No, it was “restful classical music”. Whatever they played, in that setting, would have been music to my ears.


Plan view of Roosevelt Field after the opening of Gimbels, from Chain Store Age magazine, January 1963.

Being a Primer on A&P Centennials.

Anniversaries were always very important to the A&P. Every year for much of the 20th century, the company’s stores held a special anniversary sale, proclaimed with banners in the stores and trumpeted in newspaper ads. “Come celebrate A&P’s 87th Anniversary” – that sort of thing. Five year anniversaries were an even bigger deal. Ten year anniversaries – huge. Twenty-five or Fifty years, forget about it. Gigantic. But when A&P’s 100th anniversary rolled around in 1959, they really blew it out of the box.

Not content to just hang banners and place six-page newspaper spreads for this momentous event, A&P opted instead to construct a series of monuments to celebrate the company’s centennial. These “monuments”, of course, were stores, and the “series” went on for more than a decade, tallying hundreds of stores. And interestingly, a great number of these still stand, as home to all manner of retail establishments, community centers, churches, and just about anything else imaginable. A handful even continue to house A&P stores.

The celebration was kicked off in January 1959, but a few Centennial stores had already been opened by then. The Centennial store made its "official" debut in mid-March at New York’s International Flower Show, where a special A&P 100th Anniversary exhibit was...uh, exhibited. An 18-foot tall, four-tiered cake was the centerpiece of the exhibit, surrounded by a Victorian garden. A mock-up of the original A&P store on New York’s Vesey Street was on display, along with dioramas depicting A&P’s Jane Parker bakery and Eight O’Clock coffee operations. The last display featured the Centennial prototype, a colonial architectural design that A&P would soon begin rolling out all over, and of which they were justifiably proud.

The design, which A&P generally referred to as “Early American” in its promotion, was based on the architecture of 18th century Virginia. This style was most prominently exemplified in modern times by Colonial Williamsburg, the historic section of the one-time capital of colonial Virginia, which was restored to its original appearance in the 1930’s. One of America’s most popular tourist destinations, Williamsburg has done much to foster a love for colonial architecture among many Americans in the decades since the restoration.

By the late 1950’s, A&P had settled into a fairly plain style of architecture for the majority of its stores, with nothing that really stood apart from those of other grocery or variety chains. They had the typical rectangular, boxy appearance of the day, with brick or tile veneer and a row of large picture windows across the facade. There were the occasional pylons, but for the most part the only distinguishing features were the famous round “A&P” signs, which usually were either internally lit Plexiglas or neon, with beveled “rays” jutting out to the right and left of the round sign. It was obvious to anyone that the Centennial design represented a substantial increase in prestige over what had gone before.

And A&P knew this full well. In reading a number of late 50’s/early 60’s newspaper articles on various Centennial store openings, the same phrase continues to pop up, nearly verbatim, from the pen of the local A&P vice president – “We are certainly proud to dedicate to the _______ community a modern Super Market to serve the people of this area; and we are doubly happy that the new store could be the company’s latest approved design, this handsome ‘Early American’ style”. The key is in the last part of that sentence – A&P wisely promoted the prestige and “scarcity” factors as a way of making sure that customers were aware of their good fortune. They ate it up, as evidenced by the hundreds of Centennials that would be built over the ensuing decade, although A&P did continue to build the standard non-Centennial style in selected markets (along with some unique designs for their Southern California stores, but that’s a story for another time) for various reasons.

In the first years of the Centennials, an effort was made to carry on the Early American theme inside the stores as well, with pediment-style departmental signs and colonial murals on the walls. This was discontinued a few years later, as competition heated up and a more modern interior look, with bolder colors, was virtually forced upon them.

Also in earlier years, not surprisingly, the “colonial” theme lent itself to all kinds of patriotic-themed promotions, from grand opening ads proclaiming “Here ye, Here ye”, to giveaway copies of the Declaration of Independence on “genuine aged parchment”. (I had one, not from A&P, that I thought was extremely cool.)

To me, one of the most interesting aspects of the Centennial program was the way A&P adapted the design for an incredibly wide range of store types, both for new stores and for retrofits of existing stores. The popularity of the Centennial design and resulting public demand prompted A&P to remodel scores of existing stores with the colonial theme, with results ranging from the attractive, to the slightly odd, to the funny but endearing.

The only Centennial store that I recall shopping at personally was in Glenview, Illinois, a near north suburb of Chicago, where we moved in 1970 when I was in second grade, and I have to admit that the store’s design made a striking impression on me even then. I don’t remember much about the inside of the store, save for all the slush that had been tracked in by shoppers during those snowy Chicago winter days. And the Jane Parker fake Oreos, which my little brother and I used to crush up in our ice cream, creating what I believe was the first Cookies and Cream ever invented. To my knowledge, that is…

From the top, the photos depict: (1) An unknown location from 1962, with a lovely red logo, (2) Edmonds (Seattle Area) Washington, from 1968, (3) Columbus, Indiana, also 1968, where the colonial design fit the larger store extremely well in my opinion, (4,5,6) Three views from the West Hempstead, Long Island, NY store, 1968, (7) Somewhere in Queens, NY, 1966, (8) Jackson Heights, Queens, NY, 1966 (Ok, now the “Car 54, Where Are You?” theme is running though my head. No, I wasn’t born yet when that show first ran.), (9) An unknown location from 1970 – someone who remembers “Hoeffer Drug”, please help us out!, Note: Thanks to Bill, who informs us: "The A&P by Hoeffer Drug was at West Boulevard and Lorain Avenue in Cleveland, OH. The building was torn down and replaced with a CVS drugstore a few years ago." (10) Southampton, Long Island, NY, 1972, with a really sharp-looking treatment of the side of the store. Below, a mother and daughter show their affinity for A&P brands in a circa 1960 scene, where the colonial pediment signs are visible on the wall above. All are A&P publicity photos with the exception of the "Hoeffer Drug" photo, which is from Progressive Grocer's A&P Study, and the Queens, NY night shot, which is from a Crouse-Hinds Lighting ad.

Lastly, some newspaper ads from the early years of the Centennial era - 1959 ads from Annapolis, Maryland and Logansport, Indiana. Next is an article with an artist’s rendering of a forthcoming A&P store that appeared in the Sandusky (Ohio) Register in 1959, followed by a grand opening ad for the store from the following year. Following that are 1959 and 1962 Grand Opening ads from New Castle, Pennsylvania and Valparaiso, Indiana, respectively. Last is a 1964 article from the Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, showing off their newly Centennialized (remodeled) A&P store.

Wow, getting real close to December 25, and I haven’t started my Christmas blogging! We’ll shift gears for the next few posts. Hope your week isn’t too hectic!

The ____ Side of Sears

I’ll let you come up with your own adjective to describe this gasp-worthy (ok, that’s mine) group of four Class A Sears stores, which opened between August and October, 1964 and are pictured here shortly after opening. Showing a wide spectrum of architecture and (almost) every Sears logo combination, the individual charm of each of these stores speaks for itself.

The first store pictured is the now torn down Columbus, Ohio Northland Mall store. Columbus had an Eastland, Westland and Southland Mall as well, which still exist in various states. On my earlier post about the Oakbrook, Illinois store, Steven Swain pointed out the similarity in concept to that store albeit with a more substantial steel structure supporting the awning. The store, shown here in a 2003 photo, was razed along with the rest of the mall in 2004.

The second store is the Hicksville, Long Island, New York store, which held the distinction for a great many years as Sears’ top-grossing store. This store was built adjacent to Mid-Island Plaza (now called Broadway Mall) and is still going strong. Check out the sweet two-tone Rambler wagon in the foreground of the parking lot. Here is a page of not-too-shabby photos of a Cadillac collectors’ show that show the store as it currently appears for a backdrop.

The third store is still humming away in Albuquerque, New Mexico in a shopping center that was originally launched by Homart, the development division of Sears. Original plans called for a 124,000 square foot store, but Austin T. Cushman, Sears' chairman at the time, professed confidence in Albuquerque's future and personally ordered the store's size hiked up to over 170,000 square feet. Provisionally known as “Homart Shopping Center”, it opened as the Coronado Shopping Center, and is now more fittingly referred to as Coronado Mall, reflecting the large enclosed portion that was added some years later.

The last store, from Decatur, Georgia’s Columbia Mall, which was later renamed Avondale Mall. The store closed in 1984 and finally met the wrecking ball last year. Note the presence of a “key-osk” (my apologies.) out front, a not uncommon feature of Sears and other chains (note the fourth photo here) during that time. I mean seriously, why would someone want to go inside a store to have a duplicate key made- the idea itself is just tacky, don’t you think? Those booths were definitely the way to go. Here is a nice photo page from a great site with extensive photos of the store (and its destruction) and history of the mall over the years, and there is also a video (please see disclaimer below) showing the store’s final moments.
*****************NOTICE*****************
The attached video link portrays the destruction of a classic retail property. More sensitive retail fans will want to exercise caution in deciding whether or not to view said video. Ok, you’ve been warned.
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