Happy New Year!

The floors are washed and waxed, the checkout lanes fully stocked with paper bags, and the cash registers are loaded with change and crisp new bills. We’re ready to launch a new year of Pleasant Family Shopping, a look at the everyday places that make up a surprising share of our youthful memories, in part because we spent so darn much time at them! I’m referring to the chain stores – the supermarkets and discount stores, and the shopping centers and malls that our parents dragged us to as kids. The places we took so much pride in driving to when we finally got our own license and wheels. The places where many of us held our first jobs, made lifelong friends and even met future spouses.

One doesn’t have to be very old to notice how much these places have changed over the years. If you’re over 25, you’ve already seen a good number of household names come and go, and for those of us over 40, the current retail scene is a universe apart from that of our youth. Over time, as the extent of these changes has sunk in and life has become more complicated in so many ways, it’s amazing how nostalgic many of us have become about them, to the point where our “shopping memories” are seemingly right up there alongside the dream vacations, Disney trips and other highlights we may have experienced in years past.

Fortunately, many of these places were photographed in their prime, and it’s the goal of this website to present them as they were, along with the sometimes surprising, often frustrating, but almost always interesting history behind the great American retail firms from which these stores sprang. Your own memories are an extremely vital part of things here – they truly complete the picture, and I want to express my deepest thanks to those of you who continue to share them with the rest of us through your comments.

The photo above shows the checkout area of a Food Fair supermarket, as depicted in a 1962 ad for Kentile Floors, a long-defunct manufacturer of asbestos tile flooring, strangely memorialized by identical neon signs that still stand in Brooklyn and Chicago. I love the pattern of the tile floor in relation to the checkstands, almost a “starting block and running lane” pattern. (Had food been this closely involved, I might have gone out for track-and-field in high school.) The store’s pastel colors and the style of cash registers lead me to believe that the store may have been a few years old at the time this photo was taken, and that the tile flooring was a new upgrade, although I'm not certain of that. Also, note the one-line marquee on the back wall, a very common feature of 1950’s-era Food Fair stores that I’ve rarely seen elsewhere. Ordinarily it would to be used to promote a store special of some type.

Of course, today at least, it would have read “Happy New Year!” The best to you and yours for 2011!

A&P Goes to War!

Probably not the war you’re thinking of, although World War II fits in at roughly this point in the timeline. No, this was a war of A&P’s own – one that started earlier and ended much later.

As far back as the mid-1920’s, there were grumblings about the growing power of “the chain stores”. Most of this concern, understandably, was on the part of independent grocers, who by the mid-1930’s were looking at a full third of their potential market going to one competitor – A&P. Predictably, it wasn’t long before politicians on a variety of levels took notice. As a result, throughout the 1930’s, over half of the individual states passed laws regulating the operation and expansion of chains, and in nearly all cases a “chain store tax” was levied for good measure. By necessity, A&P took these as they came, complying quietly in nearly all cases.

As far as A&P’s business was concerned, they had weathered the Depression far better than most companies. Their aggressive pricing policies accounted for one reason, but another key factor was George L. Hartford’s insistence on short-term leases for all A&P stores. Very short term, in fact – the typical A&P store lease was for one year with nine one-year renewal options. In later decades this policy would come back to bite A&P in a big way, costing them many prime early shopping center locations, but the flexibility it gave the company to close or relocate unprofitable stores was an asset in the darkest days of the 1930’s.

Another development was the conversion to supermarkets. Faced with upstart competition from the likes of Michael Cullen, a former A&P employee who had started a chain of giant, self-service food stores called “King Kullen”, and others, it became evident to John Hartford that A&P would have to jump into the fray in order to remain competitive in their key New York/New Jersey markets and elsewhere. After considerable egging on by his brother, George Hartford, the conservative one who controlled the purse strings, agreed to a 100-store experiment with the newfangled supermarkets in 1936. Success soon caused the experimental number to be upped to 300. Before long, the “experimental” designation was dropped altogether, and supermarkets became the way forward for A&P.

In early 1938, according to the 1970 Progressive Grocer A&P Study, while supermarkets constituted just 5 percent of their store base at that point, they were contributing 23 percent of sales and nearly half of the company’s profits. As author William I. Walsh points out in his history of the company, “The Rise and Decline of the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company”, although A&P didn’t come up with the supermarket idea, the fact that the company opened the first supermarkets to be seen in many locales often led people to credit A&P with the concept.

Further adding to the excitement, A&P decided to enter the publishing business. For some years the company regularly issued an illustrated giveaway recipe booklet, called simply “Menus”, but would now introduce a full-fledged women’s magazine, to be entitled Woman’s Day. The decision was spurred on in part by the success of another magazine, The Family Circle, which was then reaching nearly 1.5 million households through five major grocery chains, according to an October 1937 Time article. A&P’s new magazine would carry “menus and home hints”, but “no fiction or film gossip as does Family Circle”, according to Time. Twenty years later, A&P would sell the magazine off to an independent publisher, who made it available to all grocery outlets and other retailers. Of course, Woman’s Day and Family Circle remain staples of supermarket checkouts everywhere, alongside some distinguished longtime competitors and some shall we say “less uplifting” publications. (Personally, I miss the “Weekly World News”. You just can’t find solid news reporting anymore!)

On a more somber note, the “anti-chain store movement” was rapidly growing in intensity by the late 1930’s. By this time, the movement had an official face. Congressman Wright Patman, a firebrand who was aptly nicknamed “the fighting Democrat from Texas”, had taken the issue up as his personal crusade, and his sights were set directly on the good old A&P. In 1936, he had won passage of the Robinson-Patman Act, still a cornerstone of U.S. commercial policy today, which essentially prohibits manufacturers from selling the same item at different prices to different entities, in effect leveling the playing field for smaller retailers who are unable to purchase at the volume level of their larger competitors. (I’m massively oversimplifying this, for space reasons. And in the interest of keeping you awake.)

Two years later, Patman introduced a new bill to curb the influence and spread of chain stores, (accurately) nicknamed the “Death Sentence Bill”. The centerpiece of the bill was a national chain store tax of $1,000 per store, but “with a final clincher”, as the Progressive Grocer study put it – “the total tax would be multiplied by the number of states in which the chain operated”, a provision that would have meant utter devastation for A&P. The numbers in A&P’s case would have added up to a half a billion dollar tax for the company for 1937 – 60 percent of total sales and a mere 6,000 percent of profits. Bye, bye Tea Company, along with Safeway, Kroger, Woolworth and host of other household names. Even cooperative organizations such as IGA would have been under threat, according to the study. Fortunately, Patman’s bill never made it out of committee.

It wouldn’t remain quiet for long, however. In the early 1940’s, the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division filed two landmark lawsuits against A&P, one in Dallas in 1942 and a second in Danville, Illinois, in 1944. For the second suit, the list of charges filled ten pages, which Progressive Grocer condensed to a page and a half and I’ll further boil down to a few lines (This is “Web 2.0”, right? Whatever the heck that means.) as follows. The main points of the lawsuit alleged:

· That A&P purposely ran stores at a loss to drive out competition.
· That A&P held a “partial monopoly”, because of “illegal” practices in manufacturing, wholesaling and retailing.
· That A&P was able to obtain preferential allowances and discounts in violation of the Robinson-Patman Act.
· That A&P took profits from its manufacturing plants and used them to subsidize its retail stores.
· That A&P’s produce subsidiary, The Atlantic Commission Company, which sold to other chains as well, dominated or controlled markets, overcharging or selling inferior products to competitors.

A&P lost the case and a subsequent appeal, eventually agreeing to pay a $175,000 fine and to dismantle the Atlantic Commission Company. The judge who handled the case still had words of praise for A&P: “To buy, sell and distribute to a substantial portion of 130 million people (the U.S. population at the time) one and three-quarters billion dollars worth of food annually, at a profit of 1.5 cents on each dollar, is an achievement one many be proud of.”

Yet it wasn’t over. In September 1949, less than a year after the previous case finally ended, the Attorney General of the United States filed a new lawsuit – this time calling for no less than the Breakup of The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company. Rumors were floating that the government was proposing a plan to split A&P into seven separate regional companies. (For those of you who are at least my age or maybe a few years younger, this may “ring a bell”. Get it? Ok, I’ll stop.)

A&P had used advertising to a limited extent in their previous struggles to help rally public opinion to their side. Exasperated that they were facing this situation yet again, they declared an all-out P.R. war this time around. In late 1949, a series of full-page newspaper ads were taken out in (according to Time Magazine) some 1,800 papers across the country, laying out A&P’s side of the story in painstaking detail.

By far, the most intriguing of these ads appeared on November 11, 1949, featuring testimonials from several of the company’s competitors, undertaking an impassioned defense of A&P. “Who hollered for Uncle?” “We Agree With A&P” “We Don’t Want the A&P Put Out of Business”, and so on, followed by detailed explanations of their positions. The motivations were wide-ranging –including a genuine respect for A&P as a major food supplier for millions, and concern for their tens of thousands of employees. Several of them started their careers with A&P before striking out on their own, the sentimental ties still evident. And then there were the objections on principle – as a “threat against our system of free enterprise”, a threat to growth aspirations of their own. Or perhaps the objections stemmed from a sense of being exploited, regardless of the potential financial gain for them should A&P go down.

The strategy worked. Before long, letters began pouring into Washington D.C. from hundreds of consumers, upset that the government was threatening to mess with “their A&P”. It soon became evident that a majority of people were convinced that the government’s case against A&P lacked merit. The case slowly faded away, ending in 1953 with a consent decree that called for a handful of wholly inconsequential changes at A&P.

Sadly, the one person who no doubt did the most to help A&P weather these storms passed away before their final legal victory. At age 79, John Hartford was still as active as ever, running A&P along with his brother and sitting on a number of other corporate boards. On September 20, 1951, Hartford collapsed and died moments after attending a Chrysler Corporation board meeting in their famous namesake building in New York City. It would be years before the full magnitude of the loss to A&P, in terms of ingenuity, judgment and fine-tuned empathy for the customer, would be completely realized.

At least now, though, A&P was finally free from all of the legal distractions and could chart its own destiny again.

The photos above are all from Chain Store Age, and from top to bottom, show – an unknown exterior from 1941, the meat counter from the Rockville Centre, Long Island, NY store from 1937, an exterior view from Birmingham, Alabama in 1939, an interior from Pittsburgh in 1937, exterior and interior views from Asbury Park, New Jersey (Or is that Granada I see? No, just Asbury Park.) in 1937, and finally two views of another Birmingham unit from 1939, from the Five Points shopping center, with Scott 5 and 10 next door.

Pictured below are John and George, the brothers Hartford, in contrasting styles of dress and matching Bakelite telephones, as photographed for Life Magazine in 1949. Two of the 1949 ad campaign newspaper pages can be seen in the background. (Thanks to Richard of the great Viewliner Ltd. site for the tip on the Google Life Magazine archives. Some fine stuff there!) Lastly, for your reading pleasure, are the two ads pictured behind the Hartfords. Click to enlarge and read.

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.

One Small Step For Woolco

By the end of the 1960’s, Woolco had finally picked up the pace of new store openings, with 33 stores opening in 1969 alone - adding up to 92 Woolco stores in the United States and 33 in Canada at the close of the decade. A few more multiple store markets, so critical for market presence and maximizing advertising dollars, were now part of the mix, including Atlanta and Houston (3 stores each), Indianapolis and Jacksonville, Florida (2 stores each). An even more ambitious program was put in place for 1970 and 1971, with 70 new stores slated, including additional units in Houston, Atlanta, Richmond and Toronto, and multiple stores in new markets Toledo, Miami and Sacramento, the first appearance of the Woolco name in California. Also, Woolco’s first (and only, for a while) store in the New England states would open in Bangor, Maine in 1970.

In 1971, F.W. Woolworth Co., Woolco’s parent company, made the somewhat surprising decision (to me, at least) to eliminate Woolco’s separate division status and consolidate the Woolco operation into the Woolworth variety store regional management structure. While this may have made sense on paper, I can’t help but ponder the psychological effect on Woolco managers – did it lessen their drive, knowing their operation was “lumped in” with the variety store operation, which despite Woolworth’s leadership position was by now widely considered be an antiquated retail concept? Within a few years, the shift in status would even be noticeable on Woolco’s shopping bags, of all things. By the mid-70’s, the bags sported both Woolworth and Woolco logos, with Woolco’s new stylized logo in the subordinate position. Multitudes of products were advertised on TV as being available “at Woolworth and Woolco stores”, in that order. Again, the comparison with S.S. Kresge couldn’t have been more striking, with the near totality of that company’s resources being invested in Kmart, to stunning results. And even Woolworth’s other longtime dime store competitors had jumped in by now – G.C. Murphy with its growing line of Murphy’s Marts and W.T. Grant Company’s 1972 vow to open only large “Grant City” department stores henceforth (sadly, it wouldn’t be enough to save Grants, but more later on that).

Another factor that would take on much more significance as the decade of the 70’s rolled on was Woolworth’s burgeoning specialty store business. In 1962, the Federal Trade Commission invalidated the six year old merger between Brown Shoe Company and the New York City–based G.R. Kinney Corporation (Kinney Shoes), the largest shoe store chain in America at the time, and the following year it was acquired by Woolworth. At the time, Kinney had 584 stores in a mix of locations – some downtown, but a large number in the all-important shopping centers and free-standing “roadside” sites in high-traffic areas. By 1971, as Kinney Shoe Corporation, a wholly-owned Woolworth subsidiary, the chain had grown to over 900 locations, with many of the new ones in enclosed shopping malls. Two successful nameplates (among a few less than successful ones) that were launched under the Kinney umbrella were Susie’s Casuals (1968), a fixture of 70’s-era malls, and Foot Locker (1974), which would be the eventual successor to the entire Woolworth organization. In 1968, Woolworth acquired Cleveland-based Richman Brothers, a 245-store men’s apparel chain. In line with a common practice of the day, both the Kinney and Richman operations had in-house manufacturing capacity, which allowed a higher degree of control over styles, manufacturing quality and pricing. Richman also operated men’s stores under two main banners (Woolworth would add a third called “Adams-Row”) beside its own – Stein Stores, a chain of southern apparel stores that it had acquired in 1959, and Anderson-Little, a Fall River, Massachusetts-based chain bought in 1966. My grandparents hauled my brother and me off to Anderson-Little at least once a year on our summer visits there, usually the Walnut Hill Plaza store in Woonsocket, RI or the one at the Auburn (Mass.) Mall. When I was fourteen, they bought us leisure suits there - brown for my brother, and a startling powder blue for mine. I’ve never been so anxious for a growth spurt in my life. Unfortunately, that suit was followed up with a forest green one (with a vest!) from JC Penney.

It would eventually become clear to most observers where Woolworth’s corporate priorities stood, and Woolco was not atop the list, nor was it in second place. As a Business Week article would later put it, “The (Woolco) discount unit slipped as specialty retailing got the principal attention”. The opportunity to profit from the immense volume the Woolco stores could have produced with a stronger effort, potentially multiples of what a successful chain of shoe stores or menswear shops would ever yield, was slowly allowed to slip away.

Nevertheless, at the beginning of the seventies, the arrival of a new Woolco store was happy event for any community they entered, with sizable crowds and the type of Grand Opening hoopla joyfully described on this site time and time again. Woolco’s slogan at the time was “a new fashion in modern retailing”, and the emphasis continued to be on apparel, which in light of the sister businesses described above isn’t surprising.

The photos above are circa 1968-70. The first one is a night exterior view of the Northtowne Plaza Woolco in Claymont (Wilmington), Delaware, which opened in 1968, followed by a daytime exterior of an unknown location (possibly the Town and Country Shopping Center Woolco in Marietta, Georgia, thanks to J.T. for mentioning that possibility) on its 1969 opening day, complete with a crowd, outdoor sale items, pennant streamers, a Wise Potato Chips truck, and a parking lot full of iron and not much plastic. The majority of the other shots depict the Asbury Park, New Jersey store (sorry, no Springsteen sightings) at its grand opening in 1970, including the main aisle crowd shots, the cosmetics department, the “Sweater Shack”, the (definitely analog) watch display, and the final photo, a peek under the “cheerful red-striped awning” of the Red Grille cafeteria. Five of the photos – the wide view of the front of the store, the checkout line (from those proud days when Woolco had “exclusive” shopping bags), "Miss Credit" (these people were big on beauty queens, weren't they?), the auto center view and the “University Shop” shirt section are of unknown locations.

The Woolco Of Our Dreams

The photos above, dating from 1964 through 1966 and showing scenes from several different stores, paint a fairly complete picture of the typical Woolco store from the chain’s 1962 launch through the early 70’s, when they introduced a new image. When these publicity photos were taken, the look was fresh and clean, and although simple, was in keeping with the style of the times. Ten years later, well…

In 1964, when Woolco’s national coverage was still extremely light and there was no significant penetration in any major market, the company made the decision to introduce a compact version of their standard store layout for secondary markets (population 25,000 to 75,000). While the typical Woolco store size varied from anywhere between 100,000 to 140,000 square feet, the smaller units would be 70 to 80,000 square feet, yet would carry a full line, including the auto center and Red Grille cafeteria. The first of the “mini-Woolcos” opened in 1964 in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada, with other units immediately following in Columbus, Mississippi and Kinston, North Carolina.

Around the same time, Woolworth introduced another store banner, the short-lived “Worth Marts”. These stores were basically conversions of older Woolworth’s stores that were still under lease, but had been supplanted by Woolco stores or newer, larger Woolworth’s units. The program bore several similarities to S.S. Kresge’s “Jupiter” store line, especially the merchandise mix, which emphasized fast-moving staple goods. Twenty-seven units were slated for conversion to Worth Mart stores in 1964.

In 1966, the pace of growth accelerated, with Woolco’s store count doubling from 27 to 52 units by the end of the year. By now, a number of cities had multiple Woolco stores - Columbus, Ohio with three stores, Phoenix, Denver, Memphis and Louisville each with two. Two years after that, in 1968, Woolco had two stores each in the New Orleans, Atlanta , Dallas and Houston areas, three in Charlotte, and a third was added in Memphis. Still, there were no stores in many Woolworth strongholds such as Chicago, for example, nor were there any at all in California’s mushrooming markets.

In contrast, Kresge had nearly 300 Kmarts by 1968, and was adding over 60 per year. More than matching Woolco’s store density in their existing markets and with particular strength in the areas Woolco was nowhere to be seen, the die was pretty well cast between the two companies by the mid-60’s. Kmart was clearly seen as Kresge’s future, while Woolworth continued to hedge their bets.

One area in which Woolworth did continue to invest heavily was the Canadian Woolco program. As mentioned, four of the seven stores opened during Woolco’s first year, 1962, were in Ontario. Nova Scotia, Alberta and British Columbia were entered in 1964, Saskatchewan in 1965, Quebec and Manitoba in 1966, Newfoundland in 1967 and New Brunswick in 1968. Thus, after six years of existence, Woolco had 27 stores in Canada, covering every province except Prince Edward Island - so I guess “Anne of Green Gables” didn’t shop at Woolco. (I threw that last line in for my wife and daughter, who occasionally read this thing.) Claude of the “Ghost of Steinberg’s” Flickr page, a great collection of photos of Steinberg’s supermarkets and Miracle Mart discount stores, has kindly brought us up to date on the fate of many of the Canadian Woolco stores. You can read it in the comments section of this previous post.

The locations of the scenes pictured are unknown to me, with the exception of the first one, an artist’s rendering of the East Brunswick, New Jersey Woolco, which opened in 1964, and the fifth (the “Ladies Apparel” section), which was taken at the Azalea Mall Woolco in Richmond, Virginia. Note the Red Grille with its “familiar red-and-white striped awning” in back of the jewelry and camera departments, and the tan cloth pool table and pin setting machines in the sporting goods section. I especially like the camping setup, with the pop-up trailer and galvanized steel Igloo cooler (and a male mannequin, for cryin’ out loud!). It was a great day when I figured out how to set up my Coleman stove.