Ville de Paris was a department store in Downtown Los Angeles from 1893 through 1919.
A. Fusenot's Ville de Paris Los Angeles store should not be confused with the unrelated City of Paris store operating in Los Angeles through 1897 operated by Eugene Meyer & Co., then by Stern, Cahn & Loeb; nor with the much more famous City of Paris Dry Goods Co. of San Francisco.
French emigre Auguste Fusenot (French Consul in Los Angeles 1898–1907) [1] arrived in the U.S. in 1873 and soon became a partner in San Francisco's City of Paris store. After learning the business, he founded the Ville de Paris in Los Angeles in 1893. It was operated by the A. Fusenot Co. as a dry goods store. It was located in the Potomac Block at 221–223 S. Broadway between 2nd and 3rd streets [2] at a time when most stores were located in the Central Business District around Spring, Main, First and Temple streets. The original store measured 3,000 square feet (280 m2).
In the latter half of 1905, the store relocated to a space 32 times larger, (96,000 square feet (8,900 m2)), formerly the premises of Coulter's, a block away in the Homer Laughlin Building, at 317–325 S. Broadway, extending all the way back through to 314–322 Hill Street. [3] [4] This is the current site of Grand Central Market.
In 1907, Auguste Fusenot died and brother Georges took over management of the store. [5] In 1915, Fusenot sold his business to the owners of The Emporium (San Francisco), [5] and in 1917 the Ville de Paris removed to 7th and Olive streets, after J. W. Robinson's opened their flagship store on 7th Street, many blocks to the west of Broadway. The area would become the downtown's upscale shopping district for several decades. The space on Broadway has since been occupied by the Grand Central Market. [6]
In 1919 the owners sold the 7th and Olive store to B. H. Dyas, [7] and that the store became B. H. Dyas Co., which itself closed around 1930. The Seventh and Olive building was then occupied by the Los Angeles Jewelry Mart, a constituent of what is now the Jewelry District, part of the Historic Core district. [8] [9]
Broadway Stores, Inc., was an American retailer based in Southern California. Known through its history as Carter Hawley Hale Stores and Broadway Hale Stores over time, it acquired other retail store chains in regions outside its California home base and became in certain retail sectors a regional and national retailer in the 1970s and 1980s. The company was able to survive takeover attempts in 1984 and 1986, and also a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in 1991 by selling off most of its assets until August 1995 when its banks refused to advance enough additional credit in order for the company to be able to pay off suppliers. At that point, the company sold itself to Federated Department Stores for $1.6 billion with the acquisition being completed on October 12, 1995.
Broadway, until 1890 Fort Street, is a thoroughfare in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The portion of Broadway from 3rd to 9th streets, in the Historic Core of Downtown Los Angeles, was the city's main commercial street from the 1910s until World War II, and is the location of the Broadway Theater and Commercial District, the first and largest historic theater district listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). With twelve movie palaces located along a six-block stretch of Broadway, it is the only large concentration of movie palaces left in the United States.
The Homer Laughlin Building, at 317 South Broadway in Downtown Los Angeles, is a landmark building best known for its ground floor tenant the Grand Central Market, the city's largest and oldest public market that sees 2 million visitors a year.
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John and Donald Parkinson were a father-and-son architectural firm operating in the Los Angeles area in the early 20th century. They designed and built many of the city's iconic buildings, including Grand Central Market, the Memorial Coliseum and the City Hall.
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.
The Broadway was a mid-level department store chain headquartered in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1896 by English-born Arthur Letts Sr., and named after what was once the city's main shopping street, the Broadway became a dominant retailer in Southern California and the Southwest. Its fortunes eventually declined, and Federated Department Stores bought the chain in 1995. In 1996, Broadway stores were either closed or converted into Macy's and Bloomingdales.
The Emporium, from 1980 to 1995 Emporium-Capwell, was a mid-line department store chain headquartered in San Francisco, California, which operated for 100 years—from 1896 to 1996. The flagship location on San Francisco's Market Street was a destination shopping location for decades, and several branch stores operated in the various suburbs of the Bay Area. The Emporium and its sister department store chains were acquired by Federated Department Stores in 1995, and many converted to Macy's locations.
The City of Paris Dry Goods Company was one of San Francisco's important department stores from 1850 to 1976, located diagonally opposite Union Square. In the mid-20th century, it opened a few branches in other cities of the Bay Area. The main San Francisco store was demolished in 1980 after a lengthy preservation fight to build a new Neiman Marcus, but the store's original rotunda and glass dome were preserved and incorporated into the new design.
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Desmond's was a Los Angeles–based department store, during its existence second only to Harris & Frank as the oldest Los Angeles retail chain, founded in 1862 as a hat shop by Daniel Desmond near the Los Angeles Plaza. The chain as a whole went out of business in 1981 but Desmond's, Inc. continued as a company that went in to other chains to liquidate them. Desmond's stores in Northridge and West Covina were liquidated only in 1986 and survived in Palm Springs into the first years of the 21st century.
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.
Myer Siegel was a Los Angeles–based department store, founded by Myer Siegel (1866–1934), specializing in women's clothing.
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B. H. Dyas Co. was a Los Angeles sporting goods retailer that turned into a department store and went out of business in the 1930s, owned by Bernal Hubert Dyas (1882–1959).
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.
City of Paris was a dry goods store and eventually Los Angeles' first department store, operating from the 1850s through 1897, first as Lazard & Kremer Co., then Lazard & Wolfskill Co., then S. Lazard & Co., then with the store name City of Paris operated by Eugene Meyer & Co., then by Stern, Cahn & Loeb. It should not be confused with the much more famous City of Paris store of San Francisco, or the Ville de Paris department store of Los Angeles, of Mr. A. Fusenot, which was a spinoff of San Francisco's "City of Paris".
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.
J. M. Hale Co., also known as Hales, was a department store Downtown Los Angeles.
Image is dated 1904 but it is impossible that the Ville de Paris was in the Homer Laughlin Building that early, since Coulter's left only on May 31, 1905