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> From: MDK10 <[log in to unmask]>


Mary wrote:

> I am researching American department stores (19th & 20th C.) and would
> appreciate information you might have on any you might know - name,
location,
> approximate construction date, and any reminiscences you might have from
> personal histories.

Mary,

I don't know if this is what you had in mind, but certain rites of passage
of children of a particular New York class and culture
(upper-middle class second generation Eastern European Jews) in the 50s
were inextricably linked with particular department stores, almost all of
which are no more.

Best & Co. was THE place to inflict his first haircut on one's toddler, and
to continue to torture him at until well into his school years. I can't
swear that I remember my first haircut there, but it couldn't have been any
less traumatic than several I do remember from when I was 3 or so. I think
that the banshee wails on the sound-tracks for all those 60s low budget
horror flicks were inspired by, if not recorded from, the din of frightened
infants at Best's children's haircutting parlor.

Not much less traumatic was the annual visit, starting when I was 5 to
Browning King which was the official outfitter for numerous camps where my
parents and their friends hid their children away each summer; official,
because they agreed to have every item on the lists sent out by the camp
directors in the official colors of each camp. Buy a complete outfit and
the name-tags were free. These visits, sometime in April or May, served the
useful purpose of making the season of dread for those of us who felt
abandoned and left out of real life ("Why not? Why can't I go to Europe
with you? Pleeease") last not for just the two summer months, but through
the entire spring. Is it any wonder that so many of the children of my
backround became the van garde of the revolution in the 60s.

Next was the required visit to Saks 5th Ave. for one's first suit, and
eventually for one's Bar Mitzvah suit. The earlier event was so traumatic
that I have buried its memory deep in my unconscious and will require
hypnosis to bring it forth. I vaguely do remember that the salesman sneered
a lot, didn't seem to have any respect at all for those he served, and that
the fitter took necessary liberties with my body that made me exceedingly
uncomfortable. The choosing of the Bar Mitzvah suit I recall dimly as a
choreographed number in which a handful of pimply boys would rush over to
the one rack that held items that could be considered the least bit cool,
and then being dragged by the arm, in unison, over to the racks full of
miniature versions of our father's garb.

B. Altman & Co. was the one store that allowed for happy memories. Its
annual Christmas display windows were amazing concoctions of animated
scenes (not merchandise) that surpassed Rockefeller Center in astounding,
and holding one's fickle attention.

Not quite a department store, but worth a mention was the Loemann's on
Bedford Ave. in Brooklyn. It was a crazy folly of a Chinese temple in red
lacquer, complete with golden dragons, where the racks were full of
discounted women's wear from major designers, now, but not then, a common
part of the outlet mall scene.

Beside the wondrous architecture what made Loemann's a big event in the
life of an adolescent was that it had no dressing rooms. I'll never
understand what lay behind the thinking of all those mother's who insisted
upon bringing their male children with them, at any excuse, into this world
of women shuffling in and out of dresses in all the aisles, but it was a
practice that delighted me until I was about 13, the age which seemed to be
the limit in the unwritten law that governed the mother's behavior.

Bruce