A Well Planned Safeway, 1966

Many of the retail chains featured on this site were known for an iconic look – a combination of architecture, signage and interior decoration that made their stores instantly recognizable. While this remains largely true today, one could argue that it reached a peak during the 1960’s.

Among the foremost of these would have to be Safeway, with its “Marina” design. They had a handful of other favored formats, including the “Ranch” Safeway (Low, peak-roofed stores. Maybe they had one of those in Hidden Valley, California - get it? Ok, moving right along…), but the Marina, introduced in 1959 and named for its maiden location on San Francisco’s Marina Street, is far and away the best remembered Safeway store design today. Hundreds were opened in Safeway’s vast American territories (the West, Atlantic, Southwest and Plains regions), and a number of examples sprang up in the company’s Canadian, European and Australian markets as well. The Marina stores featured floor-to-ceiling windowed facades with one of several “standard” arched rooflines - with or without upswept “side wings”, horizontal wings, etc., and a multitude of other permutations. At the briefest glance, they were unmistakably Safeways.

As much as I like the “trademark” store designs of Safeway and others , however, l love the one-of-a-kind stores these chains would occasionally open to fit into an unusual setting or meet some special architectural requirement. Depicted above, in a wonderful photo sent to me recently by Amy Bertsch, is just such a store - from 1966, the Safeway supermarket at the brand-new Lake Anne Plaza in Reston, Virginia. This photo was taken by visitors from nearby Alexandria. My sincere thanks to Amy for sharing it with us.

Amy informs us that Lake Anne Plaza was the first community in Reston, the “planned suburb” of Washington, D.C., to be completed. Intrigued, I did a brief bit of research on Reston and Lake Anne Plaza and found it very absorbing. One site in particular, the Planned Community Archives at George Mason University in nearby Fairfax, is a treasure trove, to put it mildly.

There’s way too much detail to go into here, but I’ll attempt to cover a few basics. Reston, conceived in the early sixties, was the beneficiary of experience gained by America’s earliest planned communities, including Park Forest, Illinois and the various Levittowns. Planning goals for Reston included maintaining the close proximity of homes, stores and offices (creating “an ideal place to live and work”) in a modern architectural environment, while hopefully avoiding the income and class stratification that became so closely associated with the aforementioned towns.

Whether they succeeded in the latter goal is hard to say, but the modern architecture of Reston (and Lake Anne Plaza in particular) is now widely recognized as a true mid-century modern classic. The master plan for Reston, completed in 1963, was developed by acclaimed architect James Rossant, whose firm also designed the buildings in Lake Anne Plaza. Additionally, Rossant was an accomplished artist who personally designed the Brutalist sculptures that adorned the Plaza’s courtyards and fountains. In 1982, Lake Anne Plaza was declared a historic district. Through the years, his firm remained active there, overseeing a major renovation some of the Plaza’s key buildings and sculptures a few years back. Mr. Rossant passed away in December of last year at the age of 81.

The Safeway, now gone, was a vital part of the Lake Anne community in earlier years. An early 70’s Lake Anne promotional brochure, archived on the GMU site, spotlights a middle-aged couple who regularly traveled to the store by boat, for example - a sure-fire way to keep the romantic flames glowing. The store’s restrained signage, the polar opposite of 70-foot-tall tower signs, is very appealing in its own right, and I got a particular kick out of seeing the famous Safeway font and “S” logo rendered in black and white - a very classy touch!

At some point though, as the photo below (shown here through the kind courtesy of the Planned Community Archives, Special Collections & Archives, George Mason University Libraries) shows, the signs were changed from monochrome to the very familiar red and white. Perhaps the company felt the need to ramp up the branding power a bit.

Or maybe the whole thing was just a Wizard of Oz-like dream sequence: “Oh, it was beautiful! There was snow everywhere – and the Safeway signs were all in color – and you, and you, and you, and you were there!!”

But I guess the first scenario seems more likely, doesn't it?

G.C. Murphy - Dime Store Pioneer

From the moment of its founding in 1899 until the curtain came down nearly 90 years later, the G.C Murphy Company was first and foremost one thing – an operator of variety stores. Known colloquially as “five-and-tens” or “dime stores”, variety stores were giant forces in American retailing throughout most of the 20th century. Virtually every retail chain that sells general merchandise at “less than full price”, from one end of the spectrum (Walmart) to the other (any chain with the word “dollar” in its name) can trace part of its heritage, either directly or by influence, to the variety stores.

George Clinton Murphy was a native of Indiana County, Pennsylvania, an area located about 60 miles west of Pittsburgh, known best today as the boyhood home of actor James Stewart. Born there in 1868, Murphy would leave the area as a young man to go to work for J.G. McCrorey (the “e” was soon discarded) in McCrory’s Jamestown, New York variety store, some 150 miles north of Murphy’s hometown. Not long after Murphy joined the firm, McCrory sold Sebastian Spering Kresge, a salesman who had called on his store, an interest in the firm. Murphy was put in charge of mentoring Kresge in the business, traveling with him to Memphis to help Kresge open a new McCrory-Kresge store. Obviously, Murphy did a good job of showing him the ropes, as Kresge would later go on to become one the all-time retailing legends. In early 1899, Murphy left the McCrory-Kresge firm to start up his own store in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, a town much closer in to Pittsburgh. (A few short years later, Kresge and McCrory would part ways, running their own namesake firms afterward.)

Within five years, the G.C Murphy Company would have 14 stores in the greater Pittsburgh area, all reporting to the McKeesport home base. Before long, Murphy’s ascendancy came to the attention of the then 76-store strong F.W. Woolworth organization, a company that was expanding rapidly into several major American cities (at that point mostly in the Northeast) through acquisition. In 1911, Woolworth would consolidate those many acquisitions into what would become the modern F.W. Woolworth Company, which, like S.S. Kresge Co. would become a 20th century American retailing titan. In mid-1904, Murphy sold his young chain to Woolworth, who insisted on the proviso that Murphy would not operate a five and ten cents store in their territories.

Note that the agreement said “five and ten cents store.” It did not say “five through twenty-five cents store”, which is exactly what Murphy proceeded to open, just down the block from one of his old stores that was now a Woolworth’s. Soon, Murphy’s new company had ten stores, one in downtown Pittsburgh and the rest in surrounding towns.

Tragically, Murphy would not live to see his company’s greatest successes. In 1909, he passed away suddenly at the age of 41. With no succession plan in place and a failed public offering of the stock, the company floundered for the next couple of years.

At this point, J.G. McCrory reentered the picture, at least briefly. Considering a possible buyout of the Murphy company, McCrory sent his deputy (and cousin) John Sephus “Seph” Mack to look into the possibility. Mack returned with a most enthusiastic recommendation in favor of a buyout. When McCrory balked for no apparent good reason, Mack began to formulate plans to acquire Murphy himself, enlisting the help of friend and fellow McCrory manager Walter Shaw. Of course, this would entail their resignations from McCrory, which took place in short order. In February 1911, the two men closed the deal to acquire the G.C. Murphy Company, and for the next nearly 60 years, either a Mack or a Shaw would be running the show.

Mack and Shaw had "complementary" personalities, with Mack called “the architect” and Shaw “the engineer”, according to the book “For the Love of Murphy’s”, a wonderful history of G. C. Murphy written by Jason Togyer, that serves as the source of most of the information in these Murphy posts. Mack’s hard driving personality and Shaw’s people skills made for a powerful combination that would help facilitate dramatic growth for Murphy in the ensuing years.

Murphy pursued some interesting policies that set them apart from their dime store compañeros, including the implementation of a much higher “price ceiling” in many of its stores, both literally and figuratively. As far back as the early twenties, many Murphy stores had a second floor which featured all manner of goods priced from 25 cents to a dollar, while down below the normal 5-to-10 cent price point was the rule. After some years of back-and-forth on this policy, the company was finally convinced it was a winner with customers and made it permanent, going so far as to move everything down to the main floor. By contrast, Woolworth’s price cap remained at twenty cents until 1935.

Another point that found Murphy at odds with the competition was the company’s store location strategy. Whereas Woolworth sought to establish coverage in such major markets as New York, Philadelphia and Boston, Murphy expanded their geographic base far more slowly, avoiding the “jump and backfill” approach, preferring instead to shore up their base in the industrial towns of Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, long before the “rust belt” was rusty. Despite the intervention of a major depression and then a world war, these towns came through for Murphy year after year. By the mid-30’s, with nearly 200 stores in the chain, Murphy’s average per store sales and profits were far higher than Woolworth’s.

The 1940’s saw several leadership transitions within the company. Seph Mack passed away in 1940, and the chairmanship passed to his cousin Edgar Mack. Upon his death six years later, the top job went to Walter Shaw, Seph Mack’s original partner in the business. Despite these transitions, Murphy’s continued to grow, with the average store size increasing significantly through the 40’s.

In 1951, G.C. Murphy acquired the Morris 5 & 10 Cent Stores, a Bluffton, Indiana-based chain of 71 variety stores. This proved to be an excellent move for Murphy, giving them a leadership position right out of the box in Indiana, a state that adjoined their existing market area. It was timely as well, as it provided a hedge against some major labor strikes that occurred around this time near their highly manufacturing and mining-based home turf. If there was a downside to Murphy’s store location strategy, it was a particular vulnerability to strikes, which of course affected the purchasing power of their loyal, largely working-class customer base.

Another leadership change took place in 1953, when the second generation took over. Jim Mack, son of Seph Mack, had his father’s hard driving style combined with a Harvard education, but according to the Togyer book had a presence that a number of Murphy employees found intimidating. Also Mack’s philosophy was very conservative in respects that would take their toll on Murphy over time. For example, Murphy was exceedingly slow to convert to self-service. Many of their fellow variety chains (along with most major supermarkets) had already done this, and the practice was met with overwhelming acceptance from consumers. Secondly, Mack was utterly disdainful of discounting, even banning the use of the word in Murphy’s stores. In the early 50’s this wasn’t a big problem. Ten years later, with Mack still in place, resolute and attitude unchanged, it certainly became one, given the 1960’s startlingly different retail climate.

In contrast, Mack spearheaded an interesting development for Murphy – the acquisition of several chains in the Southwest, far outside of the company’s traditional operating areas. The largest was the 1959 buyout of Morgan & Lindsey, a Monroe, Louisiana based chain of 92 variety stores in Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas. Then there were a slew of “junior department store” (along the lines of a medium-sized Penney’s, for lack of a better description) acquisitions in Texas over the next several years - Cobb’s - four stores in west Texas, Bruner’s - 28 stores in San Antonio, Morris Dept. Stores – 13 stores in Dallas, and Terry Farris, with 17 stores in McAllen, Texas, just above the Mexican border.

The latter acquisitions proved to be disastrous, due to Murphy’s lack of understanding of the nuances of the shopping culture in Texas cities, and the very different requirements of operating junior department stores as opposed to variety stores. (Wait, did I just say “nuances” and “Texas” in the same sentence? Ok, we’ll call this one a “draft”. No offense, fellow Texans!) Worse yet, many name brands that had been longtime suppliers of these chains, including such mainstays as Levi Strauss, bailed when they learned of the new ownership by Murphy. They feared that their products would somehow end up in the Murphy dime stores, as Togyer mentions in his book. Murphy elected to supply its own house brands to the stores as a replacement, including their “Big Murph” jeans (I’m really hoping there wasn’t a “Lady Murph” brand, but it takes a lot to surprise me these days!). This practice “more or less ruined (the stores)”, a former executive told Togyer.

The Morgan & Lindsey stores, being true 5-and-10’s, fared better, but there was a fair amount of animosity between longtime M & L local store operators and the McKeesport-based Murphy brass that took some years to quell. Wisely, Murphy opted to keep the Morgan & Lindsey name, probably based on their experience with the smattering of G.C. Murphy stores opened in the Southeastern states, where the company’s poor name recognition put a damper on sales.

By the late 50’s, the standard G.C. Murphy stores were well-oiled machines. Downtown stores in their core Ohio Valley and Mid-Atlantic markets continued to sustain the company. As with other “five and ten” chains, the store cafeterias, without a doubt among the most beloved aspects of the Murphy stores and the subject of some of the fondest anecdotes in the Togyer book, were a major source of profits and an all-important traffic driver for the stores.

This was especially true in the company’s “flagship” stores, a class that included gigantic G.C. Murphy stores on Fifth Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh (“Store #12”, pictured first above) and Washington, D.C. (“Store #166", located at between Twelfth and Thirteenth Streets). The Pittsburgh store, for example, took up an entire block, and was remodeled at least ten times between 1931 and 1950 according to the Togyer book. In the 1960’s, this store was the site of a number of exciting promotions, including live in-store broadcasts by local DJ’s. Also, they leased space to a “full-time” fortune teller and all manner of other sideshows. Murphy even leased out one corner of the store a meat market. By virtue of their great locations in bustling sections of town and their well-earned “ local landmark” status, these stores were excellent performers for the chain well into the 1980’s, years after the company’s other stores began to struggle.

By the early 1960’s, however, it was another story for the rank-and-file small town and suburban G.C. Murphy stores. The discounting trend was in full swing, and the greatest pinch was being felt from their direct competitors – F.W. Woolworth’s Woolco stores, and to a much greater extent, S.S. Kresge’s Kmarts. Sensing an opening wide enough to drive a (hundred-thousand square foot discount store) through, Kresge invaded Murphy’s backyard and “erected Kmarts at all four compass points around Pittsburgh”, as Togyer puts it. Did Murphy defend their turf by opening large discount stores of its own? No. Not yet, at least.

Instead, Murphy sought to redefine the variety store concept, modernizing it to fit the changing lifestyle of the 1960’s consumer. The new stores would be called “A-A” (double-a) stores, featuring upgraded lighting and signage and bolder color schemes, but most importantly would employ a radically different approach to merchandising. Departments would be reorganized into “themed groups” to create a “boutique store” feeling, as described in the Togyer book, which describes a typical department – the “Entertainment Center”, as including “not just records, radios and television sets, but books, magazines craft supplies, musical instruments, and cameras”. The A-A stores would be larger but would actually carry fewer items than the typical Murphy store, and managers were required to ax items that fell below a certain sales threshold. Also, the A-A stores would be allowed to sell at deeper discounts than the standard Murphy stores. The bold new plan caught the attention of Chain Store Age, whose December 1967 issue consisted almost entirely of Murphy coverage. The magazine’s cover photo featured Murphy’s top executives huddled around a set of A-A store concept drawings, a banner headline excitedly proclaiming “G.C. Murphy’s On the Move Again!”

By the time Murphy had converted 10 percent of its 500-plus stores to the A-A format, they realized they had a bomb on their hands. Customers resented the fact that prices were higher at regular Murphy units than at the A-A stores, causing a public relations headache. More than that, they resented the fact that their beloved Murphy store carried far “less variety” than before. Even though the A-A stores carried more stock, they had fewer individual items (in today’s retail terminology, fewer stock keeping units or “SKU’s”). Beyond this, the A-A program offered little in the way of a panacea for the hammering the company was taking at the hands of the discounters.

Sadly, it took the 1968 death of Jim Mack, Murphy’s chairman, before the company embarked on a real solution to that problem. Unbeknownst to Mack or almost anyone else in the company, plans were surreptitiously being drawn up for a Murphy-owned discount concept. The very day after Mack’s passing, according to the Togyer book, the discount store plans came out of the drawer. The battle was about to be joined.

These are vintage G.C. Murphy publicity shots. First up is Store #12, the downtown Pittsburgh flagship, circa Christmastime 1973. Originally opened in 1930, the store was wrapped in the pictured “handsome streamlined façade” sometime in the late 40’s/early 50’s. The second photo, from 1968, shows the Annandale, Virginia store with an arcade-style facade that brings to mind some of the Memco stores that would open not far from there a few years later. Third, also from 1968, is a more conventional store from Beckley, West Virginia. Fourth, from 1973, a beautiful store with a fine colonial look from the quaint western Pennsylvania borough of Ligonier. Fifth, 1973 as well, is the interior entrance of the Monroeville, Pennsylvania store, a very inviting sight indeed. With fresh popcorn and pretzels beckoning, this one would have been hard to pass by. For sure, they knew what they were doing!

Pictured below, in 1968-dated photos, are two interior scenes from Murphy’s new “A-A” stores. The A-A concept may not have flown, but in my opinion, the designs represent a very nice updating of the variety store idea, and I particularly like the abovementioned lighting, bolder colors and modern (for the time) signage font. Immediately below is the wonderful candy department, scales at the ready.

Last is the “Entertainment Center” section, where I would have been guaranteed to waste a great deal of time. Portable record players were obviously a hot item (Sure hope the 45 adapters were built in!), and the white-framed portable television sets bring back memories. These rarely had remote control units, and I don’t believe that my family owned a TV with remote control until I was at least in high school. The silver lining to this was it gave people like me a great “hardship story” to use in the future – the modern-day version of Grandma and Grandpa’s “trudging through the snow for five miles to school every day, in worn-out shoes, uphill both ways” kind of thing. For me, it’s “Whenever we wanted to change the channel, we had to actually get up and go do it! It was horrible! You guys don’t know how lucky you are!” My kids shudder.

Then of course there was the records section, the main attraction for me from about age seven on. I’ve spent a good bit of time squinting at this photo trying to identify the album covers. (My personal area of expertise is covers of the 1970’s and 80’s, but I’m reasonably competent with the few years before and after that range. It’s too bad I couldn’t have minored in this in college – my GPA would have been greatly enhanced!) I’m embarrassed to say I’ve only been to call one so far, but it’s a great one – the 1968 blockbuster “Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison”, fourth album from the far left on the top row. I’ve been a Cash fan for years - he was an artist who refused to ever let himself be bracketed. And much of his best work was done in the last ten years of his career, an enviable feat. If anyone can squint harder than me, let me know if you figure any of the other covers out!

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.

Searsizzle

One final look at Sears for now, and this time we’ll move inside for a gander at some indoor entrances to Sears stores within the context of the far-out, groovy atmosphere of a couple of brand new circa 1971-2 malls, in photos taken when they were new. (Ok, those expressions were already dated by 1971, but what the hey…)

In my opinion, the real action from a design standpoint was inside the malls by this time; the exteriors of most new malls appearing fairly subdued compared to those that had opened in the previous decade. Subtle browns and tans began to prevail on the exteriors, while the mall interiors were a blitz of marquee lights, globed fixtures, exquisite fountains and wonderful modern sculpture. “The mall” had really come into its own by this time.

The first picture is of the Town East Mall, located in Mesquite (suburban Dallas), Texas, a mall developed and owned by Sears’ Homart Development subsidiary, one of – malls Homart developed in 1971. Town East was solely developed by Homart, but a number of other malls were developed in partnership with other companies, most notably Chicago’s gigantic Woodfield Mall, which Homart co-developed that same year with lead developer Taubman.

This mall, already impressive in appearance, is beautifully decked out for its first Christmas. If you look in the foreground of the picture, you can see two stores that absolutely scream “70’s!” - Love Is (Woodfield had one!) and Rings’n’Things. Ah, those were the days. Town East Mall was the site of partial filming for one of Ron Howard’s earliest films, the teen film "Cotton Candy” (featuring Howard’s brother and legendary sidekick Clint Howard) in 1978. The mall, complete with its Sears store, still exists.

The second photo is of Richmond, Virginia’s Cloverleaf Mall, where Sears was strictly an anchor tenant. This mall, opened in 1972, was owned by New York-based Arlen Realty and Development, one of the seventies’ major developers of malls, who at the time also held the (by then dubious) distinction of being Korvettes’ parent company. By the end of the decade, both Arlen and Korvettes would be no more.

Sears remained open at Cloverleaf for thirty years, moving to nearby Chesterfield Towne Center in 2002. The mall, profiled last year on Labelscar, has undergone some disappointing changes, namely the removal of the delicate, beautiful fountain work and a typical remodeling given to malls of this vintage – the deadly “country pink, tan and cream” tile treatment.

The mid and late 1970’s would prove to be difficult for Sears for a number of reasons. One reason, of course, was the general difficult economic environment of the time, with stagflation and the resulting major squeeze on consumer purchasing power. Another problem was an unforeseen result of a strategy that had actually served Sears pretty well up to that time.

The fifties and sixties saw Sears expand into virtually every market where an economic case could be made for it. Of course, this new store growth provided fuel for explosive sales and profit growth. By the mid-sixties, they were closing in on a saturation point, and continued expansion at the same pace would have required building in “marginal markets”, as author Gordon Weil put it in his excellent 1977 history “Sears Roebuck U.S.A.”.

In part to offset the effects of fewer new stores, Sears began a move toward more upscale merchandise at higher price points, figuring it made sense to move up the ladder with their customers as they became more affluent. Sears, whose reputation throughout its history was built on providing values to middle and lower middle income customers, now made a concerted effort to shift their offering to an upper middle class audience. High income families, of course, would remain out of reach, and Sears made no serious effort to go after them.

Another factor was that by the early seventies, the discounting arena had reached a certain level of maturity, with an array of strong regional competitors growing and marginal operators having been shaken out. King of the Hill was S.S. Kresge’s Kmart division, with national coverage and a base of 1,200 stores by 1976. Middle and lower middle income customers, the bedrock of Sears’ success for years, left Sears in droves for Kmart, and by the mid-70’s there was serious buzz that Kmart Corporation (S.S. Kresge changed its corporate name to that in 1976) had a shot at overtaking Sears for the number-one retailer slot.

Sears also found itself the target of increased criticism from the media than in the past. Weil's book provides an insightful quote from a 1974 Forbes article that aptly describes Sears' new strategy – “Imagine McDonald’s introducing a sirloin steak, raising the price of its Big Mac and withdrawing its plain hamburger. That was Sears’ growth strategy, namely, to ‘trade up America’, as some insiders put it.”

Sears struggled to regain an identity with the consumer, who had long since begun to look elsewhere. In a sense, even today, thirty years later and owing in part to today’s brutal retailing climate, the company remains in a similar position today. To be sure, the competitive landscape has changed – Kmart is now a sister company of Sears, and the company’s main adversaries are now Wal-Mart, Target and Kohl’s, among others.

In the 1990’s, Sears began to shed subsidiaries that were not directly related to their retail business. In 1993, the company spun off its Sears Financial Network, which included Dean Witter Investments, Coldwell Banker Realty, and the Discover Card (Sears’ attempt to create competitor to MasterCard and Visa which ultimately became a major success). Its longtime insurance division Allstate was spun off to shareholders as well in 1995. That same year, Sears’ mall-development and ownership division Homart was sold to General Growth Properties.

Sears, Roebuck and Co. as it was historically known ceased to exist on November 17, 2004, when it was announced that the company would be sold to billionaire investor Edward Lampert’s Kmart Holdings Corporation to be combined into a new entity that would be called, appropriately enough, Sears Holdings Corporation. A number of strategies have been implemented since, including some new nameplates - “Sears Essentials” and “Sears Grand”, and offering Sears’ products for sale in Kmart stores. Even now many possibilities are being considered, including making Sears’ powerful brand names (including Craftsman and Kenmore) available for sale through other retailers. Time will tell whether these efforts are successful.

Will Sears make it? I certainly hope so.

Live from Korvette City!

We interrupt our regularly scheduled posts to bring you this special report live from the “Korvette City” in Baileys Crossroads, (near Arlington) Virginia in the metropolitan Washington, DC area!

Live in 1965, that is. This special footage was sent to me by Robyn Carter, an Arlington native, retro retail and postwar culture fan. Filmed in 8mm color in 1965 by Robyn’s grandmother, Izola Grubb, this footage comes to us through the courtesy of Robyn’s aunt, Sue Kuhlman, who worked there during the store’s early years. The clip, (twenty seconds long but looped three times to provide a longer look) shows a pan shot of the entire face of this 1964-built “Korvette City”, an integrated shopping center containing a Food Center, furniture and carpet store, and a two-story department store. An auto center would have been at the edge of the property.

Mrs. Grubb, an avid 8mm moviemaker, shot a large number of reels of family film over the years, and one day decided to film the exterior of the store where her daughter Sue worked. Oh, that more people would have done that kind of thing, especially during that era when stores looked so cool! It’s a wonderful look at not only the store in its prime (on a very busy day, you will observe), but the cars and even a couple of happy shoppers. Thanks so much, Sue and Robyn, for sharing it with us!

A little background on the Baileys Crossroads Korvette – the store, located at 1335 Leesburg Pike, opened on April 30, 1964 and was the second Korvette to be opened in the metro DC area, the first having opened in Rockville, Maryland. A newspaper account of opening day at the Baileys Crossroads store describes a “day-long traffic jam" that "stretched bumper to bumper from Alexandria nearly to Seven Corners on Rte. 7 and from the Arlington County line to Lake Bancroft on Columbia Pike". Wow! The grand opening of most any shopping center was a major event in those fairly innocent times, but Korvette (despite the nagging emergence of operating and profitability problems and home office turmoil) still enjoyed a hugely positive reputation with the public. A Korvette opening was definitely front page news in 1964.

A year after this store’s opening, Korvette would merge with Long Island-based Hill’s supermarkets to help stem a growing management crisis, and the supermarket portion would be redubbed “Hill’s/Korvette”. Sadly, only a year after that, Korvette would sell off their supermarkets altogether, with the DC area units going to Food Fair. The furniture and carpet store would go not long afterwards, but the main department store and auto center soldiered on for several more years. Korvettes (there was an “s” at the end of the name by this time) began to close stores in the late 70's and folded entirely in 1980.

Robyn was kind enough to film for us the shopping center as it exists today, shown below. The main anchors of the storied old Korvette City are now TJ Maxx and Burlington Coat Factory, two chains that often find homes in classic old shopping centers.

More Korvettes information can be found here, or you can search by other topics at the right of the page.

The Signature of Sears

If you are around 30 years old or so, you probably have some good memories of shopping at Sears. If you’re over 40, chances are they’re great memories. The sights (and smells) of the Sears “experience” , if it may be called that – the “Karnival Korner” candy and popcorn stands, the smells from which permeated a large portion of the store, the toy department, bringing the Christmas “Wish Book” home (and making your Christmas list up from it), tagging along with your dad in the huge Craftsman tool department, buying new Perma-Prest clothes at the start of the school year – the memories go on and on for many of us. It all contributed to a kind of “homey” image for Sears when looking back on it.

The architectural design of many of these stores was anything but homey, however, and by the late fifties Sears began to receive a fair amount of recognition for their unique store designs. The first four photos are of a brand new Sears store in Tampa, Florida, as profiled in Architectural Forum in 1958. The article expounds on the “W-shaped sections” which compose the store’s roofline and the “shell-concrete folds, turned up at the edges” on the auto center. Interesting stuff!

Sears was set up at the time in five major regions, with regional headquarters in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Dallas. While the interior layouts were standardized to a large extent within the A-B-C classifications and the basic size of the each store determined with the guidance of headquarters, the individual regions were given a great deal of autonomy in determining the exterior design (usually engaging high-profile architects from their region) and construction materials used for each store. This enabled the company to adapt each store’s appearance to the local area and made for a fascinating variety of looks when viewed in groups, as I plan to show over the next few posts.

Here is a link to a nice color postcard view of the Tampa store on Flickr, where the poster has provided some great history and current status for the store. Nice to know this one’s still standing and has been put to good use. Wish it was still a Sears, though.

Pictured below is a special addendum to the previous post, a great line drawing ad for the Roanoke, VA Sears Town (pictured in the last post)as published in a special book commemorating the city’s Diamond Jubilee in 1957. This ad appears courtesy of Steven Swain, Virginia native and author of two great blogs, LiveMalls, which features great mall photos and commentary and Steve’s Blog, where he covers a wide variety of topics, including retail. Steven worked on a redevelopment of the store some years back, and he gives us some great background info on the store which can be read in the comments section of the previous post. Thanks, Steven!

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!