Mullen & Bluett was a Los Angeles-based department store specializing in men's clothing.
Mullen & Bluett was a Los Angeles-based department store specializing in men's clothing.
It was founded by Andrew Mullen and W. C. Bluett in the 1880s, at the corner of First and Spring streets in Downtown Los Angeles. Arthur R. Mullen took over management of the store after the death of the founders.
In 1910 the company rented the ground floor and basement of the Walter P. Story Building at Sixth and Broadway, at a time when all the major Los Angeles department stores (May Company California, The Broadway, Fifth Street Store/Walker's, Bullock's, J. W. Robinson's, Desmond's, etc.) had been establishing themselves on or adjacent to Broadway. [1]
On November 16, 1921, the company opened a shop in the Ambassador Hotel, [2] at 3400 Wilshire Boulevard in what is now called Wilshire Center/Koreatown area of Los Angeles, joining I. Magnin who had already established a store there upon the hotel's opening in January of that year. [3]
On May 19, 1922, Mullen & Bluett opened on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, at the now-famous intersection of Hollywood and Vine, in the style of a two-story Tudor Gothic redience, in brick with stone trimming. [4] It was the first of many large upscale clothing and department stores that would open in the early 1920s, making the boulevard an important upscale shopping destination in Los Angeles second only to Downtown Los Angeles (Broadway, Seventh Street).
Architect Stiles O. Clements designed several Greater Los Angeles stores, and the one at 5570 Wilshire Boulevard on the Miracle Mile, Los Angeles as well as his adjacent Phelps-Terkel building at 5550 Wilshire, were considered landmarks by the Los Angeles Conservancy's Modern Committee. Nonetheless it was torn down in 2006, replaced with a large apartment complex in faux Art Deco design. [5]
In 1968, Mullen & Bluett had expanded to eleven stores including Hollywood, the Miracle Mile of Wilshire Boulevard, the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, Pasadena, South Coast Plaza in Orange County and Montclair Plaza in the Inland Empire. [6]
In that same year, the chain was purchased by Grodins, a Northern California men's clothing retailer. [7]
In 1972, Grodins exited the Southern California market, blaming the recession in 1970-71 and stock market weakness for the resulting inability to finance by IPO both its acquisition of Mullen & Bluett and its November 1969, $1 million new flagship store in San Francisco. [8]
Hollywood Boulevard is a major east–west street in Los Angeles, California. It runs through the Hollywood, East Hollywood, Little Armenia, Thai Town, and Los Feliz districts. Its western terminus is at Sunset Plaza Drive in the Hollywood Hills and its eastern terminus is at Sunset Boulevard in Los Feliz. Hollywood Boulevard is famous for running through the tourist areas in central Hollywood, including attractions such as the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the Ovation Hollywood shopping and entertainment complex.
Brown Derby was a chain of restaurants in Los Angeles, California. The first and best known was shaped like a derby hat, an iconic image that became synonymous with the Golden Age of Hollywood. It was opened by Wilson Mizner in 1926. The chain was started by Robert H. Cobb and Herbert K. Somborn in the 1920s. The original Brown Derby restaurants had closed or had been converted to other uses by the 1980s, though a Disney-backed Brown Derby national franchising program revived the brand in the 21st century. It is often incorrectly thought that the Brown Derby was a single restaurant, and the Wilshire Boulevard and Hollywood branches are frequently confused.
Miracle Mile is a neighborhood in the city of Los Angeles, California.
Ohrbach's was a moderate-priced department store with a merchandising focus primarily on clothing and accessories. From its modest start in 1923 until the chain's demise in 1987, Ohrbach's expanded dramatically after World War II, and opened numerous branch locations in the New York and Los Angeles metropolitan areas. Its original flagship store was located on Union Square in New York City. It maintained administrative offices in Newark and in Los Angeles. The retailer closed the Newark offices in the 1970s. Paul László designed the Union Square store as well as many of their other stores.
Stiles Oliver Clements was an architect practicing in Los Angeles and Southern California.
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J. W. Robinson Co., Robinson's, was a chain of department stores operating in the Southern California and Arizona area, previously with headquarters in Los Angeles, California.
Bullock's was a chain of full-line department stores from 1907 through 1995, headquartered in Los Angeles, growing to operate across California, Arizona and Nevada. Bullock's also operated as many as seven more upscale Bullocks Wilshire specialty department stores across Southern California. Many former Bullock's locations continue to operate today as Macy's.
I. Magnin & Company was a San Francisco, California-based high fashion and specialty goods luxury department store. Over the course of its existence, it expanded across the West into Southern California and the adjoining states of Arizona, Oregon, and Washington. In the 1970s, under Federated Department Stores ownership, the chain entered the Chicago, and Washington, D.C., metropolitan areas. Mary Ann Magnin founded the company in 1876 and named the chain after her husband Isaac.
Wilshire Center is a neighborhood in the Wilshire region of Los Angeles, California.
Morgan, Walls & Clements was an architectural firm based in Los Angeles, California and responsible for many of the city's landmarks, dating back to the late 19th century. Originally Morgan and Walls, with principals Octavius Morgan and John A. Walls, the firm worked in the area from before the turn of the century.
Mandel's was a chain of shoe stores in the Southwestern United States for many decades of the 20th century. For a time it advertised its wares as "Mandel's Fascinating Slippers". Maurice Mandel headed up the stores through the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Later Mandel would later serve as General Merchandise Manager (GMM) of chain Mullen & Bluett and president of Harris & Frank. Among its branches were:
Coulter's was a department store that originated in Downtown Los Angeles and later moved to the Miracle Mile shopping district in that same city.
Phelps-Terkel was a Los Angeles based department store specializing in men's clothing.
Myer Siegel was a Los Angeles–based department store, founded by Myer Siegel (1866–1934), specializing in women's clothing.
7th Street is a street in Los Angeles, California running from S. Norton Ave in Mid-Wilshire through Downtown Los Angeles. It goes all the way to the eastern city limits at Indiana Ave., and the border between Boyle Heights, Los Angeles and East Los Angeles.
Valley Plaza was a shopping center in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, one of the first in the San Fernando Valley, opened in 1951. In the mid-1950s it was reported to be the largest shopping center on the West Coast of the United States and the third-largest in the country. It was located along Laurel Canyon Boulevard from Oxnard to Vanowen, and west along Victory Boulevard. Like its competitor Panorama City Shopping Center to the north, Valley Plaza started with one core development and grew over time to market, under the single name "Valley Plaza", a collection of adjacent retail developments with multiple developers, owners, and opening dates.
Robertson Company also known as Robertson's department store and originally C.R.S. was the first department store in Hollywood, opened as Hollywood Boulevard became a major regional shopping district starting in the 1920s, second only to Broadway in Downtown Los Angeles.
Retail in Southern California dates back to its first dry goods store that Jonathan Temple opened in 1827 on Calle Principal, when Los Angeles was still a Mexican village. After the American conquest, as the pueblo grew into a small town surpassing 4,000 population in 1860, dry goods stores continued to open, including the forerunners of what would be local chains. Larger retailers moved progressively further south to the 1880s-1890s Central Business District, which was later razed to become the Civic Center. Starting in the mid-1890s, major stores moved ever southward, first onto Broadway around 3rd, then starting in 1905 to Broadway between 4th and 9th, then starting in 1915 westward onto West Seventh Street up to Figueroa. For half a century Broadway and Seventh streets together formed one of America's largest and busiest downtown shopping districts.
Swelldom was a large women's clothing store variously described as a "cloak and suit house" and a "department store", operating from 1906 until the 1970s in California. It had locations on Broadway in Downtown Los Angeles' shopping district, later on Wilshire Blvd. at Camden in Beverly Hills, and near Union Square in San Francisco.