Suburban Shopping in the 1970's!

…and now for something completely different! Here’s an overview of the chain retail scene from a single suburban town from the year 1976 – the town in this case being Addison, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago. Since the majority of the chains shown in this post are (or were) national or at least multi-regional, many of you will probably get a kick out of this. If you’re from the Chicago area, these photos should be a special treat, as nearly all the companies pictured should be familiar, and if you grew up in the Addison area, I suspect the floodgates will open.

These photos are the work of Mr. Joe Archie, longtime Addison resident. Joe and his wife, Jeanette, have put together an incredible photographic record of the area’s history through the years, along with the history of their family. Be sure to check out their wonderful Flickr page to see more of their photos, including some very nice downtown Chicago views. Joe took this set of photos in 1976 as part of a project to document their hometown during America’s Bicentennial year. My utmost gratitude goes to them for allowing us to enjoy these great photos, and for continuing to document these all-too-often overlooked aspects of American life.

Some of these chains have been covered in depth here before, and others I eventually hope to get around to, so we’ll dispense with the hardcore history this time around. Instead, I’ll just toss out a few facts and throw in some memories here and there. As always, I welcome your own memories in the comments section.

Also, we’ll make an exception to the rule here, and expand the site’s normal scope just a bit to include some of the popular chain restaurants of the day. I mean, we have to eat, don’t we?

And we’ll have the radio on as we drive – with any luck there’ll be something decent playing – maybe some Steely Dan or Queen or Boston, or even some 10cc or Wings. Of course, there’s always the likely chance that Dad will pop in his 8-track of Neil Diamond’s “Hot August Night” (1972 double-live album) for the 3,700th time. Oh come on, it’s not like you don’t sing along with every word!

First up is Zayre, a suburban Chicago fixture with 27 stores in the area by that time. The store pictured is the classic early Zayre with the massive glassed storefront and the even more massive signage. I particularly like the Auto Center close-up, with very nice glazed brick and blue flashing (just like the main store) and a simple, clean appearance. As I noted at the beginning of a series of Zayre posts done last year, my family pretty much dropped Zayre like a hot brick when Kmart came around. Seeing these photos years later, with that beautiful row of blue diamonds above the entrance doors (and it also looked great after the 1978 brown-and-orange revamp), I’m sitting here with pangs of regret. Were we too hasty?

Come back Zayre, I’ll let you be my store!!

The Mighty Jewel - then as now, Chicago’s supermarket powerhouse - looking mighty well in classic 70’s aggregate and mixed brick in this location at Addison's Green Meadows Shopping Center. The bold orange signage for this store was rendered in a font that the company had been using for over 40 years by then. The following year, it would be replaced with a new logotype that would eventually grace the Addison store when it was remodeled a few years later. Interestingly, both Jewel and their top competitor Dominick’s would switch from orange to red-orange logos in the 1980’s.

Jewel, pronounced correctly, is a one syllable word – “Jool.” It’s just another one of those fun, idiosyncratic Chicago pronunciations, like “melk” instead of “milk”. (I’m not kidding.) And as noted before, “Jewels” or “The Jewel” are perfectly acceptable forms of usage. Never “The Jewels”, though, lest one risk jumping the shark.

Donimick's Finer Foods (Pronounced Dah-min-ick’s, with heavy emphasis on the first syllable. Typical usage: “Oh, we’re out of melk? Crap, I just got back from Dominick’s!”) was a fairly small chain as recently as the late 60’s, but by 1976 was growing like wildfire, with over 60 supermarkets by then, bypassing such longtime Chicago stalwarts as A&P and (the newly departed) National Food Stores on its way to becoming number two in the market, second only to Jewel, which is still the case today. This very attractive store, located on Army Trail Road in Addison, opened in 1973, and is typical of the stores they were putting up all over Chicagoland. I drove by this store this past January, and sadly it is now closed. The two stores we shopped at were older, one at the Market Place shopping center in Des Plaines on the corner of Elmhurst and Golf Roads, and the other in Rolling Meadows on Kirchoff Road, but they had the same “letterboxed” signage. Nearly all Dominick’s stores flew the orange flags in those days, a great touch.

As said in a previous post, Dominick’s strength was their excellent selection of ethnic foods, and the chain held an Italian food fair for years that always managed to attract lots of customers and press attention. Also mentioned previously were the great Heinemann’s bakeries, with their superb Butter-Ritz cakes and homemade cookies. Ironically, the Heinemann’s line is not available today at Dominick’s, but is at Jewel. I still can’t get used to that.

Guido’s was an independent chain in the Chicago area. We shopped at the Hoffman Estates store once in a while during the year or so we lived in the area. Don’t know a lot about them, other than the fact that they had four stores in the early 70’s - this Addison location, Westchester, Berkeley (honored by Progressive Grocer magazine in the mid-60’s as a “Store of the Month”) and the above-mentioned Hoffman location which was closed due to poor profitability in 1973. I’m assuming that the rest of the chain ceased operation sometime not too long after that.

It’s interesting to note that Guido’s also had the Heinemann’s bakery franchise. The once-mighty (and by 1976, gone) National Food Stores had it as well, but certainly it was associated closest with Dominick’s.

Goldblatt Bros. was a classic, full-line department store with deep Chicago roots. This store, located in the Green Meadows Shopping Center in Addison, opened in the spring of 1962. Like a couple of other Chicago department store institutions, Marshall Field & Company and Wieboldt Stores, Inc., they chose green as their corporate color. Of more substance, perhaps, is the fact that like those other two companies, Goldblatts was early to establish suburban branches, as exemplified by this store and several others, including the one we shopped at in Mt. Prospect Plaza, and other locations such as the Scottsdale Shopping Center near Burbank, Illinois and at Elmwood Plaza in Racine, Wisconsin. In the early 60’s there were 31 Goldblatt’s stores in total.

Since Randhurst Center, with its triple-threat of Wards, Carsons and Wieboldt’s was just down the street from our local Mt. Prospect Goldblatts, our family usually gave them the short shrift, I’m sorry to say. Goldblatt’s seemed to target a slightly lower income demographic than the chains I’ve just named, and for a time the strategy worked very well. In time, it was competition from the discount chains rather than other department stores that caused them the most problems. Pulling out of a bankruptcy in the mid-1980’s, Goldblatts hung on for a long time but never really hit its stride again, finally closing up for good in 2003.

Sporting a nice example of one of my all-time favorite retail logos, the Addison JCPenney Catalog Outlet already had a vintage look by 1976. Unlike Sears and Wards, whose catalogs dated back to days of old, for Penney’s it was a relatively recent venture – a business they entered through acquisition, when they bought out Milwaukee-based General Merchandise Company in 1964. That company’s catalog essentially became the “Penney’s catalog”. Several of these catalog outlet stores were actually attached to the company’s distribution centers. Later on, this store was replaced by a new store at nearby North Park Mall, which itself is now closed.

We’ll talk about Portillo’s, the restaurant to the left of the photo, (Dig that “hot dog” sign! It’s long gone but lives on on all Portillo’s packaging.) in a bit, but for the moment I wanted to focus on the Ace Hardware store. Before the days of the all-inclusive “home center” – currently active firms like Lowe’s, Home Depot and Menards (primarily Midwestern locations) and now-defunct companies such as Grossman’s, Courtesy, Home Quarters, Hechinger’s, Handy Dan, etc., one pretty much bought lumber at a lumber yard and hardware at a hardware store. For us, that hardware store was the Ace Hardware in the Rolling Meadows Shopping Center. My Dad was (and is) the consummate handyman, so it was the rare Saturday morning that we didn’t stop in at Ace at least briefly. The Addison Ace looks to be of 1950’s or very early 60’s vintage.

Anyone who watched much TV in the 1970’s would have to remember the commercials with sultry-voiced actress Connie Stevens singing “Ace is the place with the helpful hardware man”, after which she would put her arm around some guy in a red Ace vest who was trying his best not to smile too broadly. In the early 80’s, Connie was replaced by NFL coaching/broadcasting legend John Madden with a modified slogan suited to fit his regular guy persona – “I gotta tell ya, Ace is the place for me.”

“The old 5 and 10’s” were definitely a dying breed by the mid-70’s, though most of the venerable old names, including the once-great Ben Franklin, were still hanging on by a thread at the time. My own family had long since passed them by in favor of Kmart, The Treasury, Venture and the other much larger discount stores.

It’s interesting to see how the Addison Ben Franklin was by then trying to position itself as a “hobby and craft” niche supplier. In light of the competition, it was probably a wise move. (Notice one of the signs mentions macramé. I remember my family selling a huge macramé wall hanging at a garage sale in the early 80’s, and a lady came up asking “How much for the ‘ma-crayme’?” I thought we were gonna die!)

In truth, I know next to nothing about the Big “R”, but it sure has that wild, kooky discount store look, and probably was a fun place to shop. Close to Addison, this store was actually located in nearby Villa Park, on North Avenue near Addison Road. The earliest newspaper ad I’ve located for the Big “R” dates back to 1962, but the store might well be older than that. Notice the colonial flags (with the famous “Don’t Tread On Me” flag to the far left) – a nice touch for the Bicentennial year. Sadly, the store appears to have been in the proverbial “throes” based on the liquidation signs in the windows. If anyone can fill us in on the Big “R” experience, I’d be glad to update this section. Thanks.

Update 10/6/09 - Several people have written to inform us that the Big "R" property was the birthplace of an important piece of Chicago-area pop culture - Dick Portillo's first hot dog stand, "The Dog House", forerunner to the wildly popular Portillo's chain, was located at the edge of the store's parking lot! Opened in 1963, the hot dog stand, which as mentioned was actually a trailer, didn't even have running water, and actually used a 250' long water hose hooked up to an adjacent building. "The Dog House" is a revered part of the company's heritage, and I believe every modern Portillo's has a picture of it somewhere on their walls. The Big "R"'s place in history is secure, and I, for one, am very relieved!

A sad sight indeed is this vacant, boarded up Topps Department Store on North Avenue in Addison. The original Topps at this location opened (to great fanfare, as was their style) in 1962, but was completely destroyed by fire four years later. The replacement store was built in the updated Topps image. This store closed in 1974 along with the rest of the chain, and so had already sat empty for some time when this photo was taken. Later on, the store became a Syms clothing outlet, which it remains to this day. I shopped there a few times, and remember their commercials featuring company founder Sy Syms with the well-known tagline – “An educated consumer is our best customer”.

Almost forgot this one, because these stores weren’t around long. Robert Hall Village was intended to be a successor to the well-known Robert Hall clothing stores, the retail face of a garment manufacturer called United Merchants and Manufacturers, Inc. Mr. Archie, in his original photo caption sums it up: “Robert Hall was a city chain whose slogans alluded to "Plain pipe racks" and "Low rent". They didn't do so well in the suburbs.” My Dad shared that view (that they carried “low end” clothes), and because of that didn’t shop there much. I personally made one significant purchase at Robert Hall, though - when I was seven years old, I bought Dad an electric yellow pair of golf socks for his birthday. I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t wear them all the time!

Robert Hall Village was UM&M’s attempt to broaden the appeal of Robert Hall by expanding it into a “total discount store” concept – clothes, sporting goods, automotive, electronics and even groceries. The Chicago Tribune’s George Lazarus explained the rationale: “If Robert Hall can attract milady with an apparel special, the firm stands a good chance of selling her some groceries while she is in the Village.” Several Robert Hall Villages were opened across the country, including five in 1973 in the Chicago area – Downers Grove, Homewood, Crystal Lake, Hoffman Estates and the pictured North Park Mall unit in Villa Park. If they were trying to emulate a Turn-Style, Topps or Korvettes, they did a pretty good job, unfortunately, since those chains were in awful shape by the mid-70’s, and were “tubesville” before decade’s end. “Milady” wasn’t impressed. Upon the chain’s closure in 1977, two of the units, Downers Grove and Villa Park, became Kmarts.

For me, one memory of Robert Hall Village stands out. We visited the Hoffman Estates store during its grand opening (1973), and it’s the first time I remember seeing an electronic digital calculator. These were beautiful desk models, manufactured by the Japanese firm Miida (My-eeda), and were priced heftily at around $200 up to $350 or so. Of course, you can now get the same functionality at Dollar Tree for…well, a dollar!

You’d think that my main interest in this photo would be the great-looking, antebellum style “Type-C” Sears store, with the classic 60’s serif version of the logo. As nice as that is, having grown up in the Chicago area, the “Playback” store to the right (unfortunately much of the sign isn’t visible) is a rare, wonderful sight. For anyone who came of age there in the 70’s and 80’s, Playback, a now defunct stereo/electronics chain, was legendary. Oh, the hours spent there, drooling over $500 Pioneer car stereos and $1200 Blaupunkts, when the car I was driving at the time was worth somewhere between the two! Playback also had one of the most memorable commercial jingles of the day – I wish I could find a copy of it to link to. It was simply the company name and tagline - “Playback – the electronic playground!” sung in a cool layered-harmony, a cappella, stretched out style, sort of like the opening verse of the Kansas song “Carry On, Wayward Son”.

Fayva was a deep-discount shoe store chain, very similar in concept to Payless. As far as I know, my family may have shopped there once or twice, but I only vaguely remember it. Fayva was division of Massachusetts-based Morse Shoe, Inc., which also operated shoe departments in a number of discount chains. (As a kid, I did visit the bizarrely fascinating, long-since closed museum founded by Ira Morse in Warren, New Hampshire. The guy loved to hunt, let’s just say.) Fayva was a major TV advertiser in Chicago, and I assume elsewhere as well.

Next door is a Rexall drug store, sporting a very nice sign with the brand-new ‘70’s Rexall logo. A national institution for decades, Rexall ‘s glory days were by then largely past, and their parent company, Dart and Kraft, was royally ticking off loyal Rexall franchisees around this time by opening up the product line to other chains. Not long afterward, the franchisees were dropped altogether, their contracts cancelled. Ironically, Dart and Kraft “invited” them to continue to keep their Rexall signage installed as a means of promoting Rexall products. Most declined, understandably, although a few drugstores still fly the orange and blue to this day.

Kinney was easily the best known “family shoe store” of the 60’s and 70’s. We shopped there a bit, but most of our shoe bucks went elsewhere, mostly to local family owned shoe stores. They were another mega-TV advertiser.

From 1962 on a division of the F.W. Woolworth Company, Kinney had over 600 stores at its peak, the majority of which were the “roadside” style buildings that looked exactly like the one pictured - an extremely familiar sight for millions of Americans. Family shoe stores, like family restaurants, are largely a thing of the past, and it seems (in all but the luxury shoe market, at least) that the key to success for a shoe store chain is to follow either the sports or discount model. Woolworth themselves realized this some time ago, so by the end of the nineties the Kinney stores were history. From that point all resources were poured into Foot Locker.

You’ve heard of Walgreens, right? Pretty hard to miss ‘em, seeing as they’re popping up on prime street corners everywhere in what has to be the most aggressive real estate strategy in all of retail - one that has all the appearances of a 50-to-100 year plan. It’s interesting to watch as they battle it out with CVS in the drugstore version of “last man standing”, but if the old adage “location, location, location” holds true, it’s hard to see how they can lose.

Even thirty-some years ago Walgreens was a big player, especially in their home market of Chicago. But as you can see they weren’t nearly as picky about locations, even to the point of taking over an existing store in a shopping center that would easily been 10 to 15 years old at the time, as this photo of the “new” store in the Green Meadow Shopping Center in Addison shows. Perhaps they took over one of their old “Walgreen Agency” franchised stores, a category that was being phased out at the time.

“When you run out, run out to White Hen!”, the classic commercial went. White Hen Pantry, the franchised convenience store division of Jewel, had been around 10 years by this time, and had multitudes of locations in Chicagoland, especially in the Northwest and West Suburbs. Home of a basic selection of groceries, newspapers and magazines, a great deli and brownies extraordinaire, these were always a great place to stop.

Looking at the photo, the “Open 6 to 11” sign jumps out at me. Gosh, I wonder whose competitive nose they were trying to tweak? Unfortunately, the competitor eventually won out, and this store, like most all other White Hens in Chicago, is now a 7-Eleven. Somehow “When you run out, run out to the Sev!” just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Many of the New England area White Hens, the chain’s other major market, are still going strong.

Wow, looking at the picture of this Denny’s restaurant, the design is even nicer than I remembered! A worthy successor to the famous first-generation “Googie” Denny’s stores, this is seventies design at its finest. Inside it was all orange and brown, red and purple. The Rolling Meadows, Illinois Denny’s, where we usually went, looked just like this Addison unit.

We ate there a lot in those days, my dad, brother and I, usually for breakfast on Saturdays. Of course, later on in college and my early twenties, I learned just how late (or early) “Always Open” really meant! “Last stop of the night”, so to speak, after a concert or other late night activity. These days, with kids of my own, Denny’s is pretty much back on breakfast duty, at least every now and then. Sure wish our local one looked like this!

Three mainstays of the 1976 fast food scene against a backdrop of cloudy skies. Dunkin’ Donuts (“World’s Finest Coffee- Donuts made fresh every 4 hours” – Awesome!) we’ll talk about them in just a sec. The Burger King, sporting the 70’s sign in the parking lot and the 60’s lettering on the building, needs a bit of shingle work. All that’s visible of the McDonald’s here is the famous “Golden Arches” sign. “10 Billion Served, it reads. Nowadays there are 10 Billion McDonald’s restaurants, aren’t there?

In this day and age, I think it would be really cool if McDonald’s switched to a satellite-fed digital readout for the “Billions Served” portion of the sign. Many of these haven’t been updated in years, or feature the “Billions and Billions Served” copout. The technology isn’t that expensive anymore, and it wouldn’t even have to be updated in real time - weekly or even monthly would suffice. I think it would be a fun gimmick, and the numbers would no doubt be impressive as heck.

(Special note to McDonald’s executives: Information on where to send royalty checks for the aforementioned idea can be obtained by contacting “Dave” at the email address in the Profile section of this website. Thank you.)

Long before America ran on Dunkin’, we still liked it a whole lot. Dunkin’ Donuts is a much revered institution in the Chicago area, possibly just slightly less so than in their native New England, where they’re as common as fire hydrants. This particular prototype brings back such wonderful memories for me. The ones we frequented the most – Des Plaines on Elmhurst Road and Rolling Meadows on Kirchoff – looked just like it. This was another proverbial “Saturday stop”, oftentimes between Ace Hardware and Dominick’s. (The thing I’m really digging about these photos and writing this post is reliving the old routines, and the way they’re coming back to me in such detail, which hopefully I’m not boring you with. Wow, has time flown!) When we were very young, my brother and I would peer through the window where we could watch them make the donuts and occasionally the cook, who didn’t look at all like that little guy on TV, would give us free ones hot off the press (and those suckers were hot, trust me), the chocolate honey-dipped type. Those must’ve been fast sellers, because that’s the only kind we ever saw them make!

In recent years Dunkin’ Donuts has received a good bit of acclaim for their coffee. Long overdue and well-deserved, in my opinion, but of course I’m partial to the stuff. The lack of a mermaid on the coffee cups doesn’t bother me in the least.

Never convenient were these, but we did hit the Jack in the Box once in a while, and the food was decent. They did have a lot of appeal for kids, with cool giveaways and a “kid meal” that predated McDonald’s Happy Meals, if I remember right. And they made Rodney Allen Rippy a star, for a while at least. My apologies to those who can’t get the Jack in the Box jingle out of their heads as a result of reading this.

And the store is very sharp looking, no question about it. The Grand Prix in the foreground reminds me of my second car, a ‘76 GP bought in 1983. With my Pioneer stereo, Audiovox equalizer and Jensen Triax speakers, I could deafen whole blocks. Didn’t even need the Blaupunkt! Today I pretty much just run with whatever factory stereo comes with the cars, though.

One of the coolest aspects of this Pizza Hut for me personally is that the fact it dates from around the first time I ever ate at one. Almost exactly year after this photo was taken, our family - grandparents and aunt and uncle in tow, stopped for dinner at the Mt. Prospect Pizza Hut on Algonquin Road (like this one, long gone) after my eighth grade graduation ceremony in 1977. I don’t remember ever setting foot in one prior to that. I believe that restaurant had the newer logo (as on the folding sign to the lower right). Still like ‘em, although I’ll take a good old Italian mom-and-pop made pizza over any chain’s product every time.

The big news now is that Pizza Hut is floating the idea of simply calling their restaurants “The Hut”, just like Radio Shack is testing out “The Shack” as a new banner for their stores. (Don’t worry, I’ve resisted any temptation to start calling this site “The Blog”. But you’d know what I’m talking about if I did, right?......……………..Hello?)

My prediction, if Pizza Hut’s name change is successful, is that ten years from now we’ll just see the familiar red roof with the word “The” on it.

Another one I don’t have a great deal of personal experience with, but I do remember their TV commercials. Arthur Treacher’s was a division of National Fast Foods, who licensed the famous fish and chips recipe from the British family who created it in the 1860’s, the Malins-of-Bow. They chose distinguished British actor Arthur Treacher as their corporate pitchman (and as he got older, strictly their symbol – he passed away in 1975). Treacher was a distinguished character actor who was very active in the 30’s and 40’s, often playing a sage-like, quip-ready butler. One of his last roles was as the Constable in the 1964 Disney film Mary Poppins.

In the late 1960’s, Fisher Foods, parent of Fazio’s supermarkets in Ohio and Dominick’s Finer Foods in Chicago, bought a major interest in National Fast Food, gaining as part of the deal the franchising rights for Arthur Treacher’s in the Cleveland and Chicago markets.

Ah, the Ponderosa – my family ate Sunday dinner after church here for years on end. The Ponderosa chain was originally started as a knock-off of Bonanza, another steakhouse chain in which one of the original investors was a star of the famous Bonanza TV show - Dan Blocker, who played Hoss Cartwright. For many years now, both chains have been owned by the same company.

The one we went to was in Arlington Heights off of Golf Road (near Kmart), and looked very much like the Addison unit pictured here. You stood in a cafeteria- style line, got your tray with a little plastic number, picked out your side dishes and then ambled over to your seat (with a woodburned “P” on the seatback!), waiting for your steak to arrive on a black plastic and stainless steel plate. (Charles Hathaway, “Romleys” on Flickr, recounts a similar recent experience at a Bonanza restaurant, so obviously the drill hasn’t changed much. I probably haven’t eaten there since the mid-90’s.) Ribeye was my standing order, and was usually good, or at least not beyond “A.1. redemption”, an extreme but sometimes necessary measure. The one thing about Ponderosa that sticks out in my mind above all else is the fact that they charged for extra butter pats! I believe it was either six or twelve cents each, don’t really remember. The strange flipside of this was that Ponderosa was the very first restaurant that I ever remember giving free soft drink refills. Of course it’s now a constitutional right, but up until the early 1980’s (in my frame of reference at least –the Chicago area and the New England states), if you wanted another Coke at a restaurant you had to order a second one. At other restaurants, if the folks were in a good mood and my brother and I hadn’t committed any major infractions, e.g.: blowing straw wrappers in the waitress’s face, etc. (These were less enlightened times, friends.), they would spring for the second Coke. Then there were those rare-as-hen’s-teeth occasions where they would buy us a third one. Of course, my brother and I were thrilled, but all the while would give each other nervous “Have they gone nuts?” looks.

At any rate, that was the great “Ponderosa Paradox”, if you will – you got your fill of drinks, but if you needed any more butter pats, you’d best pony up, Pardner! As Hoss Cartwright would say, “There’s a mess of irony out there, Pa!”

Ok folks, this is it! This is the one. Woo-hoo! At this point (as you may have figured out), my objectivity goes straight out the window. Portillo’s is a Chicago-based chain of restaurants whose main specialties are incredible Vienna Beef hotdogs and classic style Italian Beef sandwiches, and I simply love the place.

From a single hot dog stand (it was actually a trailer) called “The Dog House” which opened in Villa Park in 1963, Dick Portillo’s restaurants had matured to sit-down units like the one pictured by the mid-70’s. Today, with 32 restaurants in the greater Chicago area, plus one in Buena Park and one in Moreno Valley, California, the Portillo’s units are a feast for the eyes as well – they tend to follow one of several themes - a 1920’s “boardwalk” theme , 1930’s gangster theme, 50’s, 60’s,etc.. Of course, many restaurant chains today are into retro artifact decor, with “leaf blowers glued to the wall” (as so aptly put on Dumpy Strip Malls, one of my new favorite sites) and the like, but Portillo’s artifacts are rarer, often larger, more plentiful and more interesting than I’ve seen anywhere else. (And the Niles Portillo’s, with the ‘30’s Prohibition theme, has two killer porcelain A&P signs hanging up – a must see.)

Another great thing about Portillo’s is that it alone provides a great reason to travel to Chicago. Seriously, if a local asks “What brings you here”, all you have to say is “Portillo’s”, and you don’t have to bother with any further explanations, such as: “Oh, I’m here for a conference”, “to visit family”, “to go to a Cubs game”, “to see the museums”, yeah yeah, whatever. Gotta plan my next trip!

Well, I guess that wraps it up, and there are still four songs to go on the Neil Diamond tape. Guess we’ll have to save “Cracklin’ Rosie” for another day (although that one’s almost worth sitting in the car another four minutes for, ice cream notwithstanding). Hope you’ve enjoyed this as much as I have!

You're the Topps, Baby!

The sixties were the golden age of many things, depending upon your perspective. Rock and roll music, television, movies, sports, comics, cars, the suburbs, malls, you name it – if it existed during that tumultuous time, there are legions of folks who will claim that decade as the peak of the form, whether they actually lived during that time or not. To me, the sixties were definitely the golden age of the discount store, and the Interstate Stores banners, Topps and White Front, were among the most interesting of the bunch. In the Chicago suburbs, where I grew up, Topps was a fast-growing player in those years.

The first Topps “Discount City” was opened on October 15, 1956, in Hartford, Connecticut. Founded by Frank Beckerman and Selwyn Lemchen, the company’s initial slogan was “Profits in Pennies”. The company grew steadily in its early years, adding stores in West Haven, Middletown and Fairfield, Connecticut, Springfield, Massachusetts, Albany, New York and in far-flung Chicago, among others, by the beginning of 1960. Soon afterward, the Hartford store was replaced with a larger unit and a new Topps opened in Berlin, Connecticut. By the fall of 1960 there were ten stores in the chain.

The Topps stores averaged 60,000 square feet and proudly claimed “more than 100 departments”, running the gamut from housewares, baby furniture, auto accessories, sporting goods, shoes, records and toys to all manner of clothes for the whole family. That wonderful discount store oasis, the snack bar/cafeteria, was featured in every store.

Topps’ growth and success coalesced with a successful experiment that New York City-based Interstate Department Stores was conducting at the time. A staid, traditional chain of medium-sized department stores whose history dated back to 1916, Interstate had 47 old-line department stores in 1958 when it leased an old textile mill in Copley, Pennsylvania and equipped it with sales counters, shelves and garment racks, opening it for business as a discount store operation - the company’s first. When the Copley store racked up two million dollars in sales against only $12,000 in rent expense that first year, Interstate soon realized which side its bread would be buttered on.

Among Interstate’s top management, one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the Copley project was Sol W. Cantor. Described in the New York Times as a “lean, intense retailer…well schooled in the traditional department-store business”, Cantor, who would soon be named company president, forcefully led the charge into the discounting arena. In 1959, Interstate bought out White Front Stores, a 30 year old Los Angeles firm with only two stores but an impressive $20 million in annual sales. By 1966, Interstate would open 20 new White Front Stores was looking towards expansion to San Francisco, Seattle and Portland.

A year later, in September 1960, Topps Department Stores, Inc. was acquired by Interstate Stores at a cost of $ 4 million. Interstate now had footholds in several Eastern states and the Chicago area to go along with their newly acquired Los Angeles territory. Over the next six years, as the Times reported, Interstate would open 35 new Topps stores, increasing the average square footage per store from 60,000 to over 80,000 square feet.

One important change in the Topps stores under Interstate’s ownership was in the merchandise mix. Heavily weighted towards softlines (clothing, linens, etc.), Interstate introduced appliances, automotive supplies, sporting goods and other lines until the softlines/hardlines mix approached 50%. White Front, whose reputation was heavily built on appliance sales (in the early 1960’s, the Interstate organization was General Electric’s largest appliance customer on the west coast, and was Admiral’s largest customer altogether), required an opposite strategy - the new White Front stores featured extensive clothing lines for the first time, although hardlines would continue to dominate there.

Most of the new Topps stores were opened in partnership with supermarkets to maximize their customer drawing power. Several of the Connecticut Topps stores, for example, opened up with Food Mart stores riding shotgun. Food Mart was an independent chain based in Holyoke, Massachusetts and founded in 1949 by Frank Castaldo. In the Chicago area, the Topps stores were paired with National Food Stores. National Tea Company, founded in 1899, had long been a leader in the Chicago grocery market.

Topps continued to expand into new markets and to beef up their existing ones as the sixties progressed. In August 1962, for example, three Topps stores were opened in the Cleveland area in a single day. The same year, 1962, saw Topps grow to eight stores in Chicagoland - Waukegan, Rolling Meadows, Niles, La Grange, Joliet, Chicago Heights, Highland (Indiana) and Addison. My family shopped occasionally at the Rolling Meadows store, which was paired with a National Food Store. The combination was called a “Topps-National Super City”.

By 1968, Interstate had 60 Topps stores, along with 28 White Front units, 32 traditional department stores (these were being slowly phased out by this time) and 8 toy superstores. The previous year, Interstate had bought out the Washington D.C. –based Children’s Supermart chain, the forerunner to Toys "R" Us. Around that time, (now company chairman) Sol Cantor, noting that it had taken Interstate 38 years to reach the half billion annual sales mark, boldly predicted that the next half billion would only take 5 years – in effect, Interstate would be a billion dollar company by 1972.

It wasn’t to be. The early seventies provided a rude awakening for many discount chains, and Interstate’s stores, Topps in particular, suffered some of the worst hits. In 1971, 10 Topps stores were closed, including three Columbus, Ohio units that were sold off to Gray Drug. The combination of rising costs and increased competition continued to take its toll, and by 1972, the company began to post substantial losses. Plans were announced to close an estimated 14 White Front stores that year. A 1972 Los Angeles Times article quoted a stock market analyst who assessed the company’s troubles as saying “improved merchandising at the discount department stores appears necessary for meaningful profits”. Interstate chose instead to close more stores. By 1973, 19 Topps stores and 19 White Front stores were closed. “Profits in pennies” would have looked good at that point.

In early 1974, having posted a $60 million loss the previous year, Interstate pursued an unsuccessful attempt to acquire the variety and discount stores owned by McCrory Corporation. McCrory’s stores were profitable and had a net value of $120 million, which would have offset Interstate’s losses. With the McCrory opportunity gone, Interstate filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, hoping to reorganize. Unable to obtain further credit from their suppliers to continue stocking the stores, the US Government soon forced the company into Chapter 10 receivership. Forty-one 41 Topps stores were closed by that time, and Interstate announced the immediate closing of 11 more Topps stores, with the remaining 9 to be closed “in due course”. Plans were already underway to sell the remaining White Front stores. Company chairman Sol Cantor resigned, and a trustee was appointed to oversee the liquidation process and to ensure the viability of Interstate’s remaining golden asset, Toys “R” Us. Eventually Toys “R” Us founder Charles Lazarus would take charge of the company (which emerged from bankruptcy in Spring 1978 and was renamed Toys “R” Us Corp.), leading it to success far beyond anything Interstate had ever known previously.

We didn’t shop there often, but one memory stands out, dating from around 1973 or so. One evening my dad, brother and I were shopping at the Rolling Meadows Topps store. The store was near empty (not surprising given the state of the company at the time), and in the main aisle stood a bearded, rumpled, outdoors-type dude of about thirty years of age, standing all alone next to a table with a stack of slim hardcover books on it. It was a book signing, at Topps, of all places! It turns out he had written a book of poetry, and just asked the store manager if he could sell his books there (anything to build traffic, I guess). Upon closer examination, the books themselves looked a bit rumpled as well, and the author launched into an explanation about a canoe trip he had recently taken, with a case of his books onboard (he didn’t explain that part). The canoe capsized, soaking the case of books. The guy’s story was so offbeat, my dad actually bought one of his books!

The first five photos, an exterior and four inside shots date from 1967, the remaining two color shots, including “The Scene” (Here come da judge, baby!) are circa 1970. The black-and-white photo above is of a Baltimore Topps store from 1967, very similar in appearance to the store in the first photo. Pictured below are a new Topps store which opened in 1962 at 467 Main St., East Hartford, Connecticut, and a circa-1960 Chicago area Topps coupled with a National Food Store.

Bargain Town is now Toys "R" Us!

It had to be the rare late 60’s/early 70’s Chicago area kid who was unfamiliar with the famous Bargain Town! Bargain Town! Bargain Town! commercials that ran incessantly on area kids’ shows during those years. These commercials were a fixture, particularly on the popular Ray Rayner and Friends show, which ran on WGN from 7 to 9 am, starting long before the station was syndicated nationally on cable TV. If you’ve never heard of Ray, ask anyone who grew up in the Chicago area between 1960 and 1980 and you’re likely to see a big smile form on their face. This was an era in which a number of TV stations in major markets produced their own programming for the “youngsters”. Somewhat corny, often made on a low budget, yet nonetheless very creative, these shows are fondly remembered by many. Today, an A.M. flip across most cities’ channels yields six different versions of “Good Morning America”, while the kiddos are banished to the likes of Nickolodeon (“krabby patties, anyone?”) or the Disney Channel (“stay tuned for Lilo and Stitch 9!”) Certainly those were better times in some ways.

Children’s Bargain Town, Inc. was a chain of toy “superstores” founded in Chicago in 1957 by Larry Hochberg. Up to that point, toys were very frequently purchased by middle-income families at very small, family-owned toy stores or in variety stores such as Woolworth’s or Kresge’s. More well-to-do clientele would shop at the toy departments of the large department stores of the day, and then of course there was Sears and their legendary Wish Book. Over time, the superstore concept would come to dominate toy retailing, at least until Wal-Mart’s juggernaut in the 1990’s.

In 1969, Hochberg, whose company had grown to 8 Chicago area stores, sold Children’s Bargain Town to Interstate Stores, Inc. who had bought out another toy chain two years earlier. Hochberg, after staying on with Interstate for a very brief period, would go on to start up Sportmart, a Chicago-based sporting goods superstore chain. Interstate Stores, led by Sol Cantor, was the parent company of two prominent discount chains, Topps Discount City, whose stores were primarily in the eastern and Midwestern states and White Front stores, a west coast operation. Interstate also had a smattering of older traditional department stores, mostly in the east. Cantor was eager to replicate Interstate’s discounting success in the toy realm, and had set a goal for Interstate to operate 100 toy superstores within the following three to four years.

Interstate’s “other” toy chain was the similarly named Children’s Supermart, Inc., which they bought out in January 1967, when it had four Washington, DC area stores that went by the name of “Toys “R” Us”. Founded in Washington DC by Charles Lazarus in 1948, the first store bearing the Toys “R” Us name was opened in Rockville, Maryland in 1957. Lazarus stayed on to run the Toys “R“Us operation after the Interstate buyout.

By 1970, when the photos above were taken, Interstate was expanding their operations aggressively, and the toy division (which they continued to operate under the two separate nameplates) was no exception, more than doubling in size. At that time (’70), they had 11 Toys “R” Us units in the DC area, Baltimore, and the newly entered Los Angeles market. That year also saw 10 Bargain Towns in the Chicago, Milwaukee and Detroit areas.

The expansion drive that proved to be beneficial for the toy store divisions turned out to be disastrous for Interstate’s discount stores, Topps (in particular) and White Front. A combination of factors - the overexpanded condition of those chains, hit and miss merchandising, the wobbly early 70’s economy and the overwhelming competitive presence of Kmart in their key markets forced Interstate into bankruptcy in May 1974.

It became clear that the toy division was the only remaining star in the Interstate galaxy, so the decision was made to move forward under one banner, Toys “R” Us. An advertising campaign was launched to announce the renaming of the Children’s Bargain Town stores. Soon, we Chicago kids would learn the new mantra – “Bargain Town! Bargain Town! Bargain Town! is now Toys “R” Us! Toys “R” Us! Toys “R” Us!”, and Geoffrey the giraffe made his first Chicago appearances. For some years before and after the name change, Toys “R” Us used “the Children’s Bargain Town” as a tagline in their ads, and in many instances the slogan appeared on a small sign above the stores’ entrances.

Interstate’s discount divisions were scrapped altogether, and in July 1976 Charles Lazarus, Toys “R” Us founder was named president and CEO of the entire company. In April 1978, Interstate emerged from bankruptcy a very different company, with great prospects for future success that would be realized in the decades ahead. At this same time, the company (appropriately enough) was renamed Toys “R” Us, Inc.

A few more notes on the photos – on the Bargain Town photo, a Kentucky Fried Chicken store is visible in the distance, and what I believe may be a Shakey’s Pizza sign is peeking from behind the toy store’s signpost (it would probably take forensics to verify this). The second photo show the famed 70’s -80’s Toys “R” Us quasi-mansard prototype in one of its earliest examples. The third photo (below) features pool tables, pedal cars, wagons, trikes and good old Murray tractors (I had a Murrray bike!) from one of the two chains, don’t know which. As said, these photos are from 1970. The last item is a full-page Christmas ad from 1971 that appeared in the Washington Post. Just seeing the names of the toy companies makes me nostalgic – Gilbert, Skilcraft, Kenner and the rest which have long since disappeared with the consolidation of the industry. Add to that late, great group Marx, Schaper, Mego, Buddy L, Ideal…the list goes on and on.

Kmart - That 70's Store

Ah, the seventies. An era of taste and refinement. Of subtlety and style. And no place was better to outfit that style than Kmart. I believe that these Kmart scenes from the early and mid seventies capture the essence of that era as well as any photo, retail or non-retail, that I’ve ever seen.

Up first is a great early evening photo, from 1973, of the standard seventies Kmart exterior, followed by three very busy, slightly more recent interior shots, showing a virtual sea of 70’s humanity. In the first interior photo, the snack bar can be seen at the left rear of the store. And no, that’s not Ashton Kutcher with his back to the camera, this was the real seventies. The third and fourth photos show checkout area scenes.

By the middle of the decade, one of the burning questions in retail revolved around Kmart and whether their sales would surpass those of Sears, Roebuck and Co. By late 1976, Kmart had pulled past number two JCPenney, with $100 million more in sales and 70 percent higher profits than that well respected company. Another factor that didn’t escape notice was the increasing contrast of Kmart’s success with the troubles of their direct competitors, including some big national and regional discounting names – Grants, Interstate Department Stores (Topps and White Front), Arlan’s, Mammoth Mart and National Bellas Hess, to name just a few who were either out of business by then or were in bankruptcy reorganization. Within a few years, all would be gone.

In 1974, having established Kmarts in most major markets, Kresge launched a second Kmart format which they internally called the “Group 9 stores” specifically for smaller communities who were thought to be unable to support a full-sized (average 73,000 to 96,000 square feet) Kmart. The Group 9 stores were typically in the 40,000 square feet range. Interestingly, several of the Group 9 stores were originally opened as competitors’ discount stores. Kresge was able to capitalize on the misfortunes of several chains such as those named above and convert the stores to the smaller Kmarts. In 1977, the company would change its name from S.S. Kresge Company to Kmart Corporation, an acknowledgment that over 90 percent of their sales were coming from the Kmart stores.

Here are a few video links of vintage Kmart commercials for your enjoyment. The first one comes to us courtesy of Jack, a fan of this site, who commented recently on his pilgrimage to a local Kmart, searching for remnants of the golden era. This mid-70's commercial, which has become my life’s dream to reenact, was filmed in a store that very closely resembles the one pictured above. It features about as ecstatic (and well choreographed) a reaction to a new store in town as one could possibly imagine. For the last week, I’ve been walking around the house yelling “Kmart!” at random. You’ll see why. The second one, a Christmas commercial from 1974, features the eminently singable “Kmart is your saving place” jingle in its pure original form, one that would be heard in countless alternate versions in the years that followed. The last one is from the 1980 Christmas season, part of a charming series of commercials that I remember extremely well from my youth. Sure drives home the passage of time.

White Front - Under the Familiar Arch

All right folks, time to grab your BankAmericard, Master Charge or just good old fashioned cash as we take a brief trip to a great discount store of the past. Since we’ve been discussing West Coast supermarket chains lately and I had yet to cover a single actual discount chain at all (save the Lucky variants from the last post), this is a good place to start – with the long gone White Front stores.

In 1959 Interstate Department Stores, Inc., led by president Sol Cantor, purchased the two-store White Front operation in Los Angeles (the next year, Cantor would purchase the ten-store Topps "Discount City" chain in the East). White Front was founded in 1929 and was known for many years as primarily a seller of electrical appliances. Interstate moved quickly to expand White Front’s retail offering to include clothing, sporting goods, automotive items, household décor and much more. By 1963, the chain had grown to 11 stores and by 1970 there were 30 stores, concentrated around the Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle market areas. The new store footprints ballooned to 150,000 square feet, and in many cases a supermarket department was added to the mix.

By far the most distinctive White Front store design featured a massive arched entrance-way with the “White Front” lettering fanned out along the edge. They were spectacular looking stores, and Interstate went all out to make sure their Grand Opening festivities created a stir to match. A look through old newspaper articles on White Front grand openings shows that many stars were typically on hand – Jayne Mansfield, Troy Donahue, Bill Cosby (riding high on his early “I Spy” fame, but long before he became a legend) and Sebastian Cabot (of “Family Affair”) all did their part, along with a horde of lesser-knowns. Ah, the benefits of opening a store in Los Angeles.

In the early 70’s, the chain began a retrenchment to Los Angeles, and within a couple of years was gone. Interstate Stores folded and the only remaining vestige of the company would ultimately be Toys “R” Us.

The first photo is of the original White Front location at 7651 So. Central Avenue in Los Angeles. The store was opened in 1929, but this photo looks to be considerably more recent than that. This store was burned down during the 1965 Watts riots, and was replaced by a modern White Front at the same location which opened in March, 1967. The second and third photos are of an unknown location and are from 1968, showing the classic exterior and an interior view where customers are perusing the latest beautiful avocado and burnt sienna appliances. The final photos are from 1970, a new store at Normandie Avenue and Imperial Highway in Los Angeles. White Front had scrapped the arched look in favor of a more standard design, albeit with a “key-osk” (Sorry.) out front. Note the young ladies in the last photo checking out the groovy “tape decks”.

Serving You Better....Saving You More

Time for a tip of the hat to another major Chicago-based grocery chain - the late, great National Tea Company. Through the first half of the twentieth century, National was one of the largest Chicago-area chains, but gradually lost its market dominance to Jewel (and later to Dominick's) through the 50's and 60's. In its heyday, National was a force in many key Midwestern markets - Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Detroit, Milwaukee and several smaller cities.

By the time I came around in the 60's and early 70's, National was fading fast. My folks shopped at two different National stores on an infrequent basis, one on the corner of Elmhurst Rd. and Dempster St. in Mount Prospect, which was torn down and replaced by a Venture/A&P combination around 1975 or 6, and another on Kirchoff Rd. in Rolling Meadows which was right next to a Topps "Discount City" Department Store. The Mt. Prospect store resembled the one shown in the third photo above. The Rolling Meadows store was kind of cool-looking. It was opened in 1961 and had only been open a few years before it was was remodeled and given a very "60's" white facade (which it shared with the Topps store) with both store names rendered in the National logo-style neon block lettering. The Topps lettering was green neon and the National lettering was red neon (or maybe vice-versa - hey, it's been a long time!). They looked fantastic at night. The last I saw of it, which was about a year ago, the building still stood - although I believe it was vacant. The 60's facade has long since been replaced.

The photos above are circa 1958. The locations are unknown, although the first store sports a Sanders Bakery sign, indicating that it must have been a Detroit-area store. Sanders was a well known bakery in the Detroit area and was featured in the National stores there.