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Service and Style: How the American Department Store Fashioned the Middle Class
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Product Description
The history of downtown department stores is as fascinating as their names and as diverse as their merchandise. Their stories encompass many themes: the rise of decorative design, new career paths for women, the growth of consumerism, and the technological ingenuity of escalators and pneumatic tubes. Just as the big stores made up their own small universes, their stories are microcosmic narratives of American culture and society.
The big stores were much more than mere businesses. They were local institutions where shoppers could listen to concerts, see fashion shows and art exhibits, learn golf or bridge, pay electric bills, and plan vacations - all while their children played in the store's nursery under the eye of a uniformed nursemaid.
From Boston to San Diego and Miami to Seattle, department stores symbolized a city's spirit, wealth, and progressiveness. Situated at busy intersections, they occupied the largest and finest downtown buildings, and their massive corner clocks became popular meeting places. Their locations became the epicenters of commerce, the high point from which downtown property taxes were calculated. Spanning the late 19th century well into the 20th, their peak development mirrors the growth of cities and of industrial America when both were robust and flourishing.
The time may be gone when children accompany their mothers downtown for a day of shopping and lunch in the tea room, when monogrammed trucks deliver purchases for free the very same day, and when the personality of a city or town can be read in its big stores. But they are far from forgotten and they still have power to influence how we shop today.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #505752 in Books
- Published on: 2006-08-22
- Released on: 2006-08-22
- Original language: English
- Dimensions: 1.20" h x 8.75" w x 9.50" l, 1.75 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 352 pages
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The American department store is "not quite a dinosaur," says Whitaker (Tea at the Blue Lantern Inn), but it has certainly seen better days, and it's that robust era—from the turn of the 20th century to the 1960s—that she chooses to celebrate in this lively pop history. At their peak, department stores were the nation's largest booksellers and many major chains also sold groceries. But it was clothes that made the stores a prime destination for women of all social classes, and Whitaker discusses at significant length the subtle movements through which major chains from one end of the country to the other cultivated their reputations for being up-to-date with the latest Paris fashions, then tapped into additional markets for young adult and children's wear. More than 100 photographs and illustrations are integrated into the text, aptly demonstrating the lengths to which stores went in order to present themselves as elegant yet modern and convenient. Legendary New York chains like Macy's and Gimbel's get much of the attention, but outposts from other regions, such as San Francisco's Emporium or Philadelphia's Lit Brothers, also get due notice, adding an additional aura of comprehensiveness to Whitaker's richly detailed account. 8-page color insert. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–This well-written book presents a thorough picture of department stores from their beginnings in the late 19th century through their heyday. Readers are treated to all aspects of the stores' histories, from financing to marketing to merchandising; their employment of women, layout, display windows, and architecture; store competition; and, particularly, the move from home sewing to ladies' ready-to-wear. These independent establishments were instrumental in defining and catering to a rising middle class and an integral and hugely important part of urban centers. Then, around 1970, Sears and Penney's stores and discounters in suburbia made the going too rough. Now the big independents with the proud old names are hardly recognizable. The illustrations include photos of store exteriors and interiors and copies of ads. Chapters are broken up by topic. This is an invaluable resource for students of marketing, fashion design, and U.S. history/social studies.–Judy McAloon, Potomac Library, Prince William County, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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