August 20, 2004

F.W. Woolworth closed the last of its North American five & dime stores just over seven years ago. Woolworth's begat the "Cathedral of Commerce" Woolworth Building and stores all over the United States (Minneapolis and my hometown), Canada (Hamilton, ON), the UK (Camberwell), Germany (Heidelberg) and other countries.

Woolworth's lunch counter brings thoughts of racial segregation and sit-ins [m o r e] for some, while for others it brings pleasant memories, tastes and thoughts of women like Brunelle. Woolworth's also had a K-Mart like chain called Woolco. It opened in 1962 (the same year as Target, K-Mart, and Wal-Mart) and closed its US operations in 1983 and sold its stores in Canada to Wal-Mart in 1992. In the US, Woolworth's converted many of their stores to their other chain, Foot Locker. Various others found new lives in other uses. Lamentations on the fall of Woolworths are not hard to find. Nor are b o o k s on Woolworths, or websites on other fallen chains, 60's discount stores, or various local department stores. More Woolworths stores: Hartlepool, UK / Cairns, Qld, Australia / Old Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, UK (scroll to the bottom) / Fort Worth, Texas / Watertown, Wisc / Duluth, Minn / St Paul, Minn / Salem, Ore / Brookline, Mass / Madison, Wisc / Bakersfield, Cal / Westchester County / Swindon, UK / Bayreuth, Germany Christmas Shopping at Woolworth's in DC / A receipt from a Manhattan Woolworth's / Weird Woolworth's Window Display / Lunch Counter Recipes (Frito Pie Lamentation)

posted by andyf 20 years ago
  • I grew up in Thief River Falls, Minnesota and remember the Woolworth's well. It closed in 1997, when I was 16, but I'll always remember the lunch counter, the odd hum of the fluorescent lights, and the Woolworth's smell. The store is now a Ben Franklin and still very Woolworths-like.
  • Woolworths is alive and well in Mexico [which is technically in North America]. I went to the stores in Cuernavaca and Acapulco. I don't think I ever made it into a Woolworths in the US, but the smell of the stores in Mexico was pretty unique.
  • This will keep me happily occupied for hours. Wonderful post andyf!
  • I miss Woolworth's and Woolco - The ones near me shut down sometime in the 80's or early 90s. I finally got to go to one again, thought I had to go to now out of the way town of Wisbech, Cambridgeshire in the UK. The train doesn't even stop there anymore - but (mainly because of the Woolworth's) it still has more useful shops than Cambridge itself.
  • Woolworths are still in almost every town in Britain. And they're always packed, for some reason, despite seemingly being completely rubbish.
  • Bur weren't the 5 and 10 cent stores the model for WalMart, KMart, Target, etc.? Some details have changed (mass checkout at the front of the store instead of distributed cash registers, for example) but I think the seed was there - lots of inexpensive inventory in as many "departments" as they can fit in. The spaces have gotten larger, so the variety of goods has increased. And, some amenities have been lost (the Woolworth's that I shopped in the US in as a kid had laquered wooden piers for display tables, the lovely lunch counter with soda fountain has gone the way of the dodo, and the employees no longer see themselves as sales persons, so they have relatively little idea about what to recommend to even where to find what you're looking for.) You have to understand that I'm a troglodyte, so I hate shopping in the WalMarts, etc., of today. They have less charm than some charity thrift stores, venues that are as ugly as unpainted cinder block, uninteresting selections, and employees who seem more like prison guards, if you can find one who's not a checker, and, worst of all, they've taken away my choices of where to shop. Not sure how many I speak for, but I think that for a lot of us, "caveat emptor" has gone from "make sure you get the best deal" to "we have all your base."
  • But they aren't rubbish, dng - what they have here in Cambridge - all posh boutiques with over-priced stuff - is rubbish :) I bought a Tefal frying pan for L8, and some kitchen gadgets we needed. It was like a Walmart, only with better quality stuff, not huge, and not behind a mile of parking lot for the pedestrian me to get crushed in (unlike the local Tescos). I just know that all of the students here, being on student budgets, were very annoyed when the local Woolworth's shutdown, because the closest is only available by car. (Which being students, few have access to, of course). Real rubbish - well, for that you would need a real down and out dollar/pound store. Except that they are good for somethings too.
  • What about TG & Y? Or McRory's?
  • Path, the dime store Kresge's was in direct competition with Woolworth's. Kresge's then started K-Mart, and so, yeah, K-Mart was a direct descendent of the five-and-dime. I think that Wal-Mart ended up beating out Woolco and K-Mart (though it's still hanging on) because Wal-Mart just paid more attention to computerized inventory and supply flows (and other business-savvy things) and Target is still doing well because of their marketing savvy. lilnemo, if you look on the second page on my "60's discount stores" link, you'll see TG&Y -- which despite what that page says, was still alive until recently (I saw one in Arizona in August 2002. I also saw a Gibson's in Colorado). It appears though that McCrory owned TG&Y by the time it went bankrupt and closed at the end of 2001. When I look closely in the windows of my very crooked car-shot TG&Y photo, I can see now that the store was empty by then. Also, here's a pic of a closed McCrory's in Newark from a defunct abandoned subway stations page. [via archive.org] So I guess TG&Y belongs with McCrory's under the Wikipedia entry for Department Stores -- Defunct US Chains Not Acquired by Extant Chains.
  • When I was born, my brother somehow got the idea in his head that my parents bought me at TG&Y. He promptly asked if they could return me.
  • does anyone remember grant department store or j.c. murphy? they were around in the 70's
  • The Woolworths Virtual Museum . Incidentally, while the UK and German Woolworthses are legitimate subsidiaries of the US original, sold off when it got into trouble, the Australian version has no actual connection with FW and merely stole the name. The South African Woolworths is similarly unrelated.
  • I used to work at the "Record Bar" (music dept) of the Woolies branch in Bedford. I started out when I was at school, then worked during the summer, then at Christmas, then between terms at college. We were taught about the 'good', 'better', 'best' product ranges, and told not to eat the pick'n'mix in the stockroom. Woolworths Bedford '89-'93. We did the things, man. We had days.
  • *from the Woolies window mmmmmm, baked ham 10 cents and cocoanut piiz
  • TUM, I was constantly battling the incorrect labelling of audio-visual products. 'Akira' and other manga marked as chldren's cartoons, you know the kind of thing. It was all done at the Head Office, and lowly drones like me were unable to change it. I stole some blank D90's once - a 3-pack. I unwrapped the pack, unwrapped each cassette, wound them forward with my finger and wrote the labels on them to make them look used, and spent the day putting the scraps of wrapping in bins around the shop. Was worried about being found out all day. I'm not cut out for crime.
  • *dials Bedford police*
  • I remember my grandmother taking me to the counter at Woolworth's as a kid. It was the first place I ever tasted Green River. (it lead to a lifelong addition)
  • *gags
  • You'll never take me alive, coppers! *shoots Plegmund, then self*
  • Muteboy, must you be so melodramatic? That's a cap pistol. And that wasn't Pleggy, that was an Elmo doll.