#f.w. woolworth

[retropopcult]

Winter Haven's Northgate Shopping Center, April 1959

[stone-cold-groove]

Matchbook cover illustration detail - F.W. Woolworth Company.

[thegikitiki]

F.W. Woolworth’s Sale, January 16th 1956

[gaufry-blog]

Lunch!

A Woolworth's lunch counter menu from 1958.  I'll have the egg salad sandwich and a malted milk.  No wonder people carried coin purses in those days.  You could actually buy something with change.

[charismatic33]

View of Times Square, Broadway at West 44th Street,Manhattan, 1939.

Photographer: Alland, Alexander

[retrobaltimore]

The once-ubiquitous Woolworth’s stores

Traffic and pedestrians line the North Howard Street intersection in Baltimore. F.W. Woolworth Co. is pictured on the right side of the street, in the middle, parallel to the Walbrook streetcar. (Baltimore Sun files, 1941)

Red-and-gold F. W. Woolworth’s signs marked dozens of the chain’s variety stores in Baltimore for nearly a century. The firm came to Baltimore through a friendly competitor, Fred M. Kirby, who in the 1870s worked alongside the Woolworth brothers, Frank and Sumner, in Watertown, N.Y. The enterprising Kirby entered the Baltimore market in 1895 on Lexington Street, near the larger department stores, and later opened shops on Gay Street and South Broadway. In 1912, Kirby, who founded 96 stores nationally, sold out to Woolworth’s and remained on the firm’s board. He died in 1940.

For years, the busiest Woolworth was its oldest, the original Lexington Street store, though it seemed to be cursed by bad luck. It burned in 1921. The Baltimore Sun reported that flames melted chocolate candy displays and inches of water ran in the aisles. Nearly 250 firefighters battled the blaze when the store burned again in 1966. It reopened a year later.

Woolworth's Lexington Street location was its busiest store for years. (Lloyd Pearson, Baltimore Sun files, 1979)

Variety-store competitors flocked to Lexington Street, where there were once eight competing retailers in addition to Woolworth’s: H.L. Green, S.S. Kresge, Schulte United, W.T. Grant, J.G. McCrory, Silver's and G.C. Murphy. Many had lunch counters and restaurants. Some Woolworth’s stores had cafeterias called Harvest Houses.

Woolworth’s, which had many suburban locations, closed downtown in 1994, just short of its centennial. The Highlandtown store and its popular lunch counter folded at the same time.

-Jacques Kelly

[louisbrownusa]

No Legacy Here, But Irony Everywhere

No Legacy Here, But Irony Everywhere

Last week Staples founder Tom Stemberg died of cancer at the age of 66.   Ninety-six years ago, F.W. Woolworth died of an infection at the age of 66. He was less than a week away from turning 67.   While there is irony that both of these men at the same age and that I worked for both of these companies, their legacies could not be more different.   At its heyday, Woolworth had created a company…

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[billionaireaddresses]

Gilded Age 1913 'Five and Dime' Woolworth Mansion Burns On Long Island

Gilded Age 1913 ‘Five and Dime’ Woolworth Mansion Burns On Long Island

Once one of the East Coast’s most elaborate estates, the marble-pillared Gilded Age Woolworth Mansion that was constructed in 1916 has partially burned. What is one Billionaire Addresses favorite mansions from the gilded-age period caught fire Wednesday. The blaze erupted shortly before 11am in a first-floor bedroom, officials said. Flames quickly spread through a wing of the 25,000-square-foot…

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