From its start as a 19th-century mail-order firm, to its heyday on Main Street and in suburban malls, and from its late 20th-century reorientation toward credit and financial products to its attempted return to its original retail identity, Sears has mirrored the ups and downs of the American economy. It was a distribution arm of industrial America. It drove the suburbanizing wedge of postwar shopping malls. It helped atomize the industrial economy through manufacturer outsourcing in the 1970s and 1980s. It played a key role in the diffusion of mass consumer culture and commercial values. For better and for worse, Sears is a symbol of American capitalism.

By the early 20th century, Sears already was a household name across the United States, one that represented rural thrift and industry as well as material abundance and consumer pleasures. The company was founded as a modest mail-order retailer of watches in the 1880s by Richard W. Sears and Alvah C. Roebuck. Julius Rosenwald, a Chicago clothing merchant who became a partner in the firm in 1895, directed its rapid growth, expanding into new products and ever-broader territory. Mail-order firms like Sears were able to penetrate underserved rural areas by leaning on new infrastructure, such as the railroads that linked far-flung regions of the country. Government regulation also aided the company’s growth, with the Rural Free Delivery Act of 1896 underwriting its distribution chain by expanding mail routes in rural areas.

Sears, Roebuck letterhead from 1907 featured the mail-order company’s state-of-the-art distribution center, a symbol of its retail dominance. Image courtesy of Sears, Roebuck & Co/Wikimedia Commons.

In an era when print media reigned supreme, Sears dominated the rural retail market through its huge catalog, an amazing work of product advertising, consumer education, and corporate branding. Titled the Book of Bargains and later, The Great Price Maker, the famous Sears catalog expanded in the 1890s from featuring watches and jewelry to including everything from buggies and bicycles to sporting goods and sewing machines. It educated millions of shoppers about mail-order procedures, such as shipping, cash payment, substitutions and returns. It used simple and informal language and a warm, welcoming tone. “We solicit honest criticism more than orders,” the 1908 catalog stated, emphasizing customer satisfaction above all else. Sears taught Americans how to shop.

Sears also demonstrated how to run a business. Cutting costs and tightly controlling distribution fueled its rise to power. The company built a massive Chicago distribution complex in 1906, which occupied three million square feet of floor space. A full-page illustration of the plant, in all its bright redbrick glory, graced the back of the Sears catalog. Any customer could see how his merchandise was received and held, how his orders were filled and shipped out, and where the catalog itself was published. The distribution center was its own best advertisement; among the largest in the world, it was a symbol of the mail-order company’s dominance.

The company innovated in other ways, too. Bricks-and-mortar retailers today have to contend with new consumer habits brought about by e-commerce. Similarly, mail-order firms like Sears faced potential loss of their markets as the nation urbanized 100 years ago and entered the automobile age. Sears navigated the challenge brilliantly when it opened its first department store in Chicago in 1925. Under the managerial leadership of Gen. Robert E. Wood, who had formerly worked with mail-order competitor Montgomery Ward, Sears initiated a rapid expansion outside of urban centers. By 1929, on the eve of the Great Depression, it operated more than 300 department stores.

In 1948, Ruth Parrington, a librarian at the Chicago Public Library, studied a Sears catalog from 1902. Photo courtesy of Associated Press.

Growth continued even during the economic downturn, because Sears wisely championed an aesthetic of thrift. The chain made its name selling dependable staples such as socks and underwear and sheets and towels, rather than fashion items like those found in traditional department stores such as Marshall Field’s in Chicago or John Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia or New York. Sears outlets were spare, catering to customers who were interested in finding good value, to meet practical needs. By the end of the Depression decade, the number of stores had almost doubled.

After World War II, still under Wood’s leadership, Sears continued to open new stores across North America, in the bustling new shopping centers populating the expanding suburban landscape. In the United States, the number of Sears stores passed 700 by the mid-1950s. The firm also expanded across the borders north and south, opening its first Mexico City store in 1947 and moving into Canada in 1952 (incorporating with a Canadian mail-order firm to become Simpson-Sears). Sears benefited from being a pioneer chain in a landscape of largely independent department stores. Along with J.C. Penney, it became a standard shopping mall anchor. Together, the two chains, along with Montgomery Ward, captured 43 percent of all department store sales by 1975.

Sears wouldn’t really lose any footing until the 1970s, when new challenges emerged. Skyrocketing inflation meant low-price retailers such as Target, Kmart and Walmart, all founded in 1962, lured new customers. The market became bifurcated as prosperous upper-middle class shoppers turned to more luxurious traditional department stores, while bargain seekers found lower prices at the discounters than at Sears.

Women’s and girls’ underskirts featured in the 1902 Sears Roebuck catalog sold from $1.18. Image courtesy of Edward Kitch/Associated Press.

In 1991, Walmart overtook Sears as the nation’s largest retailer. As big box stores began to dominate the country, the department store industry responded through mergers, reorganization and experimentation with the department store category itself. Sears was no exception. The company took many different tacks under a series of problematic leaders, losing sight in the process of its traditional niche, which it ceded to discounters. Sears moved into insurance and financial services. Its credit card business, for example, accounted for 60 percent of its profits at the turn of the 21st century. In 2003, however, it tried returning to its retail core, selling its credit and financial business to Citigroup for $32 billion.

There is a tendency to look at Sears’s decline, and the potential loss of a grand icon of American business, with fond nostalgia. This would be a mistake. Sears embodied many of the uglier aspects of American capitalism, too. Many times, the firm’s management pushed back against forces that benefited workers. Sears tried to undermine organized labor, successfully resisting it even though several other traditional flagship department stores had unionized by the 1940s and 1950s. Company leaders resisted 20th-century progressive social movements that sought economic equality for African Americans and women. Like other department stores, Sears contributed both to structural and daily acts of racism, against customers and workers. African-American boycotts against Sears in the 1930s, for example, exposed racist hiring practices; in the late 1960s, welfare-rights activists revealed the firm’s discriminatory credit policies. Gender inequality was deeply entrenched in its work structure—and challenged, prominently and unsuccessfully, in the famous 1986 “Sears case,” which emerged from an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint concerning discrimination against women, who had been passed over for lucrative commissioned sales jobs in traditionally-male departments.

All of it, good and bad, reflects our nation’s struggle to adapt to larger economic, political, and cultural forces. For historians like myself, who see business as a social institution through which to view and critique the past, the end of Sears will mean more than just one less place to buy my socks.

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That mall, Plaza Mexico, sits just outside the Los Angeles city limits (as is the case with many retailers trying to avoid L.A. taxes and regulation) in the smaller city of Lynwood, overlooking the 105 Freeway. But it relies heavily on the people of South L.A., and thus attests to the transformations that have occurred there in the past 50 years.

Plaza Mexico was originally built as the Lynwood Marketplace and financed in part by a development incentive program set up to deter white flight in the 1970s. Lynwood, like South L.A. to the north, was white (“Lily-white Lynwood”), then majority black, and by the late 1980s, predominantly Latinos.

By the 1990s, all the department chains that anchored the mall had shut their doors. For a time, the Lynwood Marketplace turned into a vendor-driven swap meet, offering bargain-priced clothes and electronics and frequented by local residents, mostly African-American or Latino.

But early in the 2000s, the mall was transformed into Plaza Mexico, to tap two trends. First, many Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in South L.A. and in nearby communities were buying homes and gaining purchasing power. And many felt nostalgia for their home country, or the yearning to reconnect with the home country of their parents or grandparents.

Plaza Mexico was an ambitious Mexican-style plaza featuring replicas of iconic buildings and monuments from several Mexican states. The old mall, now a newly remade plaza, could not attract a major national department store as an anchor tenant. But it didn’t need to. Plaza Mexico played a different role, offering a remarkable diversity of goods and services and even office space, while retaining the swap meet and food court sections that had attracted previous generations of customers, many of them African-American.

In this way, the plaza set a new standard for retail and public space for the south side of greater Los Angeles. It’s reflected in the mix of stores in smaller shopping centers all over South L.A.

One example of an effort to emulate Plaza Mexico is Plaza La Alameda, opened in 2008 in Walnut Park, an unincorporated area south of Huntington Park and north of Watts. Its location, just east of Alameda Street, resonates because the Alameda corridor was long considered “the wall of hate”—rigidly separating South L.A.’s communities of color from the white, working-class cities to the east of the thoroughfare well into the 1970s. By the 1990s, most white residents had moved out of Huntington Park, South Gate, and other southeast L.A. suburbs, which then became majority Latino. And now, the plaza connects rather than separates neighborhoods in all directions.

Plaza Mexico and Plaza La Alameda share architecture that deliberately recalls the Spanish and Latin American tradition of the plaza as a central space. Unlike the car-centered architecture of the suburban mall, the plazas are pedestrian-accessible and located near public transit centers. Plaza Mexico and Plaza La Alameda both feature kiosks and fountains that serve as central gathering areas. While there is no government or church on these plazas, as you would find in some Latin American central urban plazas, the focus on pedestrians makes it a site of gathering and consumption for nearby residents.

Plaza Mexico and its imitators have given greater South L.A. locations for celebrations ranging from Mexican Independence Day festivities in September to religious holidays such as the feast for the Virgin of Guadalupe in December. And the plazas have become the go-to spots for impromptu celebrations like those occasioned by the few and far between World Cup victories of the Mexican national soccer team. In this way, these shopping centers have made good on their title claims to la plaza, the public square, becoming fixtures in the social, public, and civic life of the communities that surround them.

Yes, both shopping centers are also utilizing their customers’ fondness of Mexican plazas as a marketing tool, but it has been a very successful effort, allowing the centers to thrive in economically challenged communities. Indeed, Plaza Mexico has had success in reaching beyond the immediate area and attracting other residents of Southern California.

Plaza Mexico is what the urban planner James Rojas calls an “enacted environment,” a term describing exterior spaces between buildings that people can use as they please. In such places, a store sign becomes a work of art, and a walkway—or the plaza of a mall—becomes a place for social interactions and encounters with new people and new experiences. Plaza Mexico is thus a model for the kind of destinations that are needed more in South L.A. and in Southern California.

The post Created to Appeal to Nostalgia, Faux Plazas Serve a Traditional Purpose appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

In 1937, when I was seven, we lived in a white, wood frame house on East 61st Street. It had a front lawn and a big backyard with an alley behind it. Main Street was a few feet west, with a print shop I visited because the owner gave away writing tablets and the Princess Theater where we spent weekend afternoons. To the east was a little street named Wall Street with a corner grocery store. Toward the end of the month when mother ran short of cash, the grocer was happy to put any needed purchases “on the bill” until payday. The farthest south we ever ventured was 64th Street where our school, St. Columbkille’s, stood.

But in those days, you didn’t need to take the streetcar to meet the world; so many memorable people and things arrived at your door. With few exceptions, like going to the neighborhood grocery store, we didn’t have to leave home to purchase goods; vendors came to us. Amazon may be onto something, but it isn’t something new.

I recall the greengrocer who visited in a horse-drawn cart selling fruit and vegetables. The driver would raise the side panels of his vehicle to display his selection, still in their packing boxes. In those pre-spraying days, anyone eating an apricot was best advised to split it open and not bite into it. Tiny worms often inhabited the area around the pit.

The Fuller Brush man was a regular visitor at most houses. He came laden with the latest thing in brushes to make our lives easier—brushes for the floor, for the kitchen, and bathrooms. Since I was the oldest child in our family, it was my job to prepare bottles of milk for my infant brothers and sisters. I was happy to discover that the Fuller Brush man sold bottle brushes to assist me in washing the bottles. The Fuller Brush man became part of American popular culture and achieved the ultimate—a movie that starred a top comic of his day, Red Skelton, as the Fuller Brush Man.

In an era when not every home had a refrigerator, the iceman delivered. In our neighborhood it was the Kirker Ice Company whose plant was at 5930 South Main St. Once a week, a household that needed ice would place a card with a large ‘K’ printed on it in the window—a signal to the ice man that he should stop and deliver. The iceman would grab a block of ice with heavy-duty tongs, fling it onto his shoulder where it rested on a pad of heavy leather, and lug it to the kitchen icebox where he deposited it in its compartment. The system worked fine except that the melting water often overflowed the pan we placed on the floor under the box, creating a sloppy mess.

The Helms man often announced his arrival with three toots of his whistle. The bread he sold didn’t interest the children who gathered around his distinctive yellow van. What attracted us were the sweets: doughnuts, turnovers, pies, eclairs, and more. He stored them in oversized drawers and removed a requested item by taking a piece of tissue paper and lifting the item as if it were a precious object. Even kids who weren’t buying gathered around to enjoy the show and inhale the accompanying fragrance.

Farmer Brothers sold coffee and tea door-to-door. Occasionally Farmers ran promotions that featured dishware at reasonable prices; it was decorated with delicate paintings of autumn leaves. I hadn’t seen any of them for many years until I recently spotted a bowl at a Pasadena flea market. The sight instantly took me back decades. Of course, I bought it. Marcel Proust evoked memories of his childhood with the taste of chamomile tea and madeleines. My bowl serves that purpose for me.

Milk was delivered to homes in the early mornings by men wearing white uniforms and lifting glass quart bottles in a metal carrier that fitted six bottles. Jessup, Knudsen, and Adohr were the important dairies then. During World War II, a song named “Milkman, Keep Those Bottles Quiet” became very popular. It was sung by a worker in a defense plant whose sleep the milkman disturbed.

Milkman, keep those bottles quiet,
Can’t use that jive on my milk diet.
Been jumping on the swing shift all right,
Turning out my quota all night.

Been knocking out a fast tank all day,
Boy, you blast my wig with those clinks,
And I got to catch my 40 winks.

During the summer, the neighborhood would be visited at least once by a photographer who arrived leading a pony that was laden with a large format camera and tripod. There was no need for him to broadcast his presence. Children caught sight of him and ran home to announce his arrival. Doting mothers who wanted photographs of their offspring came out of their houses to hail him. The photographer came prepared for his photo sessions with a pair of sheepskin cowboy chaps, a belt and holster with a six-shooter, a large bandana, and a cowboy hat. My mother was a customer and the family photo album contains photos of both my brother Raul and me posing warily on ponies, doing our utmost to smile. From that day to this, I have not gotten on another horse, of whatever size.

Insurance salesmen generally knocked on our door in the late evening when the entire family would be there to decide on whether to purchase a policy. Mother was a firm believer in insurance and it took no persuasive speech by the Prudential man to convince her to buy a policy. The salesman would come by monthly to collect the premiums, using his thick account book to record the payment and issue a receipt. When the insured, my father, died, payments on his policy were in arrears but mother contacted the agent anyway. He assured her that if she made up the late payments, the company would pay off as they had contracted. She did and they did. Prudential paid her $500, a not inconsiderable sum at the time.

These days when nearly everyone carries a personal telephone, it is difficult to imagine a time when most houses were not equipped with telephone jacks and didn’t have phones. I didn’t use a phone until I was 10 years old.

Bradford’s Bread Truck, Irvine Ranch, circa 1920.

For the many Americans in our situation—that is, phoneless—Western Union offered a scene that Ingmar Bergman might have thought up. A uniformed Western Union employee would knock on the door, usually at night. He carried a telegram that had a black border around the envelope that contained it. That border gave us immediate notice that someone close to the family had died. I witnessed that scene several times as a child and can testify that the interim between seeing the black border and learning the name of the deceased seemed a very long time.

Other itinerant salesmen included the knife and scissors sharpener who wheeled his little cart with its grinding wheel down our street periodically. A music man came by the house one evening to try his luck at selling music instruments. He demonstrated a steel guitar that I liked a lot. I asked my parents whether we could buy the guitar and if I could take the lessons that came with it. One parent agreed; the other didn’t. I still can’t play the guitar.

In the summer, the ice cream man drove his truck down the street playing a tune on his loudspeaker. Chocolate-covered Good Humor bars and Eskimo Pies were beyond our budget. What helped cool us off in hot weather were big slices of cold watermelon and frosty pitchers of lemonade that mother prepared for us.

A woman wearing a flowing, flowery skirt knocked on our door one day. She advertised herself as a fortune teller. Mother consulted her and I can only hope that she got some good news for her money. Vacuum cleaner salesmen dropped by to make their pitches. Mother liked the machine the Electrolux man demonstrated. She bought it. It was expensive but mother appreciated quality and never bought any vacuum cleaner that wasn’t an Electrolux.

Now that I think about it, both my brother, Raul, and I were members of the selling class. On Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings, we’d pick up our quota of newspapers and roam the streets around our neighborhood, then around 62nd and San Pedro Streets, pulling our wagon and hawking our newspapers. To announce our presence, we developed a sing-song, “Exxxxxaminer, Times, Paperrrr!” We were thrilled when we got home with our pockets bulging with coins. It was a fun way to augment the family income.

Our family doctor was E.C. Deming, whose office was located at 6806 South Broadway. Dr. Deming made house calls for which he charged $2. In 1939 mother called him to our house to check the condition of a 9-year-old boy who was experiencing pain in the groin area. Father was less than enthusiastic about my going to the hospital, but when Deming mentioned the possible consequences of a ruptured appendix, I was allowed to go. The operation, at Children’s Hospital, was successful.

Many people, overwhelmingly men, worked as itinerant salesmen in the 1930s; I’m reminded that in 1937 the U.S. unemployment rate reached 17 percent. Those men took jobs that may not have been their first choice—they did so because there were no other employment options.

These vendors were eventually replaced as consumers took to driving their cars to malls, often on crowded streets and freeways, packing multi-storied, fortress-like parking structures to full capacity.

How long will it be before shopping malls and their parking lots join the list of things that aren’t here anymore, and that people of a certain age look back upon with nostalgia?

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