From Main Street to Mall: The Rise and Fall of the American Department Store

The geography of American retail has changed dramatically since the first luxurious department stores sprang up in nineteenth-century cities. Introducing light, color, and music to dry-goods emporia, these "palaces of consumption" transformed mere trade into occasions for pleasure and spectacle. Through the early twentieth century, department stores remained centers of social activity in local communities. But after World War II, suburban growth and the ubiquity of automobiles shifted the seat of economic prosperity to malls and shopping centers. The subsequent rise of discount big-box stores and electronic shopping accelerated the pace at which local department stores were shuttered or absorbed by national chains. But as the outpouring of nostalgia for lost downtown stores and historic shopping districts would indicate, these vibrant social institutions were intimately connected to American political, cultural, and economic identities.

The first national study of the department store industry, From Main Street to Mall traces the changing economic and political contexts that transformed the American shopping experience in the twentieth century. With careful attention to small-town stores as well as glamorous landmarks such as Marshall Field's in Chicago and Wanamaker's in Philadelphia, historian Vicki Howard offers a comprehensive account of the uneven trajectory that brought about the loss of locally identified department store firms and the rise of national chains like Macy's and J. C. Penney. She draws on a wealth of primary source evidence to demonstrate how the decisions of consumers, government policy makers, and department store industry leaders culminated in today's Wal-Mart world. Richly illustrated with archival photographs of the nation's beloved downtown business centers, From Main Street to Mall shows that department stores were more than just places to shop.

ISBN-13: 9780812224399

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press - Inc.

Publication Date: 03-15-2019

Pages: 304

Product Dimensions: 5.60(w) x 8.70(h) x 0.90(d)

Series: American Business, Politics, and Society

Vicki Howard is Lecturer in History at the Universityof Essex. She is author of Brides, Inc.: American Weddings and the Business of Tradition, also available from the Universityof Pennsylvania Press, and editor of the journal History of Retailing and Consumption.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1. The Palace of Consumption
Chapter 2. Creating an Industry
Chapter 3. Modernizing Main Street
Chapter 4. A New Deal for Department Stores
Chapter 5. An Essential Industry in Wartime
Chapter 6. The Race for the Suburbs
Chapter 7. The Postwar Discount Revolution
Chapter 8. The Death of the Department Store
Epilogue. Remembering Downtown Department Stores

Notes
Index
Acknowledgments

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