The History of Department Stores
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More stores Some favorites were: Deviled crab (Woodward & Lothrop) Corned beef hash (Marshall Field) French onion soup (Famous-Barr) Chicken velvet soup (L. S. Ayres) Crab Imperial (Hutzler's) Chicken pie (Halle's) Wilshire Tower "Five" sandwich (Bullocks Wilshire) Muffins (Higbee's) Frango Dessert (Frederick & Nelson)  Christmas at Woodward & Lothrop, Washington DC, sometime in the 1950s.  Callender, McAuslan & Troupe (aka Boston Store) in Providence. After World War I, the stores realized that attractive and accessible displays helped sell merchandise. The second World War, with its scarcity of workers, impelled stores to create more self-service areas and to encourage customers to use clerks only for ringing up sales.  Rich's goal was to be the number one department store for the whole state of Georgia, if not much of the South. Like G. Fox in Hartford and F. & R. Lazarus in Columbus, Ohio, Rich's was known for taking a large role in civic affairs. |
 Children's menu, O'Neil's, Akron Occupation: Department Store Buyer "Good Housekeeping Finds Out What a Department Store Buyer Does," Good Housekeeping, July 1941: A photo essay about Kathryn Elden, a buyer of better dresses for Carson Pirie Scott in Chicago. She, like most buyers, is addicted to coffee. She goes to the weekly fashion show in the store to gauge reactions. She stares at fashionable women on Michigan Avenue, at the Pump Room, at Rockefeller Center in New York, and at the Jamaica horse races. She keeps a trunk of clothes in the cellar of the Algonquin Hotel in New York so she can travel luggage-free. She buys 1,000 or more dresses in a 10-day New York buying trip. She visits the Metropolitan Museum for ideas from 19th-century costumes. She reads Women's Wear every day. She always buys a new hat for a Fashion Group luncheon which she attends while in New York.  Betsy Ross created the first flag all by herself. It took six seamstresses just to add two new stars for Alaska and Hawaii to Hudson's flag in 1960. It seems hardly necessary to note that the store's flag, attached to the building with a mile of strong rope, was the world's largest.  Marshall Field ground floor, 1930s. The main aisle was a block long. Later stores would have snaking aisles and no straight sight lines. |
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