L&T (Lord and Taylor) is the only one that still exists. The others were local to the DC area or the Mid-Atlantic /South. (I discovered Roger and Gallet soap at Garfinckel’s, a lifetime favorite.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garfinckel’s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodward_%26_Lothrop
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hecht’s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_%26_Taylor
We used to have A&P, too; one of the greatest store-bought cakes, the Spanish Bar Cake, was sold there:
http://www.tasteofsouthern.com/spanish-bar-cake/
Oh, Lord & Taylor. If I recall, it never had a food section unlike Macy’s in NYC. Macy’s used to have the most marvelous food hall. They went to war with Zabar’s on a regular basis in the 80s undercutting each other in price. In those times, we had Bloomingdales and B. Altmans. I used to stand on line at B. Altmans after a long day’s work to bring home my mother’s pies during Thanksgiving week and Christmas week. I also bought my mom langue du chat cookies at Bloomingdales, lol. Wonderful days, long gone. NYers, like Parisiens never baked because the bakeries were so splendid.
I was just thinking about Spanish Bar Cake the other day. My grandmother used to buy them at A&P, which she always referred to as the “tea store”. Thank you for the recipe!