It was a Philadelphia institution. It was one of the grandest department stores in the American Northeast. Its central atrium had one of the most famous organs in the world. In that same atrium, every December, was the Christmas fountain and light show, as much a Christmas tradition in Philadelphia as the Rockefeller Center tree in New York. It wasn't just a part of Philadelphia; it defined Philadelphia.
As of the end of this past March, the John Wanamaker department store, having been branded as a Macy's for over a quarter of a century, is no more. Urban department stores are going out of style and have been going out of business for some time now, as the closing of Lord & Taylor in New York recently demonstrated. Apparently fewer people want to go to Center City Philadelphia to shop, not even in a store big enough to occupy a whole block. Most of the stores in Center City are small-time chain stores, no different from the stores you'd find at the shopping malls in the suburbs (which have their own problems these days).
Shopping isn't the experience it used to be. People used to dress in their Sunday best to go to the great urban department stores of yore - even on a Thursday afternoon. Finding that right outfit or accessory was serious business. You could have a fashionable, satisfying lunch at a department store eatery, even in suburban locations; Strawbridge and Clothier, another lost Philadelphia department store, had a restaurant in its suburban Bucks County location, and as a kid I'd go there with my mother for lunch. They had the best chocolate pudding there, always served with dollop of whipped cream. Now the old-school department store is pretty much confined to a theme park on West 34th Street in Manhattan. It's been eliminated elsewhere, the old urban department stores in other cities reduced to either a generic Macy's or an empty hulk of a building that just sits there unloved and unwanted, like the old Bamberger's building in Newark, victims of Internet shopping and discount marts. Then there are other empty hulks like the old J.L. Hudson department store in Detroit, which were just plain demolished.
At least the Wanamaker building won't suffer the same fate. The former department store, an official historic landmark, where a large eagle sculpture once stood in its atrium, when Philadelphians would say to each other, "Meet me at the Eagle," is now a mixed office and retail building, which includes such elegant establishments as . . . a gym.
Pathetic.
I don't know if I'll go back to Philadelphia, my father's family's hometown, any time soon. The corporate interests who have taken over America seem to be content with homogenizing most of our cities to the point where there's nothing special about them. As for my father's family's hometown, there's nothing Philadelphia about it. 😞
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