The Vanishing Downtown Department Store

Now that the Macy's consumption of Robinsons-May is complete, Eric at blogdowntown.com wonders why Macy's decided to keep (for now) both its store and the Robinsons-May (now Macy's as well) store open downtown, when they're just a block apart:

When Macy's flipped the switch last week and changed all its Robinsons-May stores to the Macy's name it found itself in a situation Downtown that it's been in once before. For the second time in a decade Macy's has stores in both the 7+Fig marketplace (7th & Figueroa) and Macy's Plaza (7th & Flower). They've announced no plans for what they intend to do with the two stores; all we know so far is that neither got closed in the just passed round of cuts.

As recently as the late 1980s Downtown had four large department stores: Robinson's, Bullock's, Broadway and May Co. By this point they had moved away from Broadway and were all on 7th between the 110 and Grand.

Then came the mergers, a trend that's continued into last year's purchase of Robinson's May by Federated, Macy's corporate parent. And somehow in the course of a decade Macy's ended up with double stores, twice...

In 1993 Macy's was going through tough times and announced plans to close the Bullock's store at 7+Fig. They were dissuaded, though, after an intense lobbying campaign by Mayor Bradley, the CRA and the owners of the complex. Downtown kept its three department stores.

Then in 1995 Federated bought Broadway and decided to rename everything to the Macy's brand (with some Bloomingdale's thrown in for good measure). The 7+Fig Bullock's never made the switch. Instead it was closed in March of 1997, months after the Broadway at 7th/Flower changed over to Macy's.

So while this is indeed the first time there have been two Macy's nameplates in Downtown LA, it's not the first time Macy's has owned two stores just one block from each other. What they'll do this time remains to be seen.

Eric also did some fun investigative work on the origins of a fading sign on the side of a building on Broadway promoting "Goodman's Department Store":



What was this phantom department store, which never gets mentioned in talk of L.A.'s historic downtown stores? Well, as Eric discovered, there's a reason for that. Goodman's didn't survive for long:

If you look closely at the western side of the building you can make out a bit of text and a hand pointing people inside. For picking out the text the view is actually better from Broadway than it is from closer in. In my passings, though, I had been able to make out that it advertised the "??? Market in the Basement of Goodman's Department Store." Broadway, Robinson's, May... I've heard of all those. But Goodman's?

Turns out that if you blinked too long around the turn of 1923, you might well have missed it.

Check out his post for some interesting sleuthing on a phantom Los Angeles department store.