Goodbye Sealfons

This past weekend, Sealfons, a very small New Jersey upscale department store chain, closed the doors of its Caldwell location for good. Originally opening as J.M. Towne in the fifties, it was bought out by Sealfons later; the chain had to give up the store when they lost the lease on the building.

Whatever the store was called, it was a very nice department store, with men's and women's clothing, children's clothes, jewelry, cards, a present-wrapping service, and a gift shop. Back in the store's early days, they used to construct a giant Christmas tree of white lights on top of the building's flagpole, but Santa's Parlor - a display window turned into a homey, cozy place where children got to meet Santa Claus - remained until the end.

The loss of Sealfons in Caldwell is a damned shame. It was a pleasant little store, with old-fashioned decor like brass shelves and wooden banisters and soft instrumental music playing on the loudspeakers. This is very much in contrast to stores in the malls these days (more so the small ones than the big anchor stores), where loud disco and power ballads blare out in stores that look like the inner sanctum of a space station in a sci-fi movie. Sealfons was always a nice shopping experience, even if you didn't buy anything. Now it's gone (though one other store still remains in nearby Westfield), and there's one less place to shop in Caldwell. Too bad. :-(