Happy New Year!

To contact us Click HERE
Happy 2012, and welcome to the start of a new year of Pleasant Family Shopping, where we revisit those great everyday places from our past – the supermarket, the discount store, the shopping center and more. Think about it – they’ve changed more than a little through the years, haven’t they?

And to start the year off right, we’ve adopted a special theme. I like to call it “ring out the old, ring in the new” for short. (Originality. The hallmark of this website.) To symbolize this, I refer you to the photo above, circa early 1971, showing the huge, brand new Safeway supermarket in Lafayette, California, replete with mansard roof, open and ready for business. (Still there, now with a Starbucks!) In front of it is the original Safeway it replaced, shortly before the older store assumed a flat, paved-over configuration, er…became a parking lot.

So that’s our theme – ring out the old…away with the pylons and pastel colors…the barrel roofs and the checkered tile floors that held us back!

And ring in the new…bring on the cedar shingles and earth tones…the Norwegian woods…the ferns and the lower-case fonts that help us to find our true inner selves.

Ok, wait a minute – sure, I like mansard roofs. Earth tones are great, and lower-case fonts have improved all of our lives, there’s scientific proof* of that. But I still like pylons, too! And pastels, barrel roofs and funky tile still move me. I can’t help it, I want ‘em both! I want it all. Now.

In fact, I’m peeved that they ever tore the old Safeway down in this case. I’m thinking a “Safeway Visitors Center” would have been the perfect use for the old store. Heck, the Starbucks could’ve been put there! Sure, people might have had to carry their groceries a block or so on busy days (when jars were glass instead of plastic), but that's not too much to ask, is it?

* According to Dave’s scientific method.

Shopping in Los Angeles - The 1950's

To contact us Click HERE

There’s a ritual I never fail to observe when traveling to Los Angeles on business. I’ve done it for years now. Once I land, usually at LAX, grab my rental car and hit the road, I call home to let everyone know I arrived safely (transcontinental flight, you know), and at some point in the conversation I exclaim “I love L.A.!” in my best, most frazzled Randy Newman voice. It’s the title line from his 1983 hit song, and sometimes I’ll throw it in more than once. It’s an old shtick, but my wife still humors me each time.

And I really do love it. Not because I’m driving a convertible (just an “intermediate” car, which is rental car company language for “yogurt cup on wheels”) or wearing a Hawaiian shirt (“business casual” isn’t that casual, I’m afraid) or accompanied by bikini-clad women (the call home would be awkward to say the least), but because of all of the great-looking old retail buildings there: Spanish-style, mid-century modern, bizarre and uncategorizable, you name it. Sure, scads of them have been torn down over the years, but there’s still a lot to see - simply because so many were built there in the first place.

Thankfully, much of this is well-documented in still photographs, but I can’t help but wonder what it all must have looked like from the windshield perspective in its heyday. The amazing film clip above, from 1954 (sincere thanks to Julie for bringing it to my attention) is the closest thing I’ve found to that. Only 1:50 long, it provides a great, if fleeting, full-color snapshot of the City of Angels at an exciting point in the early postwar era.

I don’t know the origin of this particular clip, but it was likely made for a commercial purpose of some type. It’s a nice example of a genre known today as “ephemeral films” – educational films for classroom use or promotional movies produced for tourism bureaus, trade associations or corporations. They were glowing salutes to The American Way - progress and prosperity, the natural result of virtue, ingenuity and hard work. These films provide a fascinating, if not complete, slice of life from those times. And they always seemed to feature bouncy, optimistic soundtracks with plucking strings and insanely peppy woodwinds. I’m tempted to think that music like this just played in the air in those days, and could be heard whenever you stepped outside. (Someone, please tell me this was true!)

The local icons are well represented here - starting out with the approach to downtown L.A., we see the famous City Hall in a perfect “Dragnet establishing shot”, followed by the Angels Flight inclined railway in the Bunker Hill area of town. Then on to some of the main drags, including South Broadway in downtown L.A., Wilshire Boulevard and Hollywood Boulevard, where a crowd is lined up outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre (only the side of the building is shown – the Kodak theatre now sits in that spot next door, square atop the intersection of Hollywood and Orchid) for a showing of “The Robe”, one of those films the late movie palace historian Ben Hall would have called “the latest version of the Bible according to Cinemascope”.

And then (you knew we’d get around to this, didn’t you?) comes the really fun stuff, as far as those who regularly visit this site are concerned. In addition to the “postcard scenes” described above, the film depicts some of the L.A. area’s most noteworthy retail properties of the day, which by default means some of the most noteworthy anywhere. A few notes:

First up is a great pan shot of the Broadway-Crenshaw Center, opened in late 1947 in southwest Los Angeles and sporting subtleties of color one wouldn’t imagine based on the many period black and white photos that exist of the place. Interestingly, the facades seen here facing the parking lot were virtually duplicated on the opposite side of the shopping center, which lined the sidewalk along Crenshaw Boulevard.

Two years earlier the intersection of Crenshaw and Santa Barbara Avenue (renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd in the 1980’s) was home to only trees, grass and assorted wildlife, but the nearby population was beginning to boom. When The May Company announced plans to build a large branch store there, the Broadway reciprocated with plans for a huge Crenshaw location of its own, with a strip of some 15 supporting stores in tow, right across the street. Among the other tenants were Woolworth’s, Lerner Shops, Owl Rexall Drugs, Silverwoods (a downtown L.A.-based men’s clothing store) and a detached Von’s supermarket.

The design of the center was the work of architect Albert B. Gardner, who also had a hand in designing the circa-1928 City Hall seen at the beginning of the clip. One of the very largest shopping centers in the country at the time it opened, Broadway-Crenshaw yielded some important lessons for future retail development. I’ve summarized a few of them from Richard Longstreth’s great book “City Center to Regional Mall: Architecture, the Automobile, and Retailing in Los Angeles, 1920-1950” which devotes several pages to the center: For one, the head-to-head competition that both May Co. and The Broadway were dreading turned out to be a net plus, an early example of the drawing power of multiple large department stores in close proximity. Secondly, there was no need for the “duplicate storefronts” along the street line. Most customers drove to the center and used the parking lot, so “sidewalk shoppers” accounted for a low percentage of sales. Future shopping centers like this, for the most part, were slid to the middle of the parking lot. Third, Broadway-Crenshaw really needed a second large anchor to balance the traffic flow to the other stores. (The May Co. store didn’t count in that regard, of course.) This helped lead to the opposite ends or “dumbbell” configuration for 2-anchor malls seen countless times in the ensuing years. It also became clear that anchor department stores of this type could handle, and really needed, far more than 15 supporting stores.

The shopping center is now known as Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, which encompasses both the former Broadway and May Company properties. The Broadway store building still exists as the best-looking Walmart that will ever be, while the May Co. store is now a Macy’s. The smaller stores were torn down and replaced years ago. The photo above (same pic, two different “zoom levels”) is from the 1951 book “Shopping Centers – Design and Operation” by Geoffrey Baker and Bruno Funaro, a vital early text on the subject.The Von’s (apostrophe long since dropped) supermarket at Crenshaw Center was not designed by Mr. Gardner, but by another L.A.-based architectural heavyweight, Stiles Clements. Mr. Clements had already done a great deal of work for Ralphs, one of Von’s main competitors, with designs ranging from exquisite Spanish-styled markets to some of the most striking streamlined buildings ever seen in retail. In later years, Clements played a key role in refining Sears’ distinctive “West Coast look”.

Lauded in an August 24, 1950 Los Angeles Times article as being “Rated the World’s Largest Grocery”, the store was indeed huge for the times at over 58,000 square feet (roughly half of that selling space), and it featured a mural depicting scenes of California history along the entire back wall, painted by artist Bert Makos. This photo also comes from the Baker and Funaro book cited above. Note the windmill on the corner - the beloved trademark of Van de Kamp’s, operator of supermarket bakery departments all over SoCal as well as their own coffee/bakery shops. Then, a brief glimpse of an early fifties Safeway store from an unidentified location. (I first assumed it was the nearby 39th and Crenshaw location that opened in 1952, but an opening day photo in the Los Angeles Times proved otherwise.) This store is typical of those Safeway was opening in many locations at that time, before the yellow-pyloned exteriors of the mid-fifties and the Marina family of designs launched at decade’s end. With over 10,000 feet of selling space, these stores must have seemed immense compared to the small, white-painted masonry units the company favored (note the first photo here) just a few years earlier.

The similarly-designed store pictured above was located in Lancaster, California. This photo appears here by the kind courtesy of Jacques Gautreaux, and is part of his great collection of retail photos from northern L.A. County’s Antelope Valley, taken in 1966.
The legendary Westwood Village Ralphs market appears next, a subject already covered in some depth here. Many thanks to “vieilles_annonces” (check out her astounding collection of vintage slides and magazine articles here) for use of the photo above. It predates the film clip by more than a decade, but offers a wonderful color view of the approach into town on Westwood Boulevard. Among other iconic structures are the Ralphs store to the right, Westwood’s unique Sears store in the middle, and the A&P (only the spire is visible) to the left.

A relatively minor entry in the SoCal retail history books is long-gone independent supermarket chain McDaniel’s Markets, which featured a jaunty Scotsman as their mascot and a tartan pattern as a key design element in their ads and on stores. By mid-1957, McDaniel’s had six stores, located in North Hollywood, Beverly Hills, East L.A. (famous as the birthplace of Cheech Marin), Maywood and Baldwin Park, according to the Los Angeles Times. That year, McDaniel’s bought out the six-store Walker’s Market chain, and between those stores and additional units built over the years, the company eventually grew to almost 25 stores.

In the early 60’s McDaniel’s went bankrupt, selling their choicest locations to Food Giant Markets. I wonder if some creative sloganeering would helped, like “Visit the Plaid Pylon, where we pile on the deals!” or “More buying power under the Tartan Tower!” (Or maybe it would have hastened their demise, you say.) The photo above, an artist’s rendering of the Oxnard, California location, appears here courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library.
After that comes the sleek, curved facade of the Owl Rexall Drug at the corner of Beverly and La Cienega Boulevards (near the border of West Hollywood and Beverly Hills), which opened in the fall of 1947 and is shown here in a publicity photo taken shortly thereafter. The huge, ultramodern drugstore was only the (curved) tip of the iceberg in this case, as it was attached to the new world headquarters of United-Rexall Drug Inc., which relocated there from Boston. The move was the brainchild of company president Justin Dart, a dashing, enigmatic former Walgreen executive (and former Walgreen son-in-law) who came to United in 1941 and wasted no time casting the company in his own image. Indeed, the firm would eventually be known as Dart Industries, with interests that ranged far beyond drugstores.

Owl, Rexall’s major west coast banner, was closely controlled by the parent company, as was its eastern counterpart Liggett, and hundreds of Rexall drug stores were operated under these two names. While neither Owl nor Liggett were strictly confined to the coasts, most Rexall stores in between (in what hipsters like you and I call “flyover country”) were more likely to sport one of multitudes of franchisee names on the familiar orange-and-blue signs.

The four-day grand opening kicked off on September 15, 1947 and at the podium, along with Dart himself, was California Governor Earl Warren (this was six years before he was appointed Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and had better things to do, like reshaping American life), Wisconsin Governor Oscar Rennebohm (Because he owned 14 Rexall drugstores in Madison, that’s why!), the mayor and the sheriff of Los Angeles, executives from Eastman Kodak, Coca-Cola and Lambert Pharmacal (later known as Warner-Lambert) and other dignitaries too numerous to name here.

And there were celebrities galore, owing to Rexall’s prominence as a national sponsor and advertiser in those years when radio was the undisputed media king and many people went to the movies every single week – Jimmy Durante emceed each of the four days, and there were appearances by Dorothy Lamour, Red Skelton, Mickey Rooney, Peter Lawford, Pat O’Brien, Alan Young of future “Mister Ed” TV fame, Lynn Bari - a beautiful 20th Century Fox contract actress who deserved greater fame, and legendary newspaper gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. (Gosh, you’d think they would’ve put some more thought into this. I mean, drugstores don’t open every day, you know.)

Today the location is home to a CVS Pharmacy, Marshalls and a number of other retail tenants. The corner facade is still curved, leading me to believe the building shell may be original, but I don’t know that for a fact.
Another drugstore icon immediately follows. We see the Thrifty Drug location at the corner of Rodeo Road and La Brea Avenue in the Baldwin Hills area of Los Angeles, just a mile and a half from Crenshaw Center. By this time Thrifty, a fixture of the L.A. retail scene for decades, was well underway with a program to open larger stores in shopping center settings versus the traditional smaller streetfront units, although the latter type still made up the bulk of Thrifty’s then 100-plus stores.

Thrifty’s largest store yet, it was part of a shopping center developed by the company that also boasted a new Alpha Beta supermarket as a key tenant. As with the Owl Rexall store above, the store was built in conjunction with a new home office for the company (Thrifty was the third largest drug chain in America at that time) on the property.

The Baldwin Hills Thrifty attained instant landmark status due to its massive sign tower, affectionately named the “Trilon”. At 65 feet tall with three 15 by 35 foot faces (Weighing in at 12 tons, according to the Los Angeles Times. Did somebody throw this thing on a scale?) and a unique, funky steel structure design that brings to (my) mind some of Alexander Calder’s “stabile” sculpture pieces, the Trilon certainly served its purpose as an attention-getter for Thrifty.

The shopping center’s “premiere” (I just thought of that. Nice, huh?) took place on November 13, 1952 with actress Anne Baxter performing the ceremonial duties, an experience I’m sure she ranked right up there with her recent Oscar nomination for “All About Eve”. (Well, kinda sure, that is…) The next evening, singer/actor Tony Martin performed live at the Thrifty store. Mr. Martin, still kicking at age 99 and performing as recently as 2010, is one of the last survivors among America’s great crooners. He was married to Cyd Charisse, the great star of such classic MGM musicals as Singin’ in the Rain, The Band Wagon and Silk Stockings, (shown all the time on TCM – if you haven’t seen them, you should) for 60 years until her passing in 2008.

The sign, which survived the infamous 1963 Baldwin Hills dam break and flood, still stands while the accompanying building bears scant resemblance to the original. It now sports the name of Rite Aid, Thrifty’s successor. The picture above is a detail from the store’s grand opening ad.
Last is an interesting curiosity - the Big Owl Market, or as the sign reads, “The Market of Tomorrow”. This venture by Owl Drug (United-Rexall) was a very early, largely forgotten attempt at a supermarket-drugstore combination, a format that would catch on big in the following decade, and indeed remains the template for the industry today.

Tested out on a smaller basis in Ontario, California a few months previously, the Big Owl opened on November 1, 1951 at the corner of Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Kittredge Street in North Hollywood, just a couple of blocks up from the giant new Sears store on Victory Boulevard. The opening-day celebrity here was Lorraine Cugat, singer and (soon to be ex-) wife of bandleader Xavier Cugat. The store really did foreshadow some key elements of the combination store/superstore idea, with “a See’s candy shop (Is it legal to leave the State of California without a box of See’s candy? I don’t want to find out.), Van de Kamp’s bakery, dry cleaning shop, a liquor, tobacco, pen and camera room (all you need, right?), a gift shop and a 12-chair barber shop with a jet fire engine chair for the youngsters”, along with “a watch and jewelry repair shop, a check-cash service, a bill-paying service and a soda fountain grill.”, according to a pre-opening write-up in the Los Angeles Times. To my knowledge, they never opened another one.

The clip’s closing scenes reinforce the “America, land of plenty” theme, starting with a really nice shot of a grocery store checkout lane in action. It’s interesting to note the still-familiar brand names as they whizz past the wood grain-painted metal cash register. What’s striking is how small the package sizes were in that era before “economy size” became the rule. Ironically, with manufacturers reducing package sizes as a response to the current economy, we just might be trending that way again.

From there, there’s a glimpse of the Ford Assembly Plant in Long Beach, followed by one of its General Motors counterpart in Van Nuys, two important cogs in the economic engine that helped make all of this prosperity possible. Both have long since closed, and sadly we won’t be trending that way again. Then it’s back on the open road, a fine place to be indeed.

I think next time I’m out that way I’ll try to whistle a few bars of the “insanely peppy woodwinds” theme. I’ve been practicing. Or maybe I should just stick with Randy Newman.

Reflections on Dixie Square Mall

To contact us Click HERE
There was a time when you could when you could walk around the Dixie Square Mall without placing yourself in the path of bulldozers or wrecking balls. And there was a time when you could explore the place and even take pictures without fear of the floor falling out from under or on top of you, or being attacked by wild dogs or persons with bad intent. And yes, there was actually a time when you could shop there without having to dodge film crews, Illinois State Police cars, or two guys in dark suits and sunglasses behind the dashboard of a retired Mount Prospect police cruiser.

That time was long ago, of course. These photos are from that time.

So it’s finally coming down, according to news reports from every corner. (I received seven Google News Alerts about it in one day last week.) Demolition officially started last week and is expected to last into the summer. What’s interesting to me have been the reminiscences lacing these news reports, especially those of the various civic officials involved, several of which acknowledged Dixie Square’s unique role in pop culture history. The Governor of Illinois, for example, reappeared at the site and told of his experiences shopping there in his younger years. “Although we will always remember the Dixie Mall as the location for one of the most iconic scenes in ‘The Blues Brothers’ movie, it is time for this now vacant building to be torn down to make way for more economic development for the Harvey community”, he said. Then, from a local state representative, came a strong dose of reality – "For me, I will never talk about the movie again," he said. “It left nothing here”. What do you say in response to that?

I’ll say this. I truly hope the Dixie Square property is put to good use – for a new shopping center, or maybe a park or some light industry – just something of value, at least, to the 30,000 people for whom Harvey, Illinois is home. Because even a crumbling monument to a movie would be preferable to a soul-crushing vacant lot.

The wonderful photos above were taken in 1968, at the same time as those featured on our Dixie Square history post. They showcase the mall two years after its opening, in the exciting early years, before a myriad of problems set in. The notion that the mall would close down just ten years later would have seemed the height of absurdity then.

And once again, they are shown here by the courtesy of Dan Steenwyk, president of Steenwyk Architects, successor to his father’s architectural practice (the designers of Dixie Square Mall) in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I had the pleasure of speaking with Dan last week when I called him to relay a permission request from the CBS-owned TV station in Chicago, whose executive producer saw the Dixie Square photos here and asked to use them in a news report on the start of demolition of the mall. (That’s WBBM or “Channel 2”, as most locals know it. They even have the “dream team”, Bill and Walter, back on the air there, just like they were when I was ten!) Dan was kind enough to send me these additional photos, taken at the same time, to present here. All photos in this post are ©1968 Steenwyk Architects, All Rights Reserved.

The photos themselves need very little explanation. I’m so pleased to be able to show a full-facade view of the Montgomery Ward store this time around. The following two photos show daytime views of the Penneys facade from opposing angles (On the first Penneys photo, note the reflection in the window of a portion of the orange “JEWEL” store lettering, and its antique-blue mansard roof. Yes indeed.), followed by a great close-up of the interior Penneys entrance. Those shoppers seem a bit worn out from all the excitement, eh? Last is a nighttime view of the main mall entrance on the Wards end. It’s a bit blurry, but the Wards interior entrance is visible inside.

Below, two original pencil renderings, photographed as they were - pinned to the walls of the Hornbach, Steenwyk and Thrall offices. There’s an elevation view of the Montgomery Ward store followed a perspective view of the Penneys unit. Simply superb.

And lastly, a detail from a Northern Illinois Gas advertisement (“Even huge shopping centers like Dixie Square heat and cool with gas”), featuring a pen-and-ink drawing of the mall.
Looks like someone needed to borrow a push pin!

March 1, 1962 - The First Kmart Opens

To contact us Click HERE
Today marks a key milestone in retailing history – the 50th anniversary of the opening of the first Kmart store, in Garden City, Michigan, pictured above shortly after its opening in a photo from “The S.S. Kresge Story”, a 1979 book by the company founder’s son, Stanley S. Kresge. This store still exists, albeit in extensively remodeled form.

By any measure, 1962 was the Year of the Discount Store. Two months later, on May 1, the first Target store opened in Roseville, Minnesota, and two months after that, on July 2, came the first Walmart in Rogers, Arkansas. Thus the stage was set for a key part of the retail drama that continues to play out today.

Others were launched that year as well, among them Big K, a Nashville-based chain that gained a decent foothold in the Mid-South before being absorbed by Wal-Mart in 1981. And of course there was Woolco, the discount division of F.W. Woolworth, which might have enjoyed Kmart-like success had Woolworth been willing to burn the ships the way the S.S. Kresge Company was.

The troubles of their last twenty years or so have made it increasingly hard to remember when the phrase “Kmart-like success” was a compliment of the highest order, but from the chain’s earliest years through the 1980’s, it most certainly was. For decades, while fellow ’62 travelers Target and Walmart remained barely known outside of their home turf, Kmart smashed sales records nationwide, and communities far and wide clamored for a new Kmart store in their neck of the woods. They turned the retail world upside down, ultimately toppling the thought-to-be unassailable Sears, Roebuck and Co. from its number-one retailer perch in 1986. Now, sadly, the two retailers commiserate under the same ownership, like two old vaudeville performers searching for an audience in the television age.

Yet what a fascinating business story it was (one I attempted to cover in a series of posts here a few years ago), right from its inception in the late 1950’s, when the brilliant Kresge manager Harry Cunningham set out to explore new business directions for the company. Kresge was early to key in on the coming decline of the “old five and ten”, and upon Cunningham’s visits to some of the early discounters (the New England area “mill stores” in particular), a new direction was set. To their credit, Kresge (meaning Cunningham and his team, with the blessing of 90-plus year old S.S. Kresge himself) pursued the Kmart program relentlessly, despite criticism, as if the company’s future depended on it - which it did.

In a multitude of ways, from large concepts to small details, Kmart served as the model for Walmart, and Sam Walton was always quick to credit Cunningham’s genius in the formation of his own company. In later years it became a mutual admiration society, with the then-retired Cunningham heaping praise on Walmart’s accomplishments while comparing his old company’s latter day performance to them in an unflattering light. Ironically, both men passed away in 1992. Twenty years later, of course, Kmart struggles for its very existence, while its “pupil”, so to speak, is the largest retailer (and second largest company) in the world.

But oh, what memories it holds for so many of us – the “Bluelight mobile unit”, a little cart with a pole-mounted flashing blue light, which seemed to make an appearance nearly every time we shopped there. (“C’mon Dad, they’re selling vacuum cleaners for 20% off!”) The Icees, the hideously painted cafeterias, the little gold, red and aqua shields on Kmart store-branded products. The yellow “Key” department price stickers and the “Remember – TYFSAK” stickers on the cash registers. And for me, my Grandmother’s “Focal” brand camera case, from which she would whip out the Kodak 126 Instamatic and Sylvania flashcubes (before my Dad bought her a Polaroid OneStep SX-70 sometime in the mid-70’s) at the slightest prompting.

So if you would, allow me to suggest this – if you live near a Kmart, why not run over there this evening and buy something, and while you’re at it, wish the checker a “Happy 50th Anniversary”? They probably won’t have a clue what you’re talking about (it’s gone unobserved on the Kmart website) (Note 3/20/12: I've since learned that Kmart did feature a post with the photo above on their Facebook page that day. History survives!), but you’ll feel good about it. If I still had one near me, I would!

Publix and the Wings of Time

To contact us Click HERE
A couple of years back we featured a series on the history of Publix, the Florida-based supermarket chain. As mentioned throughout those posts, Publix is a company that has inspired a highly unusual degree of loyalty among its customers, a fact that’s no surprise to most folks who live in their market areas. They have a “mystique”, if you will, acquired over the years - something most retailers would kill for. A key ingredient in forming the Publix mystique in the decades following World War II was their unique store architecture – bold, forward looking, well-executed designs that stood out in a sea of strip mall similarity. The “winged” Publix stores in particular stand today (virtually, that is, as I believe all of the originals are gone) as enduring icons of the “Florida Boom” years.

Recently, I was delighted to receive an email from Florida native Tim Fillmon offering to share some photos he took between the late 1970’s and early 90’s of various classic Publix stores. At the time, Tim worked for the State of Florida in historic preservation, and on his travels he documented the changing sights along the way – “from signs and shopping centers to courthouses and motels”, as he puts it. In this day and age that type of activity is (thankfully) becoming increasingly common, but before the advent of digital media, when film was expensive and there were no easy means to share one’s work, it was all too rare. I want to express my thanks to Tim for sharing these with us and hope that you will do the same in the comments section.

Tim has strong family connections to Publix. His sister worked there from 1966 until her untimely passing in 2009, and his father headed up the construction of many Publix stores, including “Central Plaza in St. Petersburg, Britton Plaza and Northgate in Tampa and many others in Orlando, Hollywood, Lehigh Acres, and other places around the state.”

The fun thing for me is how the photos depict these Publix stores as I would have known them had I grown up in Florida. For other tail-end baby boomers or Gen-Xers who did grow up there or who vacationed there regularly, they should bring back some good memories. In any event it’s clear that, 20 or even 30 years after opening, these stores had charm to spare.

In the spirit of recreating the random nature of a typical “early 1980’s drive around town”, I’ve deliberately avoided putting these in any sort of chronological order. I’ve added a few notes for each photo.

“Always start with the night shot” is my philosophy, and shown above is a great one of the Publix at Gainesville Mall, a store that opened in 1967. Does your local supermarket have animated neon? I didn’t think so!The neon is glowing here, and it’s not even dark out! This was the Southgate Shopping Center location in New Port Richey, Florida, not to be confused with the other Southgate (of Johnny Depp/Edward Scissorhands fame) in Lakeland. Look at the gold “winged” parcel pick-up sign in front, typical of the attention to detail on these stores. Isn’t this nice?Many of the shopping center-based Publixes pictured here have since been replaced with much larger stores, usually sporting the Spanish-styled architecture that’s de rigueur in the Florida retail world of today. Here’s one instance, however, where the replacement Publix is as fun and quirky as the original, if not more so – from the College Park neighborhood of Orlando. Check out this video of the “Retro-Publix” that occupies this site now. The “rotating wings” sign is reportedly original. Wow!A wonderful little jewel box of a store, located at 1720 16th Street North in St. Petersburg. Save for the 60’s/70’s cars and the S&H sign (which replaced an earlier neon version), this one looks virtually as it did in 1950, the year of its opening. It featured design elements that Publix would employ through the early and mid-50’s (up until the advent of their famous “winged” designs) on ever larger stores, including Art Deco styling with glass blocks, Vitrolite-faced awnings and two-toned cutout letters. This tiny Publix finally closed in 1982, and the building now houses America’s finest-looking Family Dollar store.A unique facade was employed at the First Federal Shopping Center Publix in St. Petersburg. The transitional period between the Art Deco and “Winged” eras is clearly in evidence. (“Transitional period.” You’d think I was talking about Picasso here.)Here’s an example of the larger deco-style Publix stores, a unit that was located at 3615 Gandy Boulevard in Tampa. The framed “arches” jutting out from the sides of the store were common features of their early 50’s stores and appear to have been more important as a decorative element than as a gateway to storeside parking. The word “PUBLIX” once appeared across the top portion of the arches on either side of the store, but by the time this photo was taken it had been removed. A modern Publix now sits on this site.Hillsborough Boulevard in Tampa, with a parking lot full of “downsized” American cars. I remember my deep disappointment with the looks of the first downsized full-size cars introduced by GM in the fall of 1976 (I wasn’t a driver yet –just in eighth grade!), thinking how ugly and “chopped off” they seemed. The following year, they downsized the mid-size cars, which looked even worse. It seemed to take eons for the “Big Three” American car companies to get their styling mojo back, by which time their overseas-based competition (for whom smaller cars were always the rule, of course) had racked up huge market share gains. Interesting times, those were.Here’s the Publix store at the Hollieanna Shopping Center in Winter Park, Florida, just north of Orlando. To the right is trusty sidekick Eckerd Drugs, Publix’s pharmacy tenant of choice for many years starting in 1959. Prior to that, most Publix-owned shopping centers featured Rexall drugstores, owned by franchisee Walt Touchton. When Touchton sold off his stores to Rexall mega-operator Liggett, Publix was disaffected by the ownership change and offered Jack Eckerd the proverbial “opportunity of a lifetime” to locate his drugstores in Publix-owned shopping centers. Within ten years Eckerd became one of the largest drug chains in the country, and in his autobiography Eckerd was quick to credit the Publix deal as the catalyst of that success.The Hollieanna store once again, wings clipped and remodeling underway. Those letters have baked in the Florida sun for a long time. I'm digging the two-toned Monte in the foreground!On an earlier post there’s a 1960’s-era postcard showing the Punta Gorda Mall Publix (again, the place was much more “shopping center” than “mall”) as it appeared in its early years. This photo shows the store after its 1970’s remodeling, a makeover that many Publix stores received. Not nearly as dramatic as the “winged” look, but very attractive nonetheless.By the early 1970’s, the company’s new and remodeled stores featured only the word “Publix”, along with the famous “Where Shopping is a Pleasure” slogan. Interestingly, they made a slight attempt at modernization of this store (at Cleveland Plaza in Clearwater) by removing the “Market” signage and replacing it with three sets of mini-wings. Kind of gives the usually humble Publix a bit of swagger, don’t you think? Instead of “Publix Market”, you get “Publix, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh!” Strictly my interpretation, of course.A wide view of the Midway Shopping Center in Largo, Florida, showing part of a Publix store (once again minus the “Market” and plus the “swagger”) among some hard-to-identify fellow tenants. One that’s not hard to identify is Cloth World, the “Wonder World of Fabric”, a chain that was bought out by Jo-Ann Fabrics in 1994.Another deco classic, located at 6001 N. Nebraska Avenue in Tampa, once again virtually unchanged in appearance since its opening, which took place in February 1954. Again, the modern-day S&H signs are about the only new thing. Publix was The Sperry and Hutchinson Company’s largest and most loyal customer, a relationship that lasted some 35 years. In 1987, when the company began a two-year phaseout of S&H Green Stamps (more than a decade after most chains threw in the towel on stamps), it was a crushing blow from which S&H never really recovered.One of the hallmarks of the early Publix-developed shopping centers was their way-cool neon signage, and the memorable “arrow” design of the early 60’s, shown here at the Venice Shopping Center (today the place would have to be called “The Merchants of Venice” or something equally imposing) was one of their favorites. These signs were built for Publix by Lane Neon Company of Lakeland. According to an article in Signs of the Times magazine, the yellow arrow measured “28 feet vertically from tip to tip”. All of these signs originally had a marquee board where the “Southeast Bank” sign is located on this one. I’m aware of the following locations, in addition to Venice, that featured this type of sign: Melbourne, Douglas, Indian Rocks, Southgate (New Port Richey) and Punta Gorda. The last two can be seen on this previous post.The Searstown Shopping Center (later renamed Town Center) in Lakeland, Florida featured a Publix store with the “letterbox” variant sign. Martin Scorsese would not be pleased.Another fine example of the classic mid-60’s winged Publix at the Tri-City Plaza in Largo, Florida, which opened in April 1966 with a ribbon cutting by “Donna Dehart, Miss Largo, Dorothy (Kitty) Carr, Miss Clearwater and Dorothy Argo, Miss St. Petersburg” according to a St. Petersburg Times article from the morning of the big day. Again, a modern, much larger, Spanish-style Publix has long since taken the place of this store.“Something for everybody” or “back-and-forth through time” would be a good way to describe the scene in this photo of the Pine Hills Shopping Center (Orlando area, west of town), where at least three distinct architectural styles are represented in the space of about 150 feet. To the left of the Publix, on an unidentified store, we see a nice 50’s zig-zag awning. To the right, on the Firestone dealership, a set of 60’s Roman scalloped arches. What better way to tie them together than with some good old 70’s diagonal stained wood? Now let’s top it off with some turrets, the new look of the 80’s, to bring things up to date!Saving the best for last, we present the pièce de résistance…a prime example of my new lifelong favorite style of architecture, which I refer to as “Jet-Age Antebellum.” Not much information to go on about this one, although Tim thinks it could possibly be a South Florida location, and may have originally been intended as a “Food World”, Publix’s short-lived discount food banner. If anyone can fill us in on this store, I’d be forever indebted. And if by some chance, hope against hope, it still exists as a Publix and looks like this, please send me a copy of the local “Homes For Sale” magazine, ‘cause I’m moving there!

Thanks to Edric Floyd for identifying the location of this Publix store, at 100 West El Camino Real in Boca Raton, Florida. The building still exists as a Fresh Market, and while some changes have been made to it, some of the store's distinctive features (not the wings, of course) can still be seen. Since it's no longer a Publix, guess I won't be a Florida resident anytime soon!