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Wednesday, November 14, 2007

At Least the Star

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JOHN LOK / THE SEATTLE TIMES
The Macy's star has become a holiday tradition in Seattle.

The Seattle Times had a story in today's paper about Seattle's traditional star. Although I have lived in the Seattle area since 1979, I knew nothing of the history of this yearly Christmas decoration. Evidently, the star has been a part of our downtown for over 50 years. The man, Bob James, who designed it helped with its installation on top of Macy's yesterday. He is 86 years old and was a lifelong employee of the Bon Marche, the original local department store hosting the display.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004012900_macystar14m.html

Frankly, I miss parts of the downtown that existed when I worked at Third and Columbia. At Christmas time, during lunch breaks from my stressful and overwhelming job, I would walk down to the triumverate department stores before there was a "Westlake." On one corner was the Bon Marche, which opened in 1890. On another corner was Frederick & Nelson, also a local store, though related to Marshall Fields. The third was a small Nordstrom which also had its birth here.

I loved Frederick & Nelson. The top floor had furniture and our current living room coffee table came from there. The bottom floor in the basement had gourmet foods and candy including Frangos. They always had the best Santa and either when Kaley was a baby or when I was pregnant with her, I took Lucas--just him and me--to a Santa breakfast at the store. The window displays were out of this world and a delight to all. Over and above the city blocks, the Bon Marche star was always visible.

The Bon Marche is no more having been taken over by Macy's. They tried to soften the blow by calling it "Bon-Macy's" for a while but when nobody was paying attention, they dropped the "Bon" part. Previously, Frederick & Nelson went out of business completely. When that happened, the Bon took over the yummy F & N candy called Frangos. Macy's has continued with the candy after taking over the Bon. Nordstrom then moved into the giant beautiful building that had been Frederick & Nelson's to become a flagship store. Cold Creek or Old Navy or some other global chain store moved into Nordstrom's old building---I am not sure which.

Don't get me wrong. I love how Seattle's downtown is thriving with lots of stores, boutiques and new restaurants. I just miss the triumverate.

At least, we have our star.

// posted by Janet @ 8:58 AM

2 Comments:

Janet, when did you work at 3rd & Columbia? I worked in the Dexter-Horton building between 1975 and 1980. Perhaps we flirted at Mother Malia's. (yes, I was married then, but I flirted merely as venerable ritual, much as the Makah hunt grey whales).

Anyway, I did a lot of Christmas shopping in F&N's basement, giving myself airs about how enviably upscale I was. I still have my green and white plastic F&N credit card.

When my grandparents would visit (driving out from Toledo) in the late 70s, my grandmother would set up camp on the 7th floor of F&N.

Those department stores were the dinosaurs of retail, contentedly chewing their cud of dollars while the retail meteor of big-box stores crash-landed in the suburbs.

I remember flying with my grandmother (this was a woman who became frightened when her husband exceeded 40 mph in the car) to Chicago from Toledo over Thanksgiving when I was 5 or 6. We went to Marshall Field's, and they had a monstrous tree 3 - 4 stories tall. We sat next to the tree (after I fretted about our initial table assignment quite a ways away from it) and I ate some signature confection that was something like a snowman made of marshmallow and ice cream.

My grandmother was to a department store as an oil company geologist is to an untapped oil field. She could penetrate the obfuscating soils and flora of retail misdirection and drill directly into the dome-rock gusher of what she was seeking. This is a wondrous talent that died with her generation.

Thanks - this post tweaked a lot of my dormant neural nodes.

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 8:27 PM  

Phil, What a great comment! And about your grandmother--LOL. I was just a kid from Montana when we moved here (though we had been in KC for 5 years but their downtown was dead) so the huge downtown F&N was just fantastic to me.

When I was a little girl in MT, at Christmas time, we would get a box of chocolate candy in a dark green box with the Marshall Fields logo from one of my Dad's military buddies who lived in Chicago. Then when we moved here and I discovered Frangos were the same candy, it became our Christmas treat from then on. I send them to my relatives in Montana still.

By the way, I was at Third and Columbia for 6 yrs from 1979-1985 so I am certain we must have passed by one another.

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 8:09 AM  

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