When It Was Penneys

For most of their first sixty years of existence, the signs out front read “J.C. Penney Company” or “J.C. Penney Co.” in “black and mustard yellow“ as Time Magazine described them in 1965. Straightforward and prosaic these signs were, with the exception of some nice deco versions in the 1940’s. From 1971 until earlier this year, it was “JCPenney” in Helvetica, a much-loved classic in its own right. And just recently the logo has been tweaked, in an understandable way for understandable reasons.

But from 1963 to 1971, a snazzy, remarkable, highly individualistic logo took center stage, and even the name took on a new form – “Penneys”. Sure, the word “Penney’s” (in standard letters, with an apostrophe) had been used from time to time previously, on the odd blade sign here, the occasional newspaper ad or gift box there, but the new Penneys logo would be emblazoned on everything – traditional company products like clothing, sheets and towels, new offerings such as car batteries, stereos and sporting goods, and the cover of the newly-launched Penneys catalog. And on the stores themselves, of course.

The new logo, part of a “total graphics design program”, was the creation of New York design firm Peter Schladermundt Associates, who worked to achieve the following objectives, outlined in a February 1964 Chain Store Age article: “The Penney trademark would have to exude fashion, hint at broader merchandise interests and expanded consumer services, larger, more exciting stores (and) appeal to a more sophisticated ‘self-service’ shopper”. After coming up with several preliminary designs, they arrived at the perfect “P” – a black vertical “strength, durability” with a blue “cool color, for permanency” curved section “fashion flair, dynamic feeling of future”. The rest of the letters were designed in like fashion.

Late-term baby boomers like me (who to this day call the place “Penneys”) tend to look back at this logo with great fondness for a number of reasons. For many of us, it’s the earliest one we remember – in my case at the Golf Mill Shopping Center in Niles, Illinois. The short tenure of the logo is probably another factor – it’s truly a “sixties thing”. But most of all, it was just so cool looking! This admiration is by no means limited to over-40 folks however, as evidenced by the affectionate nickname the logo has picked up in recent years – the “Funky P”. (Although if you ask me, the whole thing is funky. Just saying.)

Getting back to the company’s newest logo, the all lower-case “jcpenney”, I don’t think it’s bad at all by current standards. Will it last as long as the “Funky P” did? I’m not sure – attention spans are kind of short these days. As long as the 1971 logo? Not a chance. But they can always go the “funky” route next time!

The publicity photo above, from 1964, depicts the inside entrance of the Penneys store at the Shepherd Mall in Oklahoma City, which opened in November of that year. Below, shown here by the kind permission of Chain Store Age magazine, are two graphics - the first showing some interesting experimental versions of the new Penney logo, the second showing the final version, with notes by designer Schladermundt. I think they made the right choice, don’t you?

Cruisin' The Strip To Woolco

The photos above provide an in-depth look at one corner of a typical Woolco store from the mid-1960’s. Pictured is the “Auto Center” portion of the brand new Woolco at the Southroads Mall in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which opened in 1966. This, of course, was during the peak of the American car culture.

Auto Centers, then as now, typically consisted of an auto accessories section and a service department, where tires, batteries and tune-ups (required much more frequently by the cars of that era) were the main standbys. By the early 1960’s, auto centers were part of the normal discount store package, a standard feature in all Woolco stores and for most of their competition , including E.J. Korvette, Zayre and K-Mart. The ability to offer these departments was one of the many advantages that the Woolco discount store format had over the much smaller Woolworth’s variety stores. Auto centers weren’t the sole province of the discounters, however, but were staples of full-line department stores as well. Some of the larger (“Class A”-type) Sears stores had offered auto service as far back as the late 1930’s, and it was near-universal at Sears by the early 50’s. Montgomery Ward began to open auto centers in 1958 when they began to open large mall-based stores, and J.C. Penney opened its first one in Melbourne, Florida in 1963 as part of a major push to expand outside of their traditional soft goods arena.

Although I didn’t start driving until the very end of the 70’s and to my recollection never set foot in the auto center section of a Woolco, these photos bring back memories. For many of us who drove less-than-stellar cars in our youth, frequent trips to buy STP Oil Treatment or some other magic potion (or gas tank antifreeze in those Chicago winters) to keep the old beaters running were mandatory. In my case, it was usually K-Mart for auto supplies or the JCPenney Auto Center (which was later bought out by Firestone) for tires.

The photos are self-explanatory, but a few things are worth noting:

· This store has one of the last examples of the “I-beam grid” tower sign with the block-lettered Woolco logo. Some of Woolco’s second generation design elements were already in place on this store – the “zig-zag” awning had already been ditched in favor of something more modern-looking, and the silver painted script Woolco logo on glass had replaced the backlit plastic signs above the entrance doors.

· The chain’s standard 1960’s in-store signage can be clearly seen.

· The “TapeDek” display, featuring a brand new product at the time – the legendary 8-track tape, where an album’s songs were divided between four “channels”. If you’re over 35, chances are you have direct experience with those. I especially remember the “ker-chunk” sound our 8-track player would make when changing between the four channels on the tape. On several 8-track albums we had, the channel breaks were actually in the middle of a song, complete with a fade-out and fade-in at the break. Yikes!

· The huge accessory headrests, sold because headrests weren’t standard in every car at the time. Looks like they would have been somewhat uncomfortable.

· The cool-looking auxiliary gauge sets.

· “Station Wagon Pads.” Eh?

· The ceiling-hung lighting display near the motor oil.

· The circa 1961 Ford Falcon in the service bay. Guess Linus and Lucy’s folks must have shopped at Woolco.

· Lastly, the shop labor price sign, featuring several free services, wheel alignment for five bucks, and an oil change for under three bucks (98 cents labor plus five quarts of Havoline at 37 cents each). Wow!

One side note that you might find interesting –the location of this store, Tulsa, had a unique connection to the “American car culture” mentioned above. The city was home to the famous “Buried Plymouth”. Back in the mid-90’s or so, I bought a copy of the July 1, 1957 issue of Life magazine at an antique store. Inside was a fascinating article about the celebrations surrounding the 50th anniversary of Oklahoma’s statehood that had just taken place. The “main event” was the burial of a brand-new black and gold 1957 Plymouth Belvedere in a specially constructed vault beneath a Tulsa city park. The vault was designed to keep moisture out, hopefully preserving the car well enough to drive after all of those years underground. Tulsa residents were asked to guess what the population of their city would be at the time of the state’s centennial celebration in June 2007. The person with the closest guess (or their heirs) would win the car at the time it was exhumed, 50 years hence. The guesses were sealed within a metal container and buried along with the car.

I forgot all about the story until a few years ago, when I came across the magazine after storing it for years. Curious, I looked it up on the web, and by that time several websites had sprung up, fanning the flames of excitement about the soon-to-be revealed Plymouth. By the time June of ’07 rolled around, my oldest son and I had strongly considered driving out to Tulsa for the official unveiling. We ended up having a schedule conflict, so we decided to watch it on a live webcast instead. We were heartbroken (along with most Tulsans, I’m sure) to learn that the doggone vault had leaked and had been full of water for years, and the car was ruined. Even a trip to the Woolco Auto Center wouldn’t have helped it.

Thanks to the Beryl Ford Collection/Rotary Club of Tulsa, Tulsa City-County Library and Tulsa Historical Society for use of these fine photos.

Montgomery Ward's Georgian Period

Students of classic architecture are well familiar the Georgian Period. The term “Georgian” is used to describe a style of architecture that was originally popular from around 1720 to 1830, during the reigns of British monarchs George I, II, III (who was in power when America declared and fought for its independence) and IV. Some of the distinctive features of the Georgian style are a strong sense of symmetry, paneled windows, dormers, mansard roofs and “quoined” corners, meaning a series of cornerstones from the foundation to the roofline, with staggered or columnar edges. Much of what is called “Early American” architecture falls within the Georgian school. This style has enjoyed a tremendous resurgence in the last couple of decades and is frequently used to convey a sense of importance or stateliness, on bank branches for instance, or on upscale homes. (Love those McMansions, right?)

Montgomery Ward had a “Georgian Period” of its own, shorter and of course much later than the original. From the mid 1930’s up until Wards froze all new construction in 1941, many new and remodeled units were cast in the Georgian mold, to great effect in my opinion. The motivation for Wards in this case was straightforward – prior to 1935 or so, there was no consistent exterior theme to the company’s stores, and Wards wanted a distinctive look, one that would impart a quality image. Concerned that a modern style would age poorly and be out of style after a few years, Wards opted for a “colonial” look, according to Chain Store Age, “because of its perennial appeal, its naturalness and its uniquely patriotic atmosphere”. It was a good thing, because (unbeknownst to Chain Store Age, or anyone else, including Ward employees at the time) the style would have to carry the company for nearly two decades, until new construction was finally restarted in 1958.

Another benefit to the Georgian designs Ward put together was the cost flexibility they allowed. For mid-level markets, such as Glens Falls, NY (the seventh photo above), cheap standard brick could be used, painted or stuccoed over in a cream color. For higher end stores, more expensive facing brick was used, and for major market units such as Detroit’s huge Gratiot Avenue store (fourth photo above), they could go all out, adding such flourishes as large columns on a rounded corner, all the while maintaining harmony with the Georgian look. Like A&P, who would later adopt the Early American exterior style for multitudes of its supermarkets, the interiors of these stores generally did not follow the colonial theme.

In the early 1930’s, Montgomery Ward was in deep trouble. Having quickly converted its handful of “display stores” into standard retail units, and well aware of how far they were trailing Sears, Wards launched a frantic store construction program. With 36 stores at the end of 1927, the company opened 208 more stores the following year and another 288 in 1929. Wards went from no stores to over 500 in just over three years! As one might expect, this incredibly rapid rollout of stores by a company whose entire previous experience was limited to mail order led to chaos. Mail order employees were pressed into service as retail store managers with negligible training. Profits went into the tank (Wards had a $9 million loss in 1931 – undeniably the deepening depression made matters worse), and rumors began to fly that Montgomery Ward faced no choice but to merge with Sears.

Wards needed a hero, and in 1931, one came at the behest of J.P. Morgan and Co., Wards’ major stockholder. He was 57-year old Sewell Lee Avery, a respected Chicago businessman who was chairman of United States Gypsum, the nation’s largest manufacturer of plaster and wallboard, and who sat on the boards of U.S. Steel, Armour and Company, Container Corporation of America and a number of other firms. Avery had taken over his father’s plaster business in 1905 and combined it with a number of competitors to form U.S. Gypsum, and was a true darling of Wall Street in those depression days, able to operate lean and still make money. When J.P. Morgan and Co. asked, Avery eventually agreed to take on the challenge of leading Wards out of the swamp. Interestingly, he would continue to head U.S. Gypsum during the entire 25 years he ran Montgomery Ward.

Three key actions marked Avery’s early tenure at Wards. First, Avery immediately put the Sears-Wards merger rumors to rest. Secondly, a number of the weaker stores were closed off the bat. Most importantly, Avery installed a team composed of some of the sharpest young retail talent of the day to help run the business. First was Frank Folsom, head of merchandising, who came from San Francisco’s Hale Bros. department store chain. Raymond H. Fogler, VP of operations for the stores and the nine gigantic mail order catalog houses, came to Wards from W.T. Grant Company. Walter Hoving was R.H. Macy’s star executive vice president in charge of sales, and at Wards he would assume charge of the catalog, company advertising and package design. Walter Baumhogger, a 13-year company veteran with a fine track record in Ward’s Chicago store district, was put in charge of the retail store division.

Under Avery and his new team, major improvement at Wards came about fairly quickly. The loss for 1932 was $5.7 million compared to $9 million the previous year, and in 1933 Wards turned a $2.2 million profit. The retail stores, formerly an albatross, accounted for the improvement in profits, offsetting a small loss on the company’s mail order business. In January 1935, Fortune magazine profiled the company’s turnaround, calling it “a notable rejuvenation of the Ward company“. Avery had lived up to the heroic expectations.

Ward’s store system was grouped along similar lines to that of Sears, with “A”, “B” and “C” designations. In 1935, according to the Fortune article, Wards had seventeen “A” stores, large units in major population centers. The “B” stores were by far the largest group, with 453 units, medium sized stores in towns ranging in population from 5,000 to 75,000, with an average of 20,000. The “C” stores, only 19 units at the time, were smaller stores that carried a lineup limited to tires and auto accessories.

In 1939, Montgomery Ward made an unlikely yet enduring contribution to America’s pop culture heritage. A Ward advertising copywriter named Robert L. May was assigned to put together a giveaway booklet for the stores to hand out as a Christmas promotion. He came up with a humorous twist on Clement Clark Moore’s “The Night Before Christmas”, only this time a ninth reindeer was added to lead the pack – Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer. The little story was an instant hit. Years later, Wards transferred the rights to the story to May, whose brother-in-law Johnny Marks soon wrote the famous song based on it, with Gene Autry recording the resulting multimillion-selling hit.

In the Wards executive suite, high drama was becoming the order of the day. Ward’s chairman, Sewell Avery wielded an increasingly autocratic leadership style, and was beginning to drive away key Wards management talent. In 1937, Walter Hoving left to take the presidency of Lord & Taylor. Two years later, Frank Folsom quit to become the CEO of Goldblatts, a Chicago-based department store chain. A frustrated Raymond Fogler, by then president of Wards, resigned a few months afterward with no new job in hand. Fogler would soon rejoin his alma mater W. T. Grant, where he would enjoy a long, successful run through the forties, fifties and sixties as Grants’ president, then as chairman of the board. It was very destructive pattern for Wards, as Avery proceeded to run the company as a virtual one-man show, driving away scores of talented managers over the ensuing years, leaving the billion-dollar company with virtually no middle-management ranks. The company was effectively becoming a training ground for managers for its competition.

While these developments were mainly discussed only within retail executive and Wall Street circles, there was a public side to Avery’s exploits. Highly distrustful of the government and deeply disdainful of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Avery made the headlines with increasing frequency in the early and mid-1940’s. (Oddly enough, as the Fortune article points out, Roosevelt’s polices did much to help farm family income, a factor which had to have played a part in Ward’s sales increases with that all-important demographic.) Avery’s first clash with the Roosevelt administration was over the National Recovery Act (NRA), a New Deal agency created to regulate industrial competition. Avery withheld the $30,000 charge assessed by the NRA to Wards, and as a result was one of the very few companies to be denied the right to display the famous eagle logo, a symbol that could be seen literally anywhere you turned in 1933. The NRA was ultimately declared unconstitutional, to Avery’s delight.

Throughout World War II, Avery battled constantly with the War Labor Board, refusing to sign a 1942 labor contract that he felt would force Wards to become a closed shop (mandatory union membership). Ultimately, F.D.R. issued an order forcing Avery (and Wards) to sign the contract, which he begrudgingly did. Two years later, things came to a head again, when the government demanded an extension of the agreement pending an election. Avery, feeling that the contract “violated employees’ rights”, refused to sign off on the extension. Roosevelt, “As commander-in-chief in time of war”, warned Avery that the work stoppage was delaying the delivery of farm implements and other goods necessary for the war effort, threatening “further action” if Wards did not comply. Avery refused to obey the president’s order, and on April 26, 1944, “three olive-drab Army trucks rolled up to Montgomery Ward’s main entrance”, as related in a Time Magazine article entitled “Seizure!”, which described the spectacle in detail the following week:

“Out jumped a 44-man unit of battle-helmeted Military Police under command of Lieut. Ludwig Pincura. Bayonets glinted in the afternoon sun. Followed by four enlisted men, Lieut. Pincura began his bloodless invasion. On the eighth floor the five pairs of Army brogans clattered across the green-and-white-squared linoleum, then moved noiselessly through the deep-carpeted executive offices.

Sewell Avery was not surprised to see them. He smiled. After a moment's embarrassed silence, Lieut. Pincura said: "Under authority vested in me by the President of the United States I am taking over this plant."

Asked Sewell Avery: "Does that mean I have to leave?"

"Yes," said the commander of the Army of Occupation."

And so it was. Montgomery Ward was now under the control of the U.S. Army, and 69-year old Sewell Avery, who refused to comply every inch of the way, was bodily removed from his office by two servicemen, as immortalized in this famous photo. The “occupation”, which Time surmised was on questionable legal ground, lasted four days, and all the while president Roosevelt was on vacation in Warm Springs, Georgia. Eventually, the whole case was scrapped.

Things would get worse (although not necessarily this crazy) for Wards before they would get better.

The photos above, from Chain Store Age, depict Montgomery Ward stores opened between approximately 1935 and 1940. Top to bottom, they are: (1) Hagerstown, Maryland, (2) Kansas City, Kansas, (3) Enid, Oklahoma, (4) Detroit, Michigan – Gratiot Avenue, (5) La Grange, Illinois, (6) Dearborn, Michigan, (shown here in late 2006 and torn down only last year *sigh*) (7) Glens Falls, New York, (8) Trenton, New Jersey and (9) Rome, Georgia.

For years I drove by the La Grange store without the slightest clue as to the building’s Wards heritage. It is now home to an Italian restaurant called Bella Bacino’s. If anyone has an update on the fate of any of the other stores, please let us know!

Below is a very highly modified Georgian from the same era, a West Palm Beach, Florida unit. King George must have had a winter place there.

Thanks to Nessa for sending along links to some great photos she has taken of the following Georgian-style Wards buildings - Cumberland, Maryland, Morgantown, West Virginia and Cambridge, Ohio. Check out her Flickr page to see many other photos with a great sense of history and fun!

The ABC's of Sears

One of the most significant keys to Sears’ success was the company’s ability to provide the appropriate size and type store for each community they did business in. General Wood, having successfully launched Sears’ initial entry into the retail store field, realized early on that a “one size fits all” approach wouldn’t work.

A strategy to develop three primary basic types of Sears stores was put in place. First there would be the “A” stores, termed by the company as “Complete Department Stores”. These stores were generally over 100,000 square feet and often approached 250,000 square feet, carrying the complete line of Sears merchandise. The A stores in the early postwar years were usually large, free-standing stores, with an auto center either attached or adjacent. As major shopping centers and large malls came into the picture in the 1950’s, the A stores were more often seen as part of those. The A stores were often of a more elaborate architectural design, especially in the very late fifties and throughout the sixties when a number of Sears store designs were strikingly impressive.

The second group, known of course as the “B” stores, were aptly called “Medium-Sized Department Stores”. The B category covered a wide range of store sizes, from footprints as small as 25,000 (or less) to the 100,000 square foot range. Here the merchandise mix varied widely as well, depending on local tastes, but usually with a strong emphasis on appliances and hard lines. This variance extended to the exterior design of the B stores. Many were as elaborate-looking as the A stores, while others were of more modest appearance. Like the A stores, most of the B’s were built as part of shopping centers or malls as the 1950’s rolled on. Some, not all, had auto centers. In the late 50’s, the “B-1” designation was created to differentiate the larger, more comprehensively stocked B stores.

The rationale for placing an A or a B store in a given location was often cut from a fine demographic cloth, and it was not at all uncommon for an A store to be placed in a major mall in a smaller town while a B store could be found in a smaller mall within a large city.

The “C” designation stood for “Smaller Hard Lines Stores”, and these primarily offered appliances, tools, sporting goods and automotive items. Far smaller than the other two store types, the C stores had much more of a plain “storefront” appearance and were typically found in urban street locations, rural downtown locations or in suburban strip shopping centers. A short-lived experiment in the 1970’s saw the addition of some clothing and soft lines to a handful of the larger, more remote C stores. These came to be known as “Z” stores. A small number of appliance-only “D” Stores existed for a time as well.

Most of these photos are from the 1958-59 timeframe. Top to bottom, the locations are: Memphis, Tennessee on Poplar Avenue (which is still a Sears), Ogden, UT, New Orleans, LA, Roanoke and Newport News, VA, Rockford, IL , Oklahoma City, OK (a bit older, circa 1955), St. Matthews (Louisville), KY (building still exists), and Fort Lauderdale, FL. I know that Memphis is an A store, Rockford and Louisville were B's. Roanoke and Newport News appear to be B's from the photos, the others I'm not certain of. The kicker for me in this group is the Memphis store. I made a great many business trips to Memphis in the early 90's, and the cool script logos were in place until at least 1995. Now replaced, of course. *Sigh*.

Speaking of Sears, and we were, my friend Didi has posted a couple of photos of a great old pre-1930 Sears store which amazingly is still operating on Chicago’s North Side. Her blog is entitled “Bright Lights, Dim Beauty of Chicago” and covers a great, eclectic variety of subjects. You don’t have to be from Chicago (like me) to enjoy it. Everywhere I go, I run into people who have a warm spot for the Windy City. Give it a click!