| Sears Roebuck & Company Department Store | |
|---|---|
 The building in 2019 | |
| Built | 1932 |
| Architect | Nimmons, Carr & Wright, with Alton L. Craft |
| Architectural style(s) | Art Deco |
| Designated | May 15, 2012 |
| Reference no. | 2469 |
The Sears Roebuck & Company Department Store is a landmarked former department store in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City.
The Sears Roebuck & Company Department Store is an Art Deco edifice of three stories, plus a 103-foot tower. The building is situated at the corner of Beverly Road and Beford Avenue in an L shape, with nine bays of grouped windows or entrances along Bedford and four along Beverly. Each window bay had a large display window, while the entrance bays are flanked by limestone piers and decorative spandrel panels that draw the eyes upward. The entrances are recessed to protect customers from inclement weather. [1]
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The town of Flatbush was annexed by the neighboring city of Brooklyn in 1894. [2] In the subsequent decades the area saw intense development, spurred by increasing transit. By the 1920s the intersection of Church and Flatbush Avenues was a busy commercial area. [3] Having started with mail order sales, Sears, Roebuck and Co. expanded to retail operations in 1925; by 1929 it was the third-largest retailer in the country, and it continued growing through the subsequent Great Depression. [1]
Sears opened its first retail store in New York City in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn in 1930. They announced a new flagship store for the location at Bedford Avenue and Beverly Road in March 1932; the site was near the busy commercial area on Flatbush Avenue, and its location was chosen to target the "motoring shopper"—land in the area was cheaper than congested downtown Brooklyn, and it was centrally located between the established, older neighborhoods to the north and the developing, car-equipped southern regions. [1] Originally, the site was to have occupied two blocks, separated by the course of East 23rd St.; the road was not extended, and the blocks were merged. [1]
The site was originally occupied by roughly ten homes and car barns. [4] The Cheshill Realty Corporation acquired 25 parcels for the store through private negotiations in 1931–1932; the Brooklyn Eagle called the purchases the "Flatbush mystery". The announcement of the new store, coinciding with two others in Union City and Hackensack, New Jersey, was only made once all the land had been purchased. [1]
The building was designated a New York City landmark in 2012. [5] At this point, Sears was in dire financial straits; the company had merged with Kmart a few years earlier amid increasing competition from ecommerce, and under chief executive Eddie Lampert started spinning off brands and selling stores. In 2018, the company filed for bankruptcy protection, [6] and the store would become the final open Sears location in New York City. [7]
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the parking lot served as a drive-thru testing area. [7] In November 2021, the Sears closed. [8] While the landmarked building is protected from demolition, Clipper Equity announced plans to build two seven-story buildings on the site for a total of 650 residential units on the remaining lot area. [9]
Sears, Roebuck and Co., commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began as a mail ordering catalog company migrating to opening retail locations in 1925, the first in Chicago. In 2005, the company was bought by the management of the American big box discount chain Kmart, which upon completion of the merger, formed Sears Holdings. Through the 1980s, Sears was the largest retailer in the United States. In 2018, it was the 31st-largest. After several years of declining sales, Sears's parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 15, 2018. It announced on January 16, 2019, that it had won its bankruptcy auction, and that a reduced number of 425 stores would remain open, including 223 Sears stores.
Erasmus Hall High School was a four-year public high school located at 899–925 Flatbush Avenue between Church and Snyder Avenues in the Flatbush neighborhood of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It was founded in 1786 as Erasmus Hall Academy, a private institution of higher learning named for the scholar Desiderius Erasmus, known as Erasmus of Rotterdam, a Dutch Renaissance humanist and Catholic Christian theologian. The school was the first secondary school chartered by the New York State Regents. The clapboard-sided, Georgian-Federal-style building, constructed on land donated by the Flatbush Reformed Dutch Church, was turned over to the public school system in 1896.
Flatbush is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood consists of several subsections in central Brooklyn and is generally bounded by Prospect Park to the north, East Flatbush to the east, Midwood to the south, and Kensington and Parkville to the west. The modern neighborhood includes or borders several institutions of note, including Brooklyn College.
East Flatbush is a residential neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. East Flatbush is bounded by Crown Heights and Empire Boulevard to the north; Brownsville and East 98th Street to the east; Flatlands, Canarsie and the Long Island Rail Road's Bay Ridge Branch to the south; and the neighborhood of Flatbush and New York Avenue to the west. East Flatbush is a predominantly African American neighborhood and has a population of 135,619 as of the 2010 United States census.
Windsor Terrace is a small residential neighborhood in the central part of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is bounded by Prospect Park on the east and northeast, Park Slope at Prospect Park West, Green-Wood Cemetery, and Borough Park at McDonald Avenue on the northwest, west, and southwest, and Kensington at Caton Avenue on the south. As of the 2010 United States Census, Windsor Terrace had 20,988 people living within its 0.503-square-mile (1.30 km2) area.
T.B. Ackerson Company was a real estate development company that built several planned communities in the New York metropolitan area during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Atlantic Avenue is a major thoroughfare in the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens. It stretches from the Brooklyn waterfront on the East River all the way to Jamaica, Queens. Atlantic Avenue runs parallel to Fulton Street for much of its course through Brooklyn, where it serves as a border between the neighborhoods of Prospect Heights and Fort Greene and between Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights, and between Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill. This stretch of avenue is known for having a high rate of pedestrian fatalities and has been described as "the killing fields of the city."
Fulton Street is a long east–west street in northern Brooklyn, New York City. This street begins at the intersection of Adams Street and Joralemon Street in Brooklyn Heights, and runs eastward to East New York and Cypress Hills. At the border with Queens, Fulton Street becomes 91st Avenue, which ends at 84th Street in Woodhaven.
The Fuller Building is a skyscraper at 57th Street and Madison Avenue in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Designed by Walker & Gillette, it was erected between 1928 and 1929. The building is named for its original main occupant, the Fuller Construction Company, which moved from the Flatiron Building.
The General Electric Building, also known as 570 Lexington Avenue, is a skyscraper at the southwestern corner of Lexington Avenue and 51st Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The building, designed by Cross & Cross and completed in 1931, was known as the RCA Victor Building during its construction. The General Electric Building is sometimes known by its address to avoid confusion with 30 Rockefeller Plaza, which was once known as the GE Building.
Kings Plaza is a shopping center within the Mill Basin section of Brooklyn in New York City, New York, United States. Opened in September 1970, it is located at the southeast corner of Flatbush Avenue and Avenue U, just north of Floyd Bennett Field. The mall features the traditional retailers Target, Burlington, Primark, and Macy's. The mall features prominent specialty retailers including Cotton On, Sephora, Guess, Zara, Michael Kors, H&M, and Forever 21. The mall was originally owned by a joint venture between Macy's and Alexander's, and is currently owned and managed by Macerich. With approximately 4,200 jobs in retail services and over 120 individual stores, Kings Plaza is the largest indoor shopping center within the borough of Brooklyn.
Bedford Avenue is the longest street in Brooklyn, New York City, stretching 10.2 miles (16.4 km) and 132 blocks, from Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint south to Emmons Avenue in Sheepshead Bay, and passing through the neighborhoods of Williamsburg, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, Flatbush, Midwood, Marine Park, and Sheepshead Bay.
The Sears, Roebuck and Company Complex is a building complex in the community area of North Lawndale in Chicago, Illinois. The complex hosted most of department-store chain Sears' mail order operations between 1906 and 1993, and it also served as Sears' corporate headquarters until 1973, when the Sears Tower was completed. Of its original 40-acre (16 ha) complex, only three buildings survive and have been adaptively rehabilitated to other uses. The complex was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1978, at which time it still included the 3,000,000-square-foot mail order plant, the world's largest commercial building when it was completed. That building has been demolished, its site taken up by the Homan Square redevelopment project.
The Sears, Roebuck & Company product distribution center in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, California, is a historic landmark that was one of the company's mail-order facilities, with a retail store on the ground floor.
The Central Library, originally the Ingersoll Memorial Library, is the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library in Brooklyn, New York City. Located on Grand Army Plaza, at the corner of Flatbush Avenue and Eastern Parkway, it contains over 1.7 million materials in its collection and has a million annual visitors. The current structure was designed by the partnership of Alfred Morton Githens and Francis Keally in the Art Deco style, replacing a never-completed Beaux-Arts structure designed by Raymond Almirall. The building is a New York City designated landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Brooklyn Tower is a supertall mixed-use, primarily residential skyscraper in the Downtown Brooklyn neighborhood of New York City. Developed by JDS Development Group, it is situated on the north side of DeKalb Avenue near Flatbush Avenue. The main portion of the skyscraper is a 74-story, 1,066-foot (325 m) residential structure designed by SHoP Architects and built from 2018 to 2022. Preserved at the skyscraper's base is the Dime Savings Bank Building, designed by Mowbray and Uffinger, which dates to the 1900s.
Art Deco architecture flourished in New York City during the 1920s and 1930s. The style broke with many traditional architectural conventions and was characterized by verticality, ornamentation, and building materials such as plastics, metals, and terra cotta. Art Deco is found in government edifices, commercial projects, and residential buildings in all five boroughs. The architecture of the period was influenced by worldwide decorative arts trends, the rise of mechanization, and New York City's 1916 Zoning Resolution, which favored the setback feature in many buildings.
The Willink Entrance area, also known as Willink Plaza, is a major urban square of Brooklyn, New York City, formed by the intersection of Flatbush Avenue, Ocean Avenue and Empire Boulevard, at the eastern corner of Prospect Park and the southern corner of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. It is serviced by the New York City Subway's Prospect Park station, and features several public spaces and historic buildings. This location is considered the northwestern point of the Prospect Lefferts Gardens neighborhood of Flatbush, and adjoins Crown Heights to its northeast.
608 Fifth Avenue, also known as the Goelet Building or Swiss Center Building, is an office building at Fifth Avenue and West 49th Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, adjacent to Rockefeller Center. It was designed by Victor L. S. Hafner for the Goelet family, with Edward Hall Faile as structural engineer. The facade uses elements of both the Art Deco and International styles, while the lobby is designed exclusively in the Art Deco style.