Posted on 03/10/2020 3:58:27 AM PDT by Kaslin
PITTSBURGH -- Five years ago, the sad goodbye to an icon began when Macy's decided to close its flagship location in downtown Pittsburgh. The void, alas, still remains.
For most of that building's storied 110-plus-year-old life, until Macy's took it 15 years ago, it was Kaufmann's department store: a place where parents, whether they were working-class or well-to-do, took their babies to get fitted for their first pair of shoes; or purchased their communion dress, prom dress, wedding gown, back-to-school clothes; or bought them the sheets, furniture, toasters, pots and pans they needed to start their adult lives.
It was also where young and old, rich or poor, went to the Adoria Beauty Salon to have their hair styled for the very first time. Or where they went to have their first special lunch with their parents or grandparents at Tic Toc restaurant. And maybe even where they have their first job.
It was 1.2 million square feet of community, where people came together no matter their age or where they were from to experience dozens of rights of passage.
Pittsburgh wasn't the only place to have this experience; there was Higbee's in Cleveland and Hudson's on Woodward Avenue in Detroit, the latter of which was very similar to Kaufmann's, where any working-class child could walk along its marble floors; gaze up at the sparkling chandeliers; absorb the smells and sounds of the flower shops or candy shops; and drink from the ornate water fountains.
Despite the affluent adornments, Kaufmann's was everyone's department store, a place to inspire and aspire. Your mother may have bought your clothes in the bargain basement, but as your family browsed the multiple floors and ascended on the escalators, you could imagine shopping one day for one of those sharply tailored suits to wear to work in one of the surrounding downtown office towers.
The absence of these stores from the core of our cities isn't just about the loss of retail square footage. That is what mayors and politicians always get wrong when people bristle at the loss. What hurts most is the loss of community and touchstones that brought people from a variety of backgrounds, races, religions, education levels and income levels. We mourn the fact that we have not replaced them with a new attachment to community.
A 2018 Pew survey showed that roughly 4 in 10 adults "say they are not too or not at all attached to their local community." This is a sharp veer away from that thing about us that awed French sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1800s, who observed with respect our robust habit of forever joining and forming communities, and how we have benefited from them.
As social media becomes a replacement for connection, online communities have proved to be a very weak link to the physical communities that made America stand out for its willingness to shed social barriers and congregate.
That is what places such as Kaufmann's and Higbee's and Hudson's did, explained Ron Fournier, a native Detroiter, former newsman and current communications expert who returned to help bring his community back together several years ago.
"When Detroit was a lively, thriving brewing city 50 years ago, Hudson's was the very center of that excitement," he said. "For my mother's generation as well as myself, you could go downtown and do your shopping, usually on a bus, and you would walk into this gorgeous ornate building, unlike anything you would see in your neighborhood, and you would be surrounded by luxury and nice things you couldn't afford, but you could aspire to."
It is in our very core to want to be around other human beings, said Fournier: "Technology is pushing us apart, it is allowing us to be disconnected from one another. But there is a pull in our DNA to gather and be around each other."
We Americans have always balanced this equilibrium of where we work, where we live and where we congregate. Community centers, churches and fraternal organizations have always filled that last pillar, yet that last pillar has weakened substantially as we have changed how we shop (our phones) and socialize (our phones) and pray (we don't, at least not as much as we used to).
The need for affiliation cannot be fully satisfied by work; human contrast and contact are needed to bring us together. When Kaufmann's/Macy's closed in 2015, it allowed people to come into its once-glamorous 13 floors and purchase the sewing machines the seamstresses used to tailor the clothes, the mannequins that boasted the newest fashions, the paintings that hung on the walls and the fixtures in the restaurant.
People came from all around to buy a part of their life they could never get back, and the outpouring of grief and loss was everywhere as people tried to buy a piece of something they lost.
They knew more than any politician or developer that whatever came next would never fill the void of community.
Human interaction for better or worse is lost, losing a visual interaction is a big part of a bigger picture
In Indianapolis for me it was the Glendale Mall, anchored by L. S. Ayres at one end and Wm. H. Block at the other. Block’s was OK but mom preferred Ayres. She could play their sales, promotions and coupons like a Stradivarius. On a shopping trip my sister and I always got a bag of cheese popcorn at G. C. Murphy. It cost 15 cents. Mom never bought us the caramel corn because it cost a quarter. Dad and my older brother went to Vonneguts to look for electric components. My other brother and I went to Ed Shock Toy and Hobby shop to buy Revell model battleships. We built them, and then shot them up in the ditch with our BB guns. Then it was back to Ed Shocks for more.
Glendale in the late 60s was a wonderful place.
How true. I remember the old Kaufmann’s store in Pittsburgh. It was an institution, and their Christmas windows were a wonder to behold. I was sorry to see it go.
It’s Amazing today how if you really dont want to be around people, you can Really Avoid them today a lot more than yesteryear.
Shop from home. Work from home. Make “friends” from home.
But humans are social creatures and it’s not a very healthy thing to be alone so much.
And for those who enjoyed people but had anxieties and fears that they HAD TO FIGHT because they had to go to work and shop, they now no longer have to fight and will drift more and more away from human contact.
And like I said, that’s not a good thing
pfft - Glendale was too hoity toity for me - give me a good commoners’ Eastgate!
I played as a kid on the yellow submarine playset they had at Glendale in the middle of the mall (on tile floor no less) until they eventually roped it off for some odd reason like kids falling off and hitting the tile floor...
for me, Cleveland downtown. Higbee’s and Halle Brothers.
7 floors at Halle’s!
How many people would use Kaufman’s clock as a landmark. I believe it’s still there however.
Woolworth’s...with the food counter on one side...and the best hotdogs. Wasn’t really a major department store, but it was a fun place to go. Heck, Santa used to show up there for a coupla weeks a year. I’ve got pictures to prove it.
*****
What changed to the point you would not do this today?
Remember the jingle around Christmas something about “Mr. Jingaling...on Halles 7th floor we’ll be looking for you to turn the key?
Hudson’s = In the 1950s Detroit was the wealthiest City in the World...
i have a Mr. Jingaling!
Community went first, then the downtown stores. Downtown was the place to be in the 50’s. You took a bus downtown. You shopped. You worked. There was no fear of crime.
Today downtowns are $hitholes. The major stores went to the malls, which are in turn now deteriorating. Downtown is owned by the street thugs. Drugs are all over. Gangs shoot each other up.
Liberal politicians have made it worse. They do everything they can to attract individuals into the cities who contribute nothing to society, but instead take, take and take whatever they can get.
As downtown went to hell, the sense of community went along with it. Fear and suspicion have replaced the sense of community.
I grew up in a mall, in the late 70s- 80s, before malls turned into cellphone kiosks and baseball hat distributors.
We’d hang out at an arcade called Aladin’s Castle, the music store (Musicland), go to the movies. When we were a little younger we’d sneak into Spencer Gift’s naughty section until the clerk ran us out. Even the bookstore was entertaining. As we got older, it was difficult to stay away from the clothing stores where the girls worked. More than once, a manager would figure out we’re in there too long and let us know what time Paige or Ashley or whoever was getting off work or going on break.
This was one of the best things about being a teen.
“Woolworth’s...with the food counter on one side...and the best hotdogs.”
—
And the photo booth where you & your pals would jam in, then wait outside the booth for the pics to process.
Well somebody has to say it. I’d boo hoo into my hankie a little harder over community if the US govt in cahoots with the global cabal hadn’t flooded my community with undesirable so called immigrants from cultures so far removed from the concept of Macy’s that its laughable.
Macy’s closing isn’t killing American culture illegal immigration and muslims are. In most large cities its not safe or pleasant to go out in your community.
What bullshit!
I like Salena, but she needs to take her head out of her rectum.
Malls destroyed the downtown shopping experience and many articles, like this were written, about what we were losing....not what we were gaining.
Now malls and retail are falling to online.....and again, we have to listen to what we are losing instead of what we are gaining.
Socialists would have kept us with general stores and forced urbanization. Socialists would have prevented the free flow of capital to where the market moves it.
The death of retail is what the market wants. What the market looks like 10 years from now is unknown....but I assure you that in 30 years, it will look different again.
and they put bus lines to wealthier communities to spread the misery. Under the guise that “people need to get to work” Instead it’s thuggery that travels to wreck everything.
The old order changes yielding place to the new
The inner cities are obsolete. Most are rotting at the core.
Core rot kills off customers
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