How Department Stores Are Carried On

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The geography of American retail has changed dramatically since the first luxurious department stores sprang up in nineteenth-century cities. Introducing light, color, and music to dry-goods emporia, these "palaces of consumption" transformed mere trade into occasions for pleasure and spectacle. Through the early twentieth century, department stores remained centers of social activity in local communities. But after World War II, suburban growth and the ubiquity of automobiles shifted the seat of economic prosperity to malls and shopping centers. The subsequent rise of discount big-box stores and electronic shopping accelerated the pace at which local department stores were shuttered or absorbed by national chains. But as the outpouring of nostalgia for lost downtown stores and historic shopping districts would indicate, these vibrant social institutions were intimately connected to American political, cultural, and economic identities. The first national study of the department store industry, From Main Street to Mall traces the changing economic and political contexts that transformed the American shopping experience in the twentieth century. With careful attention to small-town stores as well as glamorous landmarks such as Marshall Field's in Chicago and Wanamaker's in Philadelphia, historian Vicki Howard offers a comprehensive account of the uneven trajectory that brought about the loss of locally identified department store firms and the rise of national chains like Macy's and J. C. Penney. She draws on a wealth of primary source evidence to demonstrate how the decisions of consumers, government policy makers, and department store industry leaders culminated in today's Wal-Mart world. Richly illustrated with archival photographs of the nation's beloved downtown business centers, From Main Street to Mall shows that department stores were more than just places to shop.

In the late nineteenth century, the urban department store arose as a built artifact and as a social institution in the United States. While the physical building type is the foundation of this comprehensive architectural study, Louisa Iarocci reaches beyond the analysis of the bricks and mortar to reconsider how the ?spaces of selling? were culturally-produced spaces, as well as the product of interrelated economic, social, technological and aesthetic forces. The agenda of the book is three-fold; to address the lack of a comprehensive architectural study of the nineteenth century department store in the United States; to expand the analysis of the commercial city as a built and represented entity; and to continue recent scholarly efforts that seek to understand commercial space as a historically specific and a conceptually perceived construct. The Urban Department Store in America, 1850-1930 acts as a corrective to a current imbalance in the historiography of this retailing institution that tends to privilege its role as an autonomous ?modern? building type. Instead, Iarocci documents the development of the department store as an urban institution that grew out of the built space of the city and the lived spaces of its occupants.

"[...]condition of each section. It enables him to know, if desired, what each individual salesperson does; how much the total business is of any department on any day; what the expenses are for any given time; and these facts are not obtained spasmodically, but are regularly recorded and made use of. Lack of knowledge of the condition of any department does not exist. Success, or the lack of it, is apparent at once. The truth of Eternal Vigilance being the Price of Success is here acknowledged, and in no other business organization is more special care and attention[...]".

Excerpt from How Department Stores Are Carried It is not the intention in this vol ume to prejudice public opinion against Department Stores. No attempt has been made to enumerate any reasons why they exist and ourish, nor any effort made to prove that they are a necessity, or otherwise. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."

No other branch of business can bear comparison with the wonderful results achieved by Department Stores, such a success as has made them the wonder of modern merchandising. These stores, that have grown to greatness from small beginnings, have a force and power behind them that commands general interest. Their store-keeping rests upon certain well-defined principles, and not upon chance, sensations or experiments.

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