#Department stores

[coolthingsguyslike]

[stone-cold-groove]

F.A.O. Schwarz Toys and Togs catalog - Christmas 1967.

[socialjusticeinamerica]

Two stores quietly reopened. Nobody knows why. Employees speculate a possible PR stunt or perhaps a test run to gauge public interest.

[newyorkthegoldenage]

A horse and carriage advertising Franklin Simon passes in front of the more upscale department store, Saks Fifth Avenue, December 22, 1958.

Top photo: Associated Press via WHNT Bottom photo: Morse Collection/Gado/Getty Images

[goshyesvintageads]

Gold Seal Rubber Co, 1982

[viagginterstellari]

GUM (XIX c., arch.V. G. Šuchov, A. Pomerantsev) - Moskow, 2012

[hikki2525]

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魔女百貨店　 witch department store

[hclib]

Charge It

Lots of people are pulling out their credit cards today to snag Cyber Monday deals. In 1946, a new credit card debuted in Minneapolis, though it bears little resemblance to the ones we use today.

This new card, called a Charga-Plate, was designed to make it easier for local shoppers to use their store-specific charge accounts. Eight of the top Minneapolis retailers (The Baker Co., The Dayton Co., L.S. Donaldson Co., J.B. Hudson Co., Juster Brothers, Powers Dry Goods Co., Warner Hardware, and The Young-Quinlan Co.) collaborated to send Charga-Plates to their customers. A shopper would receive one Charga-Plate, no matter how many of the stores offered them credit. The location of notches on the plate indicated which stores held accounts for the shopper. The system was meant to speed up the check-out process by eliminating the need for clerks to look up who held credit at their store and then write their information on the receipt. Instead, the Charga-Plate was used to copy the buyer's name to the invoice quickly. Newspaper ads touted it as "A truly modern shopping service!"

This Charga-Plate from our collections belonged to Charlotte Griffin Weld. Weld was a leader in many civic organizations in the 1940s and 1950s, including the Friends of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the women's division of the Hennepin County War Finance Committee, and the Women's Association of the Minnesota Orchestra (WAMSO).

Photos of Charga-Plates from the Minneapolis Newspaper Photograph Collection in the Hennepin County Library Digital Collections. Weld's Charga-Plate from the Charlotte Griffin Weld Papers (M/A 0082).

[fitsofgloom]

And Still Insists He Sees The Ghosts

[machetelanding]

[libraryofva]

Recent Acquisition - Ephemera Collection

Television on display. Miller & Rhoads, Richmond, Va.

[onefootin1941]

[newyorkthegoldenage]

A fire broke out in the former Wanamaker’s department store at 9th St. and Broadway on July 15, 1956. Six hundred firefighters and more than 50 pieces of equipment were needed to control the blaze, which lasted 25 hours. An estimated 50 million gallons of water was used. It flooded the Astor Place subway station and officials feared that Fourth Avenue (on the other side of the building) would collapse, but fortunately that did not happen.

The handsome Renaissance palazzo-style building was gutted, but the cast iron shell remained.

Top photo: Associated Press via the Harry Ransom Center, U. of Texas Bottom photo: Sheldon Gottesman for the NY Journal-American via Harry Ransom Center, U. of Texas

[hst432]

暖簾

[petsincollections]

"Baby Elephant Welcomed at Department Store", 11/1/1955

"Arriving from India to spend the Christmas season at the John Wanamaker midcity store, a four-month-old elephant receives a warm welcome. Marcia MacDonald, six, of Haverford, feeds carrots to Hannibal while Barbara Mariani, of Lafayette Hills, fits him with a baby bonnet."

George D. McDowell Philadelphia Evening Bulletin Photographs

Temple University Digital Collections

[melancholic-medusa]

I fell in love with you in the department store.

the music was too loud and there wasn't enough room in between isles,

but there you were;

beautiful as always.

if I could go back to that store where you danced around in your long skirt,

I would say it was my heaven.