Livemalls

08/12/2023

New at Belk SouthPark: a wine bar

Arthur's expands to main floor of Belk, between perfume and Izod shirts

08/12/2023

08/12/2023

JCPenney has been voted the Best Department Store for 2023 by the readers of USA Today!

These 10 department stores across the country take the stress out of shopping by offering a diverse selection of quality items.

08/12/2023

Lasalle’s; North Towne Square, Toledo, Ohio

08/12/2023

It’s the Super Christmas Sale at Leggett! (1994(

(c)1994 Belk, Inc.1994 Leggett spot featuring their Super Christmas sale. The Leggett stores were a joint partnership with as part of a pattern of similar pa...

08/12/2023

Did you ever shop at Service Merchandise? Which location?

Service Merchandise was a retail chain of catalog showrooms carrying jewelry, toys, sporting goods and electronics. The company, first began in 1934 as a five-and-dime store founded by Harry and Mary Zimmerman in Pulaski, Tennessee.

In 1960, the first of what evolved into a chain of catalog showrooms opened at 309 Broadway in downtown Nashville, Tennessee.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Service Merchandise was a leading catalog-showroom retailer. At its peak, the company achieved more than $4 billion in annual sales. As the company expanded, it began to open showrooms nationwide, mostly in the vicinity of major shopping malls.

In May 1985, Service Merchandise acquired the H. J. Wilson Co. for approximately $200 million.

Beginning in the early 1990s, the company lost market share in its housewares and electronics sectors to giant discounters, such as Walmart and Bed Bath & Beyond, and later Best Buy and Circuit City. Although Service Merchandise was early to embrace the Internet in the 1990s, generating tens of millions of dollars in sales, it was not enough to offset the damage done by the mega-chain stores springing up nationwide. Service Merchandise ceased operations and shuttered all of its remaining stores by early 2002.

Pictured: Service Merchandise near Hickory Hollow Mall in Antioch, Tennessee about 1985.

View the Service Merchandise collection at American Retro Apparel: www.americanretroapparel.com

08/12/2023

Residents of the Lynchburg area once had to drive all the way to Roanoke if they wanted to shop at TORRID. Now a Lynchburg location is set to open soon.

08/12/2023

McDonald's said it is opening a new chain called CosMc's that will focus on coffee and other drinks — a step that is viewed as a challenge to Starbucks and Dunkin' as the fast-food giant seeks to boost afternoon sales.

The company said it will open its first CosMc's location in Illinois this month, with plans to open additional restaurants in 2024. https://cbsn.ws/46R85we

08/12/2023

We're going back to the Garden State today, and this time to a rare glimpse of one of its own department stores right at the end.

This 1987 photo takes us to Monmouth Mall in Eatontown, NJ during one of the many renovations here. This Hahne's store doesn't have much longer to be under this name. It will be renamed Lord & Taylor by 1988.

The Hahne's story goes all the way back to 1858 as a specialty store in Newark that would become a full-line department store by 1901. With 441,000 square feet over 5 floors, this building would be added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1994.

Hahne's (pronounced haynes) would become a founding member of Associated Dry Goods in 1916, and open its first branch store as early as 1929 in Montclair. But after being so early to the branch store game, they'd be slow to open any more. Like many department stores, they were afraid of cannabilizing the main store in Newark.

So they avoided malls for the most part, and that would come to their detriment as time went on. As customers began avoiding Newark, sales declined. Efforts were made to try and broaden merchandising and mall stores began to be added, like this one, in the 1970s. A brief attempt to upscale the brand toward the end occurred, but like all ADG properties, Hahne's was sold to Lord & Taylor. May briefly contemplated using Hahne's as a contemporary brand to be their version of Bloomingdale's, but decided on further consolidation.

08/12/2023

Rogers Department Store; Wyoming, Michigan (Wyoming Historical Commission)

08/12/2023

Smith-Bridgman's annex on First St. was looking pretty rough by the mid-60s, likely because plans were already underway to demolish this block and build Genesee Towers. To the left is the Garden Theatre, and to the right the Bill Lamb Record Shoppe.

07/12/2023

Do you want to cross the pond with me?

This 1991 photo takes us to the UK. Toys R Us got to expand internationally, and much of their footprint outside of the US lives on, most notably in Canada.

This store in Cardiff (Wales) doesn't look all that different from our US counterparts in the 80s. There's something about this design that just feels more authentic to me than the white 90s design.

Although it shows the difference in culture here that open late is until 8. I remember Toys R Us always closed at 9:30 in normal season.

07/12/2023

I remember it this way. You remember it this way.

We're live in 1996 today at Toys "R" Us. This is the Loehmann's Plaza location in East Brunswick, NJ. I remember every aspect of this, and much prefer the straight aisle era and these steel blue colored aisle signs from that era. This is what Toys "R" Us is to me.

This was when the concept stores started opening, and they began experimenting with layouts. It was around this time the video game section became separated into a different part of the store, and the iconic tickets to be taken to the counter after paying were replaced with plastic cases and separate registers at the R Zone.

07/12/2023

Thanks to one of our followers, Tracy Westerlund, we get to go back to Milwaukee's Southridge Mall, specifically to a Christmas display with Santa. I think that's one of the traditions that without department stores or malls featuring this, I don't know if kids from this generation will really find important.

While I don't have an exact timeline of when this is from, you can see Gimbels is peeking through in the background, so this is no later than the mid 80s. I happen to think it's a bit earlier than that. What do you guys think?

07/12/2023

06/12/2023

Macy’s; Towson Town Center, Towson, Maryland

05/12/2023

Did you ever shop at Kay Bee Toys? Which location?

Kay Bee Toys (also known as K·B Toys) was a chain of mall-based retail toy stores. The company was founded in 1922 as Kaufman Brothers, a wholesale candy store. The company opened a wholesale toy store in 1946, and ended its candy wholesales two years later to emphasize its toy products. Retail sales began during the 1970s, using the name Kay-Bee Toy & Hobby.

In 1999, the company operated 1,324 stores across the United States and was the second-largest toy retailer in the U.S., but it later declared bankruptcy in both 2004 and 2008 before going out of business on February 9, 2009.

View the Kay Bee Toys collection at American Retro Apparel: www.americanretroapparel.com

05/12/2023

A workman puts the final letter on the sign of a Cleveland, Ohio-area Super Kmart Center in 1991 (Gus Chan, The Plain Dealer)

05/12/2023

One of my favorite things about the holiday season was knowing that Toys R Us would be open until Midnight the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas. These days, it's hard finding almost anything open that late, even the supermarket.

This May 27, 1983 photo takes us inside the Sunnyvale, CA store and I believe this location was specifically known for haunted activity involving ghosts. We get to see the Atari section here, back when video games were a bit of a new phenomenon.

I would love to find more vintage Toys R Us content. If you have any, please send it to me!

04/12/2023

Logan Valley Mall in Altoona decorated for Christmas in 1979. On the left you can see Brooks and Richman Brothers and on the right, Murphys 5 & 10 and Millers. My Dad sure loved taking pictures of Christmas decorations!
(Photo from Tami Taylor via https://www.facebook.com/groups/Altoonahashustle/)

04/12/2023

A sepia toned look back into the 70s? We're back and local again to the days of Colonial Park Plaza in Harrisburg, PA, complete with a more up close view of the once Food Fair pylon now reading Pantry Pride.

Food Fair Properties owned and built Colonial Park in its early days, and the Food Fair company actually began in Harrisburg.

This pylon, while hidden today, is still present at the site and was used in renovations of this section. The Woolworth would become the food court as well as a now closed Buffalo Wild Wings which recently reopened as an Indian restaurant and lounge called Fyre.

04/12/2023

Eaton Centre in 1977. Familiar?

04/12/2023

A cartoon by Jack Ziegler, from 2013.

03/12/2023

These made a great Christmas gift

03/12/2023

Macy's in Voorhees 2014

03/12/2023

Macy’s Herald Square; New York City

03/12/2023

Today we're going overhead locally. Believe me, it's a lot more built up and congested than this now.

From sometime in the 1960s, this is an early overhead view of Colonial Park Plaza in Lower Paxton Township, PA (Harrisburg). This is the original foundation for the center showing Sears at the top of the center, Woolworth at the bottom along with a Food Fair supermarket. Note that the Pomeroy's wing has not yet been constructed, and I believe that opened in 1970. A Red Lobster now sits among that parking at the corner of Jonestown Rd. and Colonial Rd.

While the mall was enclosed in the 1970s and is struggling as redevelopment plans get jockeyed back and forth, the original structure you see here is largely intact to this day.

02/12/2023

There's something still so regal about it, even if in its 11th hour.

This 1976 shot captures shoppers inside the venerable Detroit Hudson's, a few years before its ultimate closure.

This Downtown store was one of the largest and most grand in the world, and you can tell from those ceilings and that chandelier that this was meant to invoke a grand image.

This 2.2 million square foot masterpiece would close as a store in 1983, but parts of the building would be used for corporate offices and the credit division until 1986. While the legacy of Hudson's continues on as Macy's, its original corporate entity lives on as Target.

02/12/2023

The Grand Crystal Tea Room at Wanamakers

02/12/2023

Woodward & Lothrop, Washington, DC, 1965

02/12/2023

Holt Renfrew; Yorkdale Shopping Centre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Photos from June 2022.

01/12/2023

01/12/2023

01/12/2023

A shopping mall in Hamilton, Ontario in 1959. credit: Archives of Ontario

30/11/2023

Today we're back in Canada, specifically the Francophone portion of the country.

This 1972 photo captures the Simpsons-Sears at the Galeries de Hull Shopping Centre in Gatineau, Quebec.

The mall scene is a bit different in Canada than it is in the United States. There's less conventional anchors than what we see here, and things like supermarkets and discounters are more common, even in larger malls in larger cities. Because of this, mall traffic is a bit more reliable in Canada to this day, and the dead mall issue we often find here in the US doesn't seem to be as present up north. I'm sure the colder weather also contributes to open-air centers being less appealing like this time of year.

29/11/2023

1982 Grand Ave Mall

29/11/2023

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that the holidays used to be synonymous with Gimbels for the regions they operated in.

This photo appears to date to 1970, and comes from the Southridge Mall outside of Milwaukee. Developed as a joint venture between Herb Kohl, the founder of Kohl's and eventual US Senator from Wisconsin and Taubman, Southridge would open with Kohl's, Gimbels, Boston Store, JCPenney and Sears as anchors, quite an assortment for that period.

This would remain Gimbels until 1987, becoming a very shortlived Marshall Field's. In 1988, it became Prange's and in 1992, Younkers. Upon Boston Store and Younkers becoming part of the same company, this would end up repurposed as a Linens N Things, Cost Plus World Market and Steve & Barry's. After all of those closed, the site was redeveloped for a new build Macy's that opened in 2012.

29/11/2023

Northridge Mall