Downtown L.A.’s Last Department Store About to Close

[Pelican Press 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Downtown L.A.’s Last Department Store About to Close

With bare shelves and signage declaring discounts of up to 70%, the

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

department store on 7th Street in downtown Los Angeles is heading for its final days. Last February, the department store’s owners announced that 150 locations were going out of business. “Closing any store is never easy,” Tony Spring, chairman and chief executive officer of Macy’s, Inc. said in a

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

. “But as part of our Bold New Chapter strategy, we are closing underproductive Macy’s stores to allow us to focus our resources and prioritize investments in our go–forward stores.”

The final days of Macy’s in Downtown Los AngelesPhoto by Chris Nichols

This Macy’s reopened as part of

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

shopping center in 2015, but is a descendant of The Broadway store, which opened at this same location more than half a century ago. That store relocated from its namesake street four blocks east in 1973 in a spot it had occupied since 1896. The closure of Macy’s means that downtown Los Angeles will be without a full department store for the first time in almost 150 years.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png">

Trolleys, cars and horses and carriages tangle in front of Bullocks at 7th and Broadway in Downtown Los Angeles during the 1920sPhoto by Security Pacific National Bank Collection/Los Angeles Public Library

Coulter’s was L.A.’s first department store, opening at Temple and Spring Streets in 1878, and was taken over by The Broadway in 1961. Every one of L.A.’s grand old home-grown department stores, including Robinson’s, Bullocks, and the May Company, evolved into Macy’s. Seventh and Broadway was once the nation’s busiest intersection, sporting the flagship Bullocks store,

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Cafeteria and the 2,450-seat State theater along a row of 13 cavernous vaudeville and movie houses. A tangle of overhead wires powered the largest electric railway system in the world, which dropped off shoppers at the intersection for a day of shopping and entertainment.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png">

Dollar Day at the downtown Broadway store in 1953Photo by Herald Examiner Collection/Los Angeles Public Library

Downtown Los Angeles once made its name as the place to shop at fine stores, brimming with amenities like tea rooms, auditoriums, ticket agencies, free gift-wrapping stations, and dedicated personal shoppers paid on commission. Those grand edifices, along with luxury hotels, movie palaces and towering office buildings defined the center city for generations.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png">

Bullock’s on 7th & Broadway 1951Photo by ***** Whittington/Los Angeles Public Library

I never saw a crowd at this Macy’s and there are many newer places to shop downtown, from the discount bazaars of

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

to the magnificent

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

store, the luxury boutiques at

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

and the fancy Swedish clothier

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

on Broadway. We still have a Target, Uniqlo, and Nordstrom Rack around the corner from Macy’s, and a Ross and Burlington Coat Factory on Broadway, just not an old-fashioned department store.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png">

Christmas shoppers at the Broadway Plaza on 7th Street in 1982Photo by Mike Mullen/Herald Examiner Collection

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png">

Beauty consultant Yvette Gutierrez applies Carino Flor lipstick on her supervisor, Evelyn Gallardo at the Broadway Department store in downtown Los Angeles in 1981Photo by Mike Sergieff/Herald Examiner Collection/Los Angeles Public Library

As this last descendant of long-gone stores that were beloved by generations of Angelenos fades away, we look back on what shopping downtown meant in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries with historic photos from the

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png">

Future site of the Broadway Plaza (now The BLOC) in 1973Photo by Herald Examiner Collection/Los Angeles Public Library

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

#Downtown #L.A.s #Department #Store #Close

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up