Michigan legislative action thread
Posted on 05/04/2015 7:35:35 PM PDT by ChildOfThe60s
The Big Store.
For generations, it was as synonymous with Christmas and fashion as it was Detroit. The store at Woodward and Gratiot avenues was absolutely massive, evolving with the Motor City until it became the tallest department store in the world. By the time it finished growing, the store’s size almost defied belief.
A quick list of facts, many courtesy of the Detroit Historical Museum:
The store was 2,124,316 square feet, making it second in size among department stores to only Macy’s in New York. Even then, Macy’s is only 26,000 square feet bigger. The store was spread out over 32 floors: 25 floors, two half-floors, a mezzanine and four basements. At 410 feet, Hudson’s was the tallest department store in the world. The building had 51 passenger elevators, 17 freight elevators, eight employee elevators and 48 escalators. Its largest freight elevator could accommodate a semi trailer. Hudson’s had to have three transformer centers in the store: They generated enough juice to power a city of about 20,000. The store had 39 men’s restrooms, 50 for women and 10 private ones for executives. The largest was a women’s lounge on the fourth floor that had a whopping 85 stalls. It had 705 fitting rooms, a world record. The dining rooms and cafeterias served an average of 10,000 meals a day - not counting the 6,000 meals a day served in the employee cafeteria on the 14th floor. The 13th floor dining room was renowned for its Maurice salad and Canadian cheese soup. There were 49 large display windows facing Woodward, Gratiot, Farmer and Grand River Avenues, and there were an additional 50 interior display windows in areas — such as the elevator corridors and in the Woodward Shops on the seventh floor. The store featured more than 200 departments across an incredible 49 acres of floor space, and it featured about 600,000 items from 16,000 vendors from 40 countries. The building had 51 elevators serving its 17 floors of retail.
Joseph Lowthian Hudson and his father were running a men’s clothing store in the lumber town of Ionia, Mich., when the Panic of 1873 struck. When the sawmills were shuttered, their customers couldn’t pay their bills. Then Hudson’s father died. Three years later, Hudson went bankrupt, paying his creditors 60 cents on the dollar. Hudson dusted himself off and started over in Detroit. On April 2, 1881, Hudson opened his first store on the ground floor of the old Detroit Opera House. In 1888, he was so successful, he looked up all the creditors he had shorted in the bankruptcy proceedings 12 years earlier and paid them in full - with compound interest.
In 1911, he opened what would become the first piece of the behemoth. Many people thought Hudson was a fool opening so far north of Jefferson Avenue, then the heart of the city’s commercial district.
Hudson himself was a legend. Easily one of the most successful businessmen in the city’s history, Hudson also was a benefactor. He would serve as chairman and organizer of Detroit’s Associated Charities, which laid the foundation for the United Way Foundation.
In 1954, Hudson’s had sales of more than $163 million (an astronomical $1.28 billion today).
In 1961, at age 29, Joseph L. Hudson Jr. - the founder’s grandnephew - became the business’ president. He had started out working on the docks of the downtown store in 1950. He emphasized fashion and special events and would grow the chain, expanding into the suburbs as the city’s population sprawled into the countryside.
In 1969, Hudson’s merged with Dayton Co. of Minneapolis, creating Dayton Hudson Corp. The merger led to growth not on in Michigan, but also Ohio and Indiana.
As the city’s decline in population, reputation and wealth continued, Hudson’s downtown store closed Jan. 17, 1983, after more than 90 years of business.
But the building was not abandoned at this point. The company’s corporate offices remained in the Big Store, and about 1,200 people still worked there. A new lobby and security entrance were added on the Farmer Street side for employees and visitors. Employees would stick around the building until 1990, when the store was sold by Dayton Hudson Corp. to Southwestern Associates of Windsor, Ontario.
“Various media sources wanted the public to believe that Hudson’s had been vacant for 15 years, when in actuality, it was eight years,” said historian Michael Hauser, “which, by Detroit standards, is a relatively short period of time, compared to many other large vacant structures in the city that have been idle for decades.” The big blast at the Big Store
Despite several pitches to redevelop the enormous structure, the building was imploded at 5:45 p.m. (the store’s closing time) on Oct. 24, 1998.
“With a deafening roar that will echo in the hearts of Detroiters for decades, the Hudson’s building was blasted to the ground — ending one era and beginning another in 30 ground-shaking seconds,” The Detroit News wrote. “A symbol of glamor for three generations, a symbol of decay for another, the mammoth structure wobbled like a drunk, hesitated, then collapsed into a 60-foot-high pile of rubble — coating downtown streets with a fine gray dust.”
Thirteen years after the big bang at the Big Store, no development has occurred at the site other than an underground parking garage. Hope that someone might wish to build on the property has left Detroiters with nothing but a giant empty space in the heart of downtown dotted by steel girders poking above a concrete expanse.
That sounds like a lot of fun. /s :)
And now Northland Mall was officially closed in February.......
Wow.
I was a teen when it opened. It was quite classy for a while....
Thanks for the post; ping; thread. Many Saturdays me and a couple teenage buddies would board the bus in Lincoln Park (connecting suburb to southwest Detroit), head to Hudson’s downtown to ride the elevators, have fun, eat, shop and look at girls…then walk to the YMCA a couple of blocks away at Whittier and play basketball…and after that we might stop at the Qwikee Donut Shop or Elmers Steakhouse for more food before the bus ride back to the suburb. Terrific memories in a great city with bustling businesses and neighborhoods surrounding the main road arteries (Fort St., Michigan Ave., Woodward, Gratiot, Jefferson) going out of the city. Fabulous town to grow up in and around. Those WERE the days, my FRiends.
Don’t know your location but you can get Vernor’s in CA if you look for it. It’s still good but not as good as it used to be.
The best of being an American... a time before Clinton type scammers became fashionable...
I took note of that also. Very impressed.
Character does indeed matter.
Not much Vernor’s here in Maryland either. We’ve got a case in the basement.
Reed’s sure has the pretty packaging down.
I was raised in Port Huron, MI, about 50 miles north of Detroit. Hudson’s was always a good shopping trip. Went to college and worked in Detroit from 56-62. In 99 was in downtown Detroit about 6 blocks from where I had worked and if it hadn’t been for the “Jolly Green Giant” at the city/county building I would not have recognized where I was!!
Note: Reed’s is Ginger Beer; Vernor’s is Ginger Ale.
When I first arrived in MD in 1972 Strohs-The beer that made Detroit famous!-was considered a premium beer!!
It is available for sale online but at a typical cost of $10 a sixpack plus shipping. I might like it but not THAT much!!
It's still good but it is not the same stuff that it was years ago. They now age it in oak for 3 years instead of 4 and use that pervasive sweetner HFCS instead of real sugar. HFCS may be cheapcost effective, but in general anything sweetened with it now doesn't taste like it did when they used real sugar (which in Michigan came from sugar beets.. ;-) A review I read of it now called it an "emaciated version of a product that once was".
I'll just continue with my present supply chain - when I visit my Sister in Ohio I stock up - in cans of course since the plastic bottles lose their carbonation - and when she heads this way for a visit on the way to or from visiting my Nephew-her-Son in the lieberal lala land of Massachusetts she delivers some. I still have 2 12 packs left in my stash from my last trip West. Summer and Boston Cooler season is approaching!
And Strohs-The beer that made Detroit famous! is now owned by Pabst and the Detroit brewery was blown up in the '80's.. ;-) But calling Stroh's a premium beer when offered for sale on the East coast is akin to calling Rhinegold a premium beer if you could find it in Michigan... ;-)
And the Rhinegold Brewery in Orange, NJ has gone the way the Stroh's plant did...
I drink very little soda, but what I do is only sweetened with cane sugar. No corn syrup of any kind.
My wife was born in Lexington, went to Cross Lex HS.
Some childhood friends of hers had a nice microbrewery/ restaurant on the water in Port Huron, but sold it several years ago. Too bad, it was nice.
Shortly after I moved to the Detroit area the building was demolished. A week later a friend visited from out of town and he wanted to go see the old site, with the demolished building. It was halloween night and we had been imbibing at a local adult beverage establishment.
We headed downtown and arrived at the site. We were illegally parked and standing outside of the fenced off area just gazing at the sheer volume of bricks! Then we decided to get a momento and we were both trying to work a brick through the fence. We were interrupted with a stern, “Hey, what are you two up too?”
It was a Detroit Metro Police officer making his patrol rounds still on foot. So, there we were on halloween night, a couple of white guys dressed in business casual clothes at 2 am and suddenly faced with a very tough looking Detroit cop!
Needless to say, I was very nervous but I just stated, “well, we were hoping to get a momento of the greatness of Detroit. We are sorry if we broke a law.”
He replied, “Oh, in that case, you wait right here and don’t move!” Then he proceeded to unlock the gate and he went into the work area and picked out a couple of nearly perfect bricks. He brought them back and gave one to each of us!
Now that I think of that story, I realize the stark dicotomy as compared to Baltimore last week. Here we were in downtown Detroit, and a black cop handed a couple of bricks to young 20-somthing white guys!
After such a neat experience, we decided to drive over to Tiger stadium. They had just closed that stadium after the final season. We were just circling the building and admiring it for a last time, when all of a sudden a couple of people exited from a door! We noticed that this door was glass and that there was a full time security guard on duty.
We decided to take a shot and see if we could get into the stadium, so there it was at 3 am on halloween night in Detroit and I decide to knock on the door. The security guard looked up, came over to the door, and asked what we wanted. I just said that we were out and about visiting the icons of Detroit and we were wondering if we could come in. To my surprise, he opened the door and let us in. He spent the next hour giving us a tour of the entire facility.
We got to see the general offices, the free standing walkway, the locker rooms and walk one last time in the stands. The one thing he would not let us do is to run on the field. I thought for a moment about doing it anyway, but decided that he was so nice that I did not want to taint the experience. I am glad that I decided to respect that particular person, because a week later I went to a Redwings game and he was the one that took my ticket at the entrance!
OK, that’s enough reminiscing for now. Thank you for posting the pic so that I could tell this story of a great night in Detroit!
Ping to my post in #39. I thought you might enjoy the story....
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