MISCmedia for 4/17/00
Dime Store Nostalgia

HERE ARE SOME MORE visual glances at recycled real estate; this time with an emphasis on the now almost-disappeared middlebrow sector of downtown retail in my town.

Before it moved to its current site in 1928, the Bon Marche had two prior downtown buildings. The first, at First and Cedar, survived until the 1980s. The second, at Second and Pike, became a J.C. Penney from 1930 to 1982 (for many of those years, it was the chain's largest store). Vacant almost a decade, it was finally razed for a condo tower and indoor mall called Newmark (as in "New Market," implying the developers hoped to draw shoppers from the nearby Pike Place Market). Newmark's mall and movie theaters failed; the space was turned into bank offices.

In the middle of the Great Depression, the F.W. Woolworth Co. built what it modestly called "The Wonder Store" at Third and Pike. The two-level emporium offered everything from clothes and jewelry to candy and toys, all at bargain prices. But more than that, its architecture and interior design told its customers they deserved to be welcomed and pampered in a shopping environment just as handsome as those of the "carriage trade" stores for the rich. The Woolworth chain staggered to a final collapse in the mid-'90s; the parent company now calls itself Venator and runs such mall-based stores as Foot Locker. The downtown Woolworth site's now a Ross Dress for Less.

During the Woolworth chain's heyday, it had many variety-store rivals. One of the biggest was the S.H. Kress Co., which built many stores across from Woolworth's bigger outlets--including one at Third and Pike in Seattle, now housing a Sam Goody record store among other tenants. Founder Samuel Kress amassed a huge collection of mideval and baroque-era religious art, which he donated to several museums (including the Seattle Art Museum). The Kress chain was eventually bought by financier Meshulam Riklis (then-husband of singer-actress Pia Zadora), who shut down the stores so he could make more money from the real estate.

Back when Nordstrom was just a shoe store, Rhodes of Seattle advertised itself as "Seattle's Home-Owned Department Store." (The long name was meant to differentiate it from the separately-owned Rhodes store in Tacoma.) By the '60s, it had become part of the M. Lamont Bean family's local retail empire (Pay 'n Save Drugs, Ernst Hardware, Pizza Haven, et al.). In the early '70s, as the Boeing recession struck Seattle and Nordstrom grew into a full-line clothing store, the Beans closed Rhodes' downtown store (now housing a Kinko's and a Seattle's Best Coffee) and renamed its suburban branches "Lamonts" (now owned by others and in financial troubles).

TOMORROW: USA Today turns 18, asserts its adulthood with a style makeover.

ELSEWHERE:

• It's like Stephen King's Christine, only without killing people--it's The Devil's Car!...

RECENT HIGHLIGHTS:

• Jim Hightower's selective memories of the pre-Clinton Democrats.
• Announcing the launch of MISCmedia Radio.
• Corporate warriors try to capture even more intellectual property.
• Parts one and two of a poet's fascination with the business press.
• Dave Eggers--Staggering Genius or just another hip-ironic bad boy?
• A drink to fair trade.
• Parts one and two of the clash between the arts scene and the info biz, and how it can be resolved.
• The potential savior of daily newsprint.
• You bet we've got demographics!
• Yet another all-time cool place in transition.
• Shorts about new-wave karaoke and other topics.
• Even Los Angeles worries about losing its civic identity.
• Business without the B.S. would still be business.
• Identity politics, target marketing-- what's the difference?
• Where America no longer shops.

ARCHIVES:

• 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, 1995, and 1986-94 columns
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• The origin and future of MISCmedia