Why read From Main Street to Mall?

Book cover of From Main Street to Mall: The Rise and Fall of the American Department Store

Book description

The geography of American retail has changed dramatically since the first luxurious department stores sprang up in nineteenth-century cities. Introducing light, color, and music to dry-goods emporia, these "palaces of consumption" transformed mere trade into occasions for pleasure and spectacle. Through the early twentieth century, department stores remained centers of…

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The Departments of France

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Business

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Why read it?

1 author picked From Main Street to Mall as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Dean G. Lampros

Author

I’m old enough to remember T.W. Rogers, the downtown department store that was still hanging on in Lynn, Massachusetts, in the early 1980s before finally succumbing to the same market and political forces that doomed so many similar enterprises during the postwar exodus of retail from the downtown to the suburbs.

This book pays tribute to the grand palaces of consumption, both large and small, that emerged in virtually every American city and town during the first half of the twentieth century. I was especially pleased that Howard chose to focus not only on the large urban retailers found in…

From Dean's list on the hidden power of space and place to shape our lives.