Missing the Dead Store and Malls... Or Not

 

I drove by two malls in the past two days.  One was the Hawthorn Mall in Vernon Hills and the other was the Northbrook Mall in Northbrook.  Lord & Taylor was an anchor store at both.  At Hawthorn, the store is already closed.  The signage is already down and there is only a shadow of the cursive logo of the venerable department store on the walls.  At the Northbrook Mall, the store was still open but there was a “Store Closing” banner hanging from the roof.  The full chain will be gone sometime in 2021.

I never really knew Lord & Taylor growing up in Detroit.  The department stores near our house in Zone 27 (48227) in Detroit Federal’s and Montgomery Ward.  They were across from each other at Grand River and Greenfield.  It was quite a commercial area that included a men’s fashion store, Harry Sufferin’s, and a women’s store, Himelhochs.  All have gone out of business though Himelhochs still has an online presence. 

The other department stores we used to frequent were Sear’s and Roebuck’s and JL Hudson’s.  My maternal grandmother, Grannie, loved Sear’s and we would go to the Oakman Boulevard store in Detroit near her home.  My mother would occasionally go to Hudson’s.  Early on it was their iconic downtown store and later it

Hudson's Toy Department

was at Northland, the first shopping center in the US.  At the time, Sear’s was the largest retailer in the US.  They are technically still in business but have been on life-support for at least ten years.  Hudson’s was bought by the Minneapolis based Dayton’s and operated as Dayton-Hudson’s while they grew their Target discount brand which eventually became their only stores and brands. 

We tend to get attached to stores especially those tied to our youthful experiences and memories. Many of us favored some stores over others.  We liked the atmosphere, the service, the prices, the attitude of the sales staff these places.  We loved the locations and the goods we bought for ourselves and the gifts we bought for others.  We remember the windows during the holidays.  We loved the Santa at our favorite stores.  The older and more magnificent the store, the more we bonded to it… and miss them all the more today.  That is the power of nostalgia in the midst of rapid change.

People still reminisce about the Hudson’s in downtown Detroit.  People miss the grandeur that was Marshall Field’s in Chicago even though it retains some of the that old tradition in its current manifestation as a Macy’s (and who knows their future is).  Most cities there was one iconic store.  In New York city were several, a hierarchy of them.  Certainly, there were Macy’s and Gimbels (gone).  There is Saks (lifesupport).  There is Bergdorf-Goodman’s and Bloomingdale’s.  Bonwit-Teller and

Henri Bendel are two other long gone stores.  Finally, there were the neighbors:  B. Altman and Lord & Taylor.  Both of the gone.  The B. Altman store on 5^th Avenue is part of NYU and the Lord & Taylor building is about to become an Amazon office complex.  B. Altman closed before I worked in Manhattan.  I did get Lord & Taylor a few times but as Saks was two blocks from my office, that was my go to store in Manhattan.

 People miss the closed stores.  But the reason the stores close is a combination of the world changing, management not keeping with the times, and, ultimately, people ceasing to shop there.  The dichotomy is that the stores we miss so much are gone because we stopped frequenting them.  We are fickle and a bit complicated.

Do I have a favorite store that I am missing?  Not really.  I do have a mall that I somewhat am nostalgic about.  I remember when the Fairlane Town Center and Hyatt Regency opened in Dearborn.  I was at the University of Michigan – Dearborn, which is basically across the street, at the time the both opened in the 1970s. 

Fairlane Town Center

There was a lot of hype.  Both were built on a grand scale, magnificent, and were seemed to portend a grand and positive change in the city.  I frequented both when I was in school and working at Ford Motor Company.  I loved going to Fairlane to shop and the Hyatt for lunch.  Lord & Taylor was an anchor store at the mall and it may have been the first Lord & Taylor store in Michigan.  The hotel ceased being a Hyatt in 2012 is currently closed after two revival attempts failed.  The Fairlane Town Center is on life support.

Do I miss them.  Just a little.  Am I upset that the hotel is closed and the Mall dying?  No.  Not really.  Markets, demographics, and people preferences change.  I totally understand and accept this while still having a few fond memories.