Old JC Penney's ad

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runchadrun
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Re: Old JC Penney's ad

Post by runchadrun »

There is also an older store in downtown San Fernando though I've never been in it and it's likely in a similar situation and demographic as the Huntington Park store, the nearest mall stores being in Northridge and Glendale. It still has the pre-stylized logo sign. If these stores weren't profitable they wouldn't have been around for so long.

There seemed to be a standard design for the Main Street-type JCP stores: a large main floor and basement, with a mezannine that covered about 1/3 of area of the main floor. I don't remember what was on each level, but I remember that at least the Culver Center store had the dressing rooms upstairs. The stores I can think of with this design were the Culver Center store (now Bally's), which closed a few years after the Fox Hills Mall store opened, the Santa Monica store on the former Santa Monica Mall (now 3rd Street Promenade), and Alhambra store on Main Street.

As for the auto centers, the ones here in LA all became Firestone auto centers. When The Broadway sold off theirs, they became Goodyear. The Fox Hills Firestone closed in the mid-1990s and became a JCP Home/Furniture Store. I bet that was fun cleaning up 20+ years of tire center toxicity to become a furniture store.
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Brian Lutz
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Re: Old JC Penney's ad

Post by Brian Lutz »

runchadrun wrote:As for the auto centers, the ones here in LA all became Firestone auto centers. When The Broadway sold off theirs, they became Goodyear. The Fox Hills Firestone closed in the mid-1990s and became a JCP Home/Furniture Store. I bet that was fun cleaning up 20+ years of tire center toxicity to become a furniture store.
I guess that would explain why there's a Firestone auto center in the parking lot of Southcenter Mall in Tukwila, WA near the JCPenney store (a late 60s store that still looks much the same as it originally did from the exterior.) The local freestanding Sears store here in Redmond also has a (surprisingly large) freestanding auto center in the south corner of their parking lot, where most of the in-mall Sears stores don't have anything like that.
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rich
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Re: Old JC Penney's ad

Post by rich »

Sears stores from the mid-60s into the mid-70s tended to have very large freestanding auto centers. Ones that come to mind include Richmond Mall & Great Lakes Mall in the Cleveland area and Northlake in the Atlanta area. They also added them to existing freestanding stores, where space permitted. The c. 1930 store on Carnegie Ave in Cleveland received a large modern auto center in the 60s, after an adjacent kresge had left.
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Re: Old JC Penney's ad

Post by Brian Lutz »

I haven't exactly pinned down the opening date on that Sears store, but I believe it would have been sometime in the early to mid Seventies, and is built out of brown brick in a style that seems to be typical of Sears stores of that time. . The auto center actually has two stories (not sure what the second one is used for though.) You can see the Sears store and the auto center here:

Live Maps Link

The "drive thru" part of the auto center is used for an espresso stand now, and has been for as long as I've lived here. It's interesting to note that the Sears store was presumably built along with the rest of the strip mall here, but is not physically attached to it in any way. I think the big store in the center of the strip mall (the Marshalls store) might have possibly been a grocery store at some point, but I can't be certain of that.
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Re: Old JC Penney's ad

Post by javelin »

Brian Lutz wrote:The auto center actually has two stories (not sure what the second one is used for though.)
Probably for tire storage. What brought them into hardlines (appliances, electronics, etc) was the acquisition of General Merchandise Co. which became Treasury Stores.
rich
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Re: Old JC Penney's ad

Post by rich »

I just went past one of the 70s auto centers that I mentioned. It was two stories and my recollection is that it was for storage. I think the discussion is about Sears not Penney's, Sears having had hardlines for decades.

JC Penney added hardlines, full-line stores and the catalog at about the same time (c. 1964), which i think predated the acquisition of Treasury.
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Re: Old JC Penney's ad

Post by Jeff »

The Old Monterey Park JCPenney Store had the original 1940's Yellow J C P E N N E Y & C O on the building and had a large main level and large basement. It did have a 2nd story but that I beleive was storage and offices. This store had closed in 1985 when the Montebello Town Center store opened (also closed were the freestanding Alhambra and Montebello store, which was single level and a small 2nd level of offices in the rear of the store)
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Re: Old JC Penney's ad

Post by Dean »

The San Luis Obispo CA JCP I believe is now Ross. It has the old main street appeal mentioned above.

Redlands CA had a similar store. I'd have to look downtown to determine what it is now.
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Re: Old JC Penney's ad

Post by Super S »

runchadrun wrote:There is also an older store in downtown San Fernando though I've never been in it and it's likely in a similar situation and demographic as the Huntington Park store, the nearest mall stores being in Northridge and Glendale. It still has the pre-stylized logo sign. If these stores weren't profitable they wouldn't have been around for so long.

There seemed to be a standard design for the Main Street-type JCP stores: a large main floor and basement, with a mezannine that covered about 1/3 of area of the main floor. I don't remember what was on each level, but I remember that at least the Culver Center store had the dressing rooms upstairs. The stores I can think of with this design were the Culver Center store (now Bally's), which closed a few years after the Fox Hills Mall store opened, the Santa Monica store on the former Santa Monica Mall (now 3rd Street Promenade), and Alhambra store on Main Street.

As for the auto centers, the ones here in LA all became Firestone auto centers. When The Broadway sold off theirs, they became Goodyear. The Fox Hills Firestone closed in the mid-1990s and became a JCP Home/Furniture Store. I bet that was fun cleaning up 20+ years of tire center toxicity to become a furniture store.
Hmmm. The JCPenney at Tacoma Mall has a freestanding auto center nearby, I presume also Firestone. As for the Portland area, there is a freestanding Home and Furniture store right outside of the Washington Square store which I thought might have been an auto center at one point. It seems that the Sandusky store may be somewhat of an oddity in that the Auto Center was NOT freestanding, but in the north wall.

As for the standard design, that not only resembles the Astoria location, but also resembles the former Kelso, WA store (later Phyl's Furniture which burned down in the early 1990s) as well as the former location in downtown Boise (which closed in the late 80s as they moved to a new mall) However, the former location in Longview, WA, which is now a fitness club, might have had a different interior. I can't say whether it has a basement, but I believe it is a three story building. I have not been inside this building, but it might have actually been a replacement for the Kelso store I mentioned, as Kelso and Longview are side-by-side.
JCPenney also had a rather odd arrangement in the Lewis County Mall in Chehalis. The store was basically split in two, near the center of the mall, with half on one side and half on the other. It seems that JCPenney was an afterthought in the design of the mall, and they left this location long ago. I have never seen another Penney's set up like that.
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Re: Old JC Penney's ad

Post by Brian Lutz »

Apparently there is a former JC Penney location in downtown Kirkland as well which might be of this style, although I'm not familiar enough with downtown Kirkland to know where it might have been. Guess I'll have to check on that the next time I'm in the newspaper archives.

EDIT: Scratch that. I was able to determine the location of the former JCPenney by looking at some stuff on the Kirkland Heritage Society's website, and it looks like the building is still there. You can still see hints of the standard design, but the JCPenney closed sometime in the mid Seventies, and I'd guess there's been some remodeling since then. Not the best picture (there's a tree in the way,) but this seems to be as close as StreetView gets. I'll have to go take a closer look at some point when I get a chance. Incidentally, it looks like the storefront to the right of it used to be a Ben Franklin based on the stuff I found.

Link (Google StreetView)
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javelin
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Re: Old JC Penney's ad

Post by javelin »

I've often wondered if the JC Penney furniture store in Ontario, CA was an original build or previously another store. It seems too far from the freeway.

I had also come across something about a Penney's once located on 7th Street in Victorville, CA. The last time I saw a "main street" store was in Bishop a few years ago, but it's still open.
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Re: Old JC Penney's ad

Post by tkaye »

Super S wrote:Hmmm. The JCPenney at Tacoma Mall has a freestanding auto center nearby, I presume also Firestone.
Yes... it is a Firestone. Here are a couple of pictures I took about five years ago, though it looks the same today: Looking south. Looking north.

Here it is during the grand opening in 1965, complete with "Blendomatic" gas pumps. The store just down the road at Lakewood's Villa Plaza (ca. 1957-1985), also had an auto center, which was not original to the store. I assume it was added in the mid-'60s as well.

The auto center's grand opening ad.

The store's grand opening ad. (Sorry it's a bit small.)

The store was originally two stories, as seen in this 1971 photo.

A third story was added (I don't know exactly when -- I assume the early '80s) to give the store the appearance it had in 2004, and still does today. There were display windows next to the doors at one time -- you can see they have been filled in with granite.
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Re: Old JC Penney's ad

Post by steps »

runchadrun wrote:There is also an older store in downtown San Fernando though I've never been in it and it's likely in a similar situation and demographic as the Huntington Park store, the nearest mall stores being in Northridge and Glendale. It still has the pre-stylized logo sign. If these stores weren't profitable they wouldn't have been around for so long.

There seemed to be a standard design for the Main Street-type JCP stores: a large main floor and basement, with a mezannine that covered about 1/3 of area of the main floor. I don't remember what was on each level, but I remember that at least the Culver Center store had the dressing rooms upstairs. The stores I can think of with this design were the Culver Center store (now Bally's), which closed a few years after the Fox Hills Mall store opened, the Santa Monica store on the former Santa Monica Mall (now 3rd Street Promenade), and Alhambra store on Main Street.

As for the auto centers, the ones here in LA all became Firestone auto centers. When The Broadway sold off theirs, they became Goodyear. The Fox Hills Firestone closed in the mid-1990s and became a JCP Home/Furniture Store. I bet that was fun cleaning up 20+ years of tire center toxicity to become a furniture store.
Not to go off topic, but by any chance did the Goodyear currently at Fox Hills Mall belong to The Broadway before it was converted? It's sitting right infront of Macy's (former Broadway).
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Re: Old JC Penney's ad

Post by wrallen99 »

I lived in El Paso 1978-1985, and I remember there used to be a JC Penneys on the northeast side that still had the old signage. at that time.
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Re: Old JC Penney's ad

Post by Brian Lutz »

I went and took a look at the former JCPenney in Kirkland yesterday, and I found that the store has been subdivided into a "mini-mall" type place which was occupied by a somewhat divey looking bar (which hadn't opened for the day when I got there yet,) some random clothing shop, a nail salon and a bunch of vacant spaces. The building doesn't seem to have any sort of mezzanine level in it, although the ceilings on the upper floor looked like they could have been high enough to accomodate one at some point that got removed later. It also had the "basement" level, although it wasn't underground, and opened up to a back door with a parking lot in the back. It almost seems like they were going for a Pike Place Market style look for the place (which isn't too uncommon around here) but didn't quite pull it off. I didn't have my camera with me, so I couldn't take any pictures.

The stairs down to the lower level were right in the center after you entered the front door though. Is this typical for this style of JCPenney store?
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