Company type | Department store |
---|---|
Industry | Retail |
Founded | 1874 |
Founder | Hiram P. Wasson |
Defunct | 1980 |
Fate | Closure due to business decline as a result of change of ownership |
Headquarters | Indianapolis, Indiana |
Number of locations | 7 (at its height in 1967) |
Area served | Central Indiana |
Products | men's, women's and children's clothing, footwear, jewelry, beauty products, bedding, housewares and home furnishings. |
H. P. Wasson & Company Building | |
Location | 2 W. Washington and 2 N. Meridian Sts., Indianapolis, Indiana |
Coordinates | 39°46′2″N86°9′30″W / 39.76722°N 86.15833°W |
Area | less than one acre |
Built | 1937 |
Architect | Rubush & Hunter; Graham, Anderson, Probst, & White |
Architectural style | Art Deco |
NRHP reference No. | 97001539 [1] |
Added to NRHP | December 24, 1997 |
H. P. Wasson and Company, aka Wasson's, was an Indianapolis, Indiana, based department store chain founded by Hiram P. Wasson. Its flagship store, the H. P. Wasson & Company Building, was built in 1937 and is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. [2]
H. P. Wasson bought the Bee Hive Drygoods Store in 1874, renaming it nine years later as H. P. Wasson and Company. With the death of H. P. Wasson in 1910, and his son Kenard Wasson in 1912, the store was sold to Gustave A. Efroymson and his brother-in-law Louis P. Wolf. The chain would eventually consist of seven stores with the flagship store located at 2 West Washington Street in downtown Indianapolis.
Efroymson was president of the company from 1912 to 1930. [3] [4]
In 1930, a second store was built on Monument Circle on the site of the former Morton Hotel. [5] The entire second and parts of the third floors of the Monument Circle Annex store were destroyed in a fire on the evening of June 1, 1969. [6]
After the Korean War, Wasson's began to build new stores in the outdoor shopping centers that were being developed in new housing developments on the outskirts of suburban Marion County during the late 1950s and early 1960s. By the early 1960s, first shopping centers and then enclosed malls were being built inside and also in nearby communities outside of Marion County. Branch stores were built in a shopping center in Kokomo and enclosed malls in Anderson and Bloomington. The open air shopping center locations at Eastgate and Kokomo were later converted into enclosed malls.
Louis C. Wolf became president in 1963 upon the retirement of his father Walter E. Wolf, who remained CEO. He was killed in a plane crash in Alaska during a hunting trip while piloting a new single-engine Cessna in August 1967 at the age of 40. Members of his family sold the company in October of the same year to Goldblatt's of Chicago. [7] Expansion and new development of the firm died upon Louis C.'s death.
In September 1967, Richard L. Glasser was appointed president and CEO while Walter E. Wolf, Sr. remained chairman of the board of directors. [8]
There were a total of seven stores by the time Wasson's was acquired by Goldblatt's in 1967, which included three stores in Indianapolis-area shopping centers and in malls located in the cities of Kokomo, Anderson, and Bloomington. [7] [9] [10] [11] The Goldblatt's acquisition of Wasson's was not successful as the two chains did not cater to the same market segments. Wasson's catered to the middle class, while Goldblatt's was a discount department store. During Goldblatt's ownership a distinct decline in merchandise quality occurred. Moreover, Goldblatt's did not open any new outlets after the acquisition, or relocate any stores into the new regional malls that ringed the city.
After suffering large losses, Goldblatt's sold the downtown store and the other property around Monument Circle to Melvin Simon and Associates for $2.25 million (~$7.62 million in 2023) in December 1979, [12] and started to close the Indianapolis metropolitan stores.
In September 1980, Goldblatt's announced that they planned to close the Anderson and Bloomington stores along with other Goldblatt stores in January 1981 as a cost saving measure after experiencing staggering corporate losses for the third straight year. [13]
The Bloomington store at College Mall closed in January of the following year. [14] The store had opened in 1965 as one of the original anchors of the mall.
On February 27, 1981, Goldbatt's announced that the last Wasson's store would close in Kokomo on the next day. [15] The Kokomo store had been one of the first stores in the Kokomo Mall when that mall had opened in 1963, and was the first store that H. P. Wasson had opened outside of Marion County.
The nine-story Art Moderne flagship store located at 2 West Washington Street was converted into a retail/office complex in the early 1980s. The main store was designed by the noted Indianapolis architectural firm of Rubush and Hunter and constructed by the William P. Jungclaus Company in 1937. A distinguishing feature of the Washington Street Store was the elimination of windows on the upper floors. With the advent of fluorescent lighting, windows were no longer required. The Washington Street location was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1997. The former Wasson's annex located on Monument Circle burnt down in 1969 and was subsequently replaced by a park.[ citation needed ] In 1998, a new headquarters for Emmis Corporation was built on the site. [16]
Wasson's Credit Union, which opened in October 1923, was the first credit union in Indiana and in the Midwest.[ citation needed ]
Competitors were L. S. Ayres, L. Strauss & Co., and William H. Block.
Jewel-Osco is a regional supermarket chain in the Chicago metropolitan area, headquartered in Itasca, a western suburb. In 2007, the company had 188 stores across northern, central, and western Illinois; eastern Iowa; and portions of northwest Indiana. Jewel-Osco has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Boise-based Albertsons since 1999. The company originally started as a door-to-door coffee delivery service before it expanded into delivering non-perishable groceries and later into grocery stores, and supermarkets. Prior to its 1984 acquisition by American Stores, Jewel evolved into a large multi-state holding company that operated several supermarket chains and other non-food retail chain stores located from coast to coast and had operated under several different brand names.
L. S. Ayres and Company was a department store based in Indianapolis, Indiana, and founded in 1872 by Lyman S. Ayres. Over the years its Indianapolis flagship store, which opened in 1905 and was later enlarged, became known for its women's fashions, the Tea Room, holiday events and displays, and the basement budget store. As urban populations shifted to the suburbs, Ayres established branch stores in new shopping centers in several Indiana cities. Ayres also acquired retail subsidiaries in Springfield, Illinois; Fort Wayne, Indiana; and Louisville, Kentucky. Ayr-Way, the Ayres discount store subsidiary, became the first discount store launched by a full-line department store. By the end of the 1960s Ayres had become a diversified merchandising business with retail department stores, a chain of discount stores, specialty clothing stores, a home furnishings showroom, and a real estate holding company. A long-time Ayres slogan, "That Ayres Look", promoted the company as a fashion leader, and by 1972 it had become the oldest continuous retail slogan in the United States.
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Goldblatt's was an American chain of local discount stores that operated in Chicago, Illinois, as well as Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin. Founded in 1914, the chain grew to more than twenty stores at its peak, gradually closing some stores in the 1990s and selling others to Ames before finally closing completely in 2000.
Lafayette Square Mall is a defunct shopping mall in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. Developed in 1968 by Edward J. DeBartolo Sr., the mall is locally-owned by Sojos Capital Group. The anchor store is Shoppers World. There are three vacant anchor stores that were once Sears, L. S. Ayres, and Burlington.
The William H. Block Company was a department store chain in Indianapolis and other cities in Indiana. It was founded in 1874 by Herman Wilhelm Bloch, an immigrant from Austria-Hungary who had Americanized his name to William H. Block. The main store was located at 9 East Washington Street in Indianapolis in 1896. The company also identified itself as The Wm. H. Block Co., and Block's.
Peoples Drug was a chain of drugstores based in Alexandria, Virginia. Founded in 1905, Peoples was subsequently purchased by Lane Drug in 1975, Imasco in 1984, and finally by CVS in 1990, which continued to run the stores under the Peoples banner until 1994, at which time the stores were converted to CVS, marking the end of the use of the Peoples Drug name.
Circle Centre Mall is an indoor shopping mall located in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. Circle Centre Mall was opened to the public on September 8, 1995, and incorporates existing downtown structures such as the former L. S. Ayres flagship store. The mall is anchored by Regal Cinemas and the offices for The Indianapolis Star. The space occupied by former anchor Carson Pirie Scott is vacant.
Castleton Square is an enclosed shopping mall in the Castleton neighborhood on the northeastern side of Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. Built by Edward J. DeBartolo Corporation and Homart Development Company in 1972, it is owned and managed by Simon Property Group. It is the largest mall in the state of Indiana, and has remained so since its construction. The center's original anchor stores were JCPenney, Sears, Lazarus, and Woolworth. Expansions in 1990 and 1998 added to the total number of anchor and inline stores, while also adding a food court. The anchor stores are JCPenney, Forever 21, H&M, AMC Theatres, Dick's Sporting Goods, Macy's, and Von Maur; the former location of Sears has been vacant since 2018. Overall, Castleton Square consists of over 130 inline stores.
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Katherine "Flossie" Bailey was a civil rights and anti-lynching activist from Indiana. She established a local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Marion, Indiana, in 1918 and became especially active fighting for justice and equality following the double lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in 1930. As president of the Indiana NAACP, Bailey was pivotal in lobbying for passage of a statewide anti-lynching law in Indiana in 1931 and advocated for a similar bill at the national level. She was also a recipient of the national NAACP's Madam C. J. Walker Medal.
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