A Very Merry Christmas

From Christmas 1971, a beautiful night view of a Chicago department store legend – the Carson Pirie Scott & Co. flagship, a familiar sight on the corner of State and Madison Streets since 1899. (The store closed last year and is now being renovated for other uses.) The Louis Sullivan masterpiece, with its magnificent iron scrollwork façade, is a lily that certainly doesn’t need gilding. In my opinion however, the multi-colored Dickensian false façade Carsons installed that season, dubbed “The Village of Lights”, took Christmas window design to an entirely different plane.

For years, a semi-friendly rivalry existed between Carsons and their State Street neighbors, Marshall Field & Company and Goldblatt’s (Thanks to commenter Randy for pointing that Wieboldt's was a key player in the contest also. They purchased the former Mandel Bros. store, directly across Madison Street from Carsons, in 1961. Their suburban locations usually had Christmas windows as well.), to win the hearts of holiday shoppers and their kids with elaborate dioramas in their store windows. These usually involved a storyline sequence that unfolded as one walked along the sidewalk, straining with the rest of the crowd to get the best view of each successive window. A dwindling number of stores in Chicago and elsewhere carry on this tradition today. Our family usually felt that Field’s won the contest, but not every time. Unfortunately, I don’t remember this 1971 edition personally. We went downtown occasionally at that time, but it was a few years before we made it a regular “day after Thanksgiving” tradition. Nonetheless, I feel safe in saying that Carsons probably won the rivalry that year.

A couple of other interesting aspects shown in the photo are the classic 50’s-70’s Carsons logo and the futuristic, fluorescent State Street lighting of the same era. Years later, these light towers would be replaced with 1920’s-style fixtures to emulate an earlier era.

In 1979, following what looked at the time to be an emerging national trend, the City of Chicago closed off State Street to automobile traffic to create State Street Mall, allowing only pedestrian and bus access, and replacing a wide portion of the street with huge sidewalks, planters and the like. Slowing sales of State Street merchants and the flight of many shoppers to nearby Michigan Avenue's “Magnificent Mile” proved this to be a mistake within just a few years, but the problem wasn’t corrected until 1997, when State Street was “de-malled” and once again traffic flowed, to the relief of retailers up and down the strip. By then, of course, the retail world had dramatically changed.

Once again, I want to take this time to let everyone know how deeply I appreciate your support of this website, and to wish everyone a wonderful holiday season, spent with family and close friends. I especially want to thank you who have commented on the site, and who have sent me such warm, heartfelt emails with your own treasured memories. It means more than I can say. Thanks so much.

May the True Joy and the real meaning of Christmas be yours, and may you and your families enjoy a happy and healthy New Year. See you then!

Dave

Sears - Christmastime in the O.C.

“The sun is shining, the grass is green.

The orange and palm trees sway.

There's never been such a day

in Beverly Hills, L.A.

But it's December the twenty-fourth,

and I am longing to be up north”.

--The usually omitted first verse of

Irving Berlin’s classic song “White Christmas”

Well, as you can see, it’s actually a bit overcast, but I’ll bet the grass is green. The orange groves were plowed up a while back to make room for legions of new suburban homes, shopping centers like this one and Disneyland, but there are a few carefully selected palm trees. And we’re not in Beverly Hills, but rather in Costa Mesa, right in the heart of Orange County. More than likely the photo wasn’t taken on Christmas Eve, but it’s definitely from the Christmas season, as evidenced by that hallmark of Southern California style - a gold garland Christmas tree, standing right there atop the Sears.

This photo, shown courtesy of the Orange County Archives, depicts the Sears end of the South Coast Plaza shopping center, which opened at the corner of Bristol Street and Sunflower Avenue in Costa Mesa, California in November 1966 and was still looking prime 15 years later when the photo was taken. Although the shopping center itself was designed by the legendary Victor Gruen, the architect for the Sears store was the firm of (the also legendary) Stiles Clements and his son, Robert. This was one of the very last projects to occur under the elder Clements’ watch, as he passed away in January 1966, while the store was still under construction. A huge store at over 338,000 square feet including the auto center, garden shop and other structures, the South Coast Plaza Sears was the chain’s largest store in the far west at the time of its opening. It still exists.

I recently heard from the grandson of George Scherquist, construction manager for Sears’ Pacific Coast territory from the 1940’s through his retirement in 1968. Mr. Scherquist presided over one of the largest and most impressive store development programs in retail history, and the South Coast Plaza store would have to count as one of his crowning achievements.

Speaking of Sears (and we were), at this time last year I mentioned the wonderful Wish Book Web site, where a fascinating collection of department store catalogs are scanned in full and available for your viewing delight. A number of the catalogs are Christmas editions, including an outstandingly beautiful 1966 Sears Christmas catalog, published the year this store opened. Many catalogs have been added to the site in the past year.

Dominick's in December - 1971

An inviting sight on a cold winter evening, Dominick’s Finer Foods, known to Chicagoans then and now as simply “Dominick’s”, was a particular favorite of our family around Christmastime, with its great holiday platters and Heinemann’s Butter-Ritz coffee cakes. Probably the biggest claim to fame for Dominick’s was its reputation for a superb selection of ethnic foods, from S. Rosen’s rye bread to a host of Italian specialties, and everything in between. As a side note Dominick’s, along with Jewel, were the enablers-in chief of my Salerno Butter Cookie habit. (Boy, do I miss those. And did I just use the word “butter” twice in the same post?)

Dominick’s, with 45 stores at the time, had more than doubled in size in the previous year and a half, buying out 24 Kroger stores in the second half of 1970. These stores were gradually converted to the Dominick’s format throughout 1971. Dominick’s was the number four-ranked supermarket chain in the Chicago area in the early 70’s, behind Jewel, National Tea and Certified Grocers. They were already outselling A&P, who had over 100 stores in the area at the time, more than double those of Dominick’s. By the end of the decade, Dominick’s would be second only to Jewel, a position they still hold today.

I’m not sure of this store’s location, though I know Dominick’s had only a small number of stores with the cutout-lettered logo and the grooved façade. (Note I said “grooved” instead of “groovy’’, in keeping with this site’s policy of tasteful restraint.) The store strongly resembles the Park Ridge Dominick’s, opened in 1962, but that particular store featured striking modernist light fixtures in the parking lot, whereas the ones in this photo are more conventional.

Next Stop - The Island of Misfit Toys!

…but first we need to stop and stock up on our Vitamin C for the long trip. And here’s the perfect place to do it – Von’s! Santa pops up through the corrugated chimney while two of his tiny (white, inflatable plastic) reindeer look on. They’re joined by an attractive woman sporting the West Coast equivalent of “big hair”. From 1962, exact location unknown.

A Wal-Mart Christmas, 1971

What to say about this one, my friends? Ok, how about the first three things that come to mind:

1. Those eerie Santa masks with large eye openings are great for hiding security cameras!
2. The oversized promo film boxes that Kodak used to make look cool, even stapled to a wall!
3. $9.94 per pound is a heckuva price for polyester!

Any other ideas?