Dead and Defeunct retail thread

[DavidDHetzel 1,816]

Recent I've been developing a fascination for retail history and historical retail branding, so I thought I'd create a thread where we could all post our favorite retail stores and brands that no loner exist.

now keep the posting of stores to one a day, but feel free to make unlimited comments

 

MILLER & RHOADES

Miller and Rhoades was a Department Store that had its roots in Richmond,VA's bustling Broad Street, eventually the company had struck out to several other major cities in the area (Such as Raleigh, Lynchburg, Roanoke), unfortunately by time the 80s hit the company was struggling and was eventually bought out by the May company and several stores were rebranded as Hecht's

Feel free to post what you want about dead and dying retail!
 

[nos.17 5,264]

Oh my gosh! How about that timing! I was just yesterday looking through some of Bobbo662's old readmes and (I never realized this until now), in the process, created a series of bankrupted department & grocery chains in North America.

I copy verbatim:

This is part of my series of bankrupted department chains that I have created for your Sims to relive which what we had experienced in North America.  Ames, Zayre, Woolco, Bradlees, and now Caldor, all have been swallowed up by the effects of Sam Walton's, Wal-Mart.

Caldor 
Headquarters - Norwalk, Connecticut
President - Warren D. Feldberg
Employees - 22,000
Stores - 145
Founded - 1954
Closed - 1999

February of 1999, New England lost another major regional retail chain of store.
Caldor, the company founded by Carl and Dorothy Bennett in 1951, turned to dust.
This was the end of the sales pitch for the 4th largest retail chain in America.
22,000 workers took home pink slips for their trouble.  145 stores in nine states
were put up for lease.  

Caldor got it's name from combining the first names of the Bennetts, Carl & Dorothy and
opened one small store in Port Chester, New York.  The Bennetts sold Caldor to Associated
Dry Goods Corp., and in 1986, ADG merged with the May Department Stores Co.  In 1991, 
Caldor went public and grew into a company with 2.5 billion in annual sales.  Though in 
recent years, Caldor failed to distinguish itself from other regional discounters, like
Ames Department Stores and could not compete with retail giants like Wal-Mart, Kmart and
Target.

[Sabretooth78 808]

You could write a book (and I'm sure somebody has) about the number of local and regional chains around Buffalo and the Great Lakes region general.

Two biggies I remember growing up that fit best into the department store model:

Hills

Gold Circle

These stores were nothing to write home about (nor are they any favorites); Hills used to have in the front/vestibule area of their stores this hot dog bar kind of thing that (IMHO) always smelled terrible.  Both were fairly average-type department stores before the advent of the big box Targets and S**t-Marts.  Of the instance of these stores closest to me, the Gold Circle sat abandoned for a good time before being repurposed as a New Era Park indoor baseball/softball training center while the entire Hills plaza just down the road still lives on in a sort of zombie state with several low-end retailers and anchored by a Grossman's Bargain Outlet (and having recently lost a neighboring supermarket).

There were several other brands in the area both before and during my time but these are the two I remember the most.  Now you just have the homogenized choice of 2 or 3 chains - just about everywhere in the country for that matter.  Run-down stores or run-down choice.  Take your pick.

[citycowboy 183]

[DavidDHetzel 1,816]

@nos.17 I recently got most of those files too (probably from the same person ).

 

There's just so many retail I would love to see in SC4 dead or alive.

 

Here's one of my favorite stores from when I was younger.

The Great Train Store

 

 

 

[Morgan R 156]

Huzzah for Miller & Rhoads! I'm a native of Richmond, Virginia, so they have a fond place in my heart. I was one of the last of a generation that grew up with the "Legendary Santa" still at the flagship store downtown. He was said to be the one true department store Santa, all other's were mere helpers (so much so that my mother as a child was driven some 80 miles from the next city over to see him). Their Broad Street building still exists, and has been converted to condos.

The architectural historian in me, though, has to gravitate to another great chain to come out of Richmond:

BEST Products

(see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_Products )

The owner, Sydney Lewis, together with his wife Frances, was a huge modern art and decorative arts enthusiast and patron (their collection is now a part of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, which has decorated the cafe with a remaining store sign and panels from one of the buildings.) This passion for the arts extended to their stores, for which BEST comissioned a number, the most notable by James Wines/SITE, whose brand of post-modernism and deconstructivism was self-dubbed as "de-architecture". With these works, SITE successfully lampooned the idea of the "big box store" long before that concept had totally taken over in the form we know it today.

Almost all former stores are either demolished or stripped of their artistic charms, BUT one survives relatively intact in Henrico County, Virginia, now used as a church. This photo shows how it appeared WHILE IN OPERATION, with an overgrown false facade behind which was a series of trees, giving it the appearance of a post-apocalyptic store reclaimed by nature:

 

With such theatrical displays, the stores acted as their own advertising, causing those in white-bread American suburbia to do double-takes. There are so many others, so I suggest you check it out. A recent retrospective article (late 2015) gives a further rundown (pun intended): http://www.archdaily.com/778003/the-intersection-of-art-and-architecture-the-best-products-showrooms-by-site-sculpture-in-the-environment

Incidentally, their postmodern headquarters building is also still standing in northern Henrico County, Virginia.

[Odainsaker 2,137]

George Dullnig Dry Goods Department Store and Wholesale Grocery

101 Alamo Plaza, San Antonio, Texas

 

The Dullnig family emigrated in 1853 from Lienz, Austria, to San Antonio, where young the Dullnig children sold fruits on the streets.  By his teenage year, the enterprising Georg Dullnig would first open a cobbler shop, which brought in enough money for Dullnig and his brothers Christian and John to create a grocery store in 1864.  Austin architect James Murphy designed the grocer's handsome new building known as the Dullnig Block, which opened in 1883 on Alamo and Commerce Streets at the gateway to Alamo Plaza.  The prominent cupolas offered panoramic views of the city, reached by one of San Antonio's earliest installed elevators--a lavish local attraction in itself complete with liveried operator.  The block also contained a hydraulically powered commercial coffee mill and, in 1894, George Dullnig's Arctic Soda Fountain.  Though Dullnig himself admitted to never having received formal schooling, the third floor of his store building was leased as a business college.

Dullnig branched out into banking and railroading, and soon acquired a 1,000-acre ranch six miles south of the city from which he hoped to grow a fruit and corn farm to supply his core grocery business.  Attempts beginning in 1886 to drill fresh water wells for irrigation failed when even shallow wells instead disappointingly found oil and gas--one of the earliest recorded oil and gas productions in Texas.  Dullnig was a few years too early to reap the benefits that modern industrialization and mass production of automobiles had on the infant petroleum industry.  Though the fruit farm failed, the land with its gases and hot sulfur waters instead became a health resort and source for bottled mineral water.

After Dullnig died in 1908, his grocery business came apart and his store was acquired by rival Joske's, who leased the Dullnig Building to German-immigrant Saul Wolfson, who relocated his grocery and dry goods business from Main Plaza to Alamo Plaza in 1911.  By 1920, Saul Wolfson's Dry Goods Company Store was bought by rival merchant J. M. Frost, who ran it as The Fair until 1930.  Street widening projects forced the removal of the corner cupolas and shortened the façade...eventually, the mansard roof, sidewalk canopy, and stone cornices were removed and the red brick covered in white plaster and a false façade for a more "modern" look.  Postwar flight of the population to suburbs drained urban retailers out of the downtown cores, and the Dullnig Building was slated to be demolished in 1978.  However, it was instead saved and renovated using federal incentive programs and state grants, though the new investors sadly opted not to restore the fancy cornice or cupolas.  Today, the building houses a McDonalds and a Five and Dime General Store on the ground floor, while the Riverwalk Vista Inn hotel occupies the upper floors.

(By Raul's Photography on Panoramio)

I really wish they had at least restored the sidewalk canopy and the cornices rather than used the flat trompe-l'œil cartoon on the roofline.  The domed cupolas would have been nice too.  Maybe real old-timey cokes and "Dullnig's Iron Water" from George Dullnig's Arctic Soda Fountain instead of another cheesy McDonald's as well.  Perhaps someday...

Interestingly, the restored red brick façade makes a popular backdrop for the fiery red La Antorcha de la Amistad, "The Torch of Friendship" sculpture gifted to the city of San Antonio by the government of Mexico and created by Mexican sculptor Sebastián:

I admit, I am not a fan of the traffic circle.  As this is a gateway location for city sights, I would make this a gateway plaza....with cupolas!

 

[TekindusT 3,809]

Somebody, during the early 1990s, had the brilliant idea of constructing a small department store very close to the market of my hometown and call it "Downtown". Back in these days, the amount of population who knew what "Downtown" means in Spain was... limited, so to say.  Also look at the contrast between the glass facade and the rest of the surrounding buildings. It is just out of any proportion for such a town.

My few childhood memories of this building are quite depressing. The top floor never had a tenant at all. If I recall well, the "Dinosaurio" store (logo on the first pic) was a toy shop on the first floor, but never bought anything on it. The corner department (center, second pic) was a newsagents, I bought a comic book once, when I was around 7 years old. The rest of the active parts of the department store occupied by a legal consultancy office, a depressing café where nobody went to and the supermarket (first pic) which was the only successful department.

After the demise of the commercial activity in the late 1990s, the squatters took over the ground floor, and there were some serious police raids. The building still stands there nowadays, and meanwhile the supermarket is still successful, nobody will tear this building down.

[Odainsaker 2,137]

The Vogue

600 Navarro Street, San Antonio, Texas

 

One of San Antonio's elite fashion department stores where society ladies from the 1920s to 1950s could find the latest haute couture clothing.  Actually, the building dates from 1895, when it originally opened as the Peck Building housing Peck's Furniture, but by 1915 Peck's had become The Vogue.  San Antonio had even then already become a kind of quaint tourist trap for those looking for historic Texiana on the Great American Tour, and The Vogue with its entry on Houston Street, the city's prime retailing street, allowed travelers and locals alike in this provincial city to still keep up with the fashion trends.

The Vogue Building's ornamentation came off and a streamlined additional story was added in the 1940s, however, it couldn't keep up with the modern retail trend of suburban flight, and the fashionably expensive Vogue closed in the 1950s.  It stood vacant in the 1970s and 1980s, and its red brickwork and picture windows were all bleakly painted over in dull gray.  The Vogue Building has since been rehabilitated into downtown offices.

(I hoped we liked the BAT, wink wink!)

 

Because the following are interesting images in urban depopulation, here is a vintage postcard of the once shopping-focused Houston Street:

Before the advent of the suburban mall, Houston Street was the mall.  The middle-class anchors at the east and west ends of this street were Woolworth's on Alamo Plaza and the local Wolff & Marx Department Store in the Rand Building.  Ironically, a popular trend now in suburban shopping centers is for the "main street" outdoor mall, cartoonishly trying to replicate the once authentic urban retail streets we long ago abandoned.  Meanwhile, here was bustling Houston Street in 2014:

(By Jerry Lara at the San Antonio Express-News)

We can see the former store buildings of The Vogue, Walgreens, W. T. Grant, Kress, Frost Bros., and Neisner's, but no more pedestrian shoppers, and colorful flags and banners stuck to the sides of the buildings are not going to bring them back.  The population of the downtown core and inner ring that had disposable incomes had fled to the outer suburbs and now drive to the malls, leaving many of these old storefronts to stand empty or underutilized.  That trend continues, though the urbanist push today by city planners is to bring residents back to the downtown area by approving thousands-of-units-worth of mixed apartment developments, repurposed historic buildings, revitalized urban fabric infrastructure, and downtown capital projects.  The basket of local redevelopment initiates is being promoted as the "Decade of Downtown," though, if all goes well, it will probably be a decade before we see any real fruits from the effort.  Ironically, a long demanded component was just getting back a downtown grocery store where core residents could buy normal, everyday groceries and consumables at normal prices.

 

[SteveMSim 275]

Burdine's, for many decades, was called "The Florida Store" until it was swallowed with many other department store chains into Macy's.  The mid-to-upscale department store chain, which was a familiar anchor in Florida shopping malls, began as a carriage-trade shop in Bartow in 1896.   In the Twentieth Century, Burdines grew into a popular chain of department stores, decorated with palm trees in the center of the store, painted in pink and blue, and other subtropical colors and motifs. In 1956, the stores became a part of Federated Department Stores, Inc.  On January 30, 2004, it was renamed Burdines-Macy's, and a year later, on March 6, 2005, the name Burdines was dropped altogether, ending 109 years of operation.

In 1897, Henry Payne and William M. Burdine opened a dry goods store in the central Florida city of Bartow.  A year later, Payne left the company, and Burdine brought in his son, John, as a partner, resulting in the company's name change to W.M. Burdine and Son. In 1898, Burdine bought a block on South Miami Avenue, one block south of Flagler Street, in the then-fledgling community of Miami.  That year he opened the first W.M. Burdine & Son store at the location, just two years after the first people had arrived in the area from the newly completed Florida East Coast Railroad to found the city.  His tiny store held only a few shelves of clothing, which were primarily sold to construction workers, soldiers from the Spanish-American War, and the local Indigenous Miccosukees and Seminoles.  Burdine was amazed with the business that he did in Miami and decided to close his store in Bartow and move his operations base to Miami, changing the business name to Burdines and Sons.

By 1912, under the leadership of Roddy Burdine, Burdines had grown into a full-fledged department store and continued expanding. The land-boom of the 1920s helped the store launch its first branch in Miami Beach. As Florida's population soared, so did the growth of Burdines. Over the next thirty years, four other branches opened across the state of Florida.

In the late 1940s, Burdines opened an international mail order program that served Latin America. This resulted in a rise of popularity for the company, and military personnel stationed in Cuba would send a supply ship to Miami every 6 months with orders for Burdines.

In 1956, Burdines merged with Federated Department Stores, Inc. The financial support given by Federated allowed Burdines to push north and westward in the 1970s and 1980s, entering the markets in the cities of Orlando, Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Sarasota. In 1971, the Burdines store in Dadeland became the largest suburban department store south of New York.

In 1991, following the 1988 merger of Federated with the Allied Stores Corporation and subsequent bankruptcy reorganization, Burdines absorbed Allied's Tampa-based Maas Brothers/Jordan Marsh Florida division, converting many of the stores to Burdines and closing the rest. The conversion resulted in there being fifty-eight Burdines stores in the state of Florida.

From 1999 to 2000, Burdines experienced major growth, expanding into seven new locations and significantly renovating their existing stores with a lighter color palette and an upgraded decor. The most publicly anticipated stores that opened during this period were those located at the Florida Mall in Orlando, Aventura Mall in Aventura (a suburb of Miami), Citrus Park Town Center in Tampa, Oviedo Marketplace in Oviedo (a suburb of Orlando), and The Mall at Wellington Green in Wellington (a suburb of West Palm Beach).

Text is taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burdines

The flagship Burdine's in Miami:

Burdines in Florida Mall, Orlando:

The fate of some former Burdine's stores; a crew from Sonny Glasbrenner Inc. of Largo demolishes the former Burdines store at the former Clearwater Mall:

[DavidDHetzel 1,816]

@Morgan R I was sadly only 2 years old when Miller & Rhoades went under, but I do remember Best Stores, just not the one in Henrico, I remember the one off of Midlothian Turnpike.

 

@SteveMSim I lived in FL three years, I remember Burdine's!

[Odainsaker 2,137]

Liberty House

Ala Moana Shopping Center, Honolulu, Hawaii:

(By kalihikahuna74 (Ryukyu Khan or Okinawa808) on Flickr)

Check out all that modernist Hawaiian architecture!

Wiki tells us the Hawaiian retailer Liberty House began in 1849 as Hackfeld's Dry Goods by German trader Heinrich Hackfeld, who renamed his store B. F. Ehlers after his nephew, and who eventually partnered with a Paul Isenburg.  The Hackfeld family and company had interests in shipping, trade, and agriculture on the plantation islands, and their sugar business became the largest in Hawaii.  When the United States finally entered the First World War against Germany, the German Hackfeld's and Isenburg's vast sugar plantation properties in Hawaii were seized and sold to a new consortium of businessmen who renamed the enemy aliens' company into "American Factors," which was later shortened to "Amfac."  The Hackfeld's German-named B. F. Ehlers store was patriotically rebranded as "The Liberty House."  The Amfac business empire comprising the former Hackfeld properties was among top largest land owners in Hawaii and had become a local institution.  In 1966, Liberty House's flagship store would join next to the venerable Japanese retailer Shirokiya as anchors at the newly expanding Ala Moana center, the world's largest open-air mall and one of America's most profitable due to Honolulu's dominant international tourist industry.  By the end of the 1960s, Liberty House was rapidly expanding onto the U.S. mainland with as many as 40 total stores across the U.S. West Coast and new flagship store opening in San Francisco.

Eastridge Shopping Center, San Jose, California:

(By Patricks Mercy on Flickr)

The West Coast stores did not do as well as the stores back in Hawaii, and the '70s chic Eastridge location was replaced in 1984 by a Capwell Emporium and finally torn down in 2003.  Perhaps they expanded too fast too carelessly...in the late '70s, Liberty House was rethinking its mainland push, and the last mainland stores were sold off in 1984.  Liberty House eventually went bankrupt in 1998 and was bought in 2001 by Federated Department Stores, who turned the Liberty House stores over to Macy's.  Amfac's larger plantation fortunes had been slowly declining along with the island sugar industry and the company went bankrupt in 2002.

The flagship Liberty House store at Ala Moana was also converted into a Macy's, which in turn was ignominiously replaced in 2014 by a Wal-Mart.  For shame!  I can imagine going to Ala Moana for Shirokiya or Bloomingdale's, but for a Wal-Mart?  I hear times have changed and the economy has gotten much tougher there.

 

We used to always go to the one at Pearlridge Shopping Center in Aiea along the northern waterfront of Pearl Harbor.  Pearlridge is far less glamorous than Ala Moana, but I always thought it was cooler because the 1970s complex's two main phases are connected by a short monorail that flies over old Sumida watercress farm and gives views of the harbor from the mall's rooftops.  It's the only monorail in Hawaii and a local icon, and every kid at the mall demanded their parents let them ride the monorail:

(By Gregory Yamamoto at The Honolulu Advertiser)

 

After Liberty House was bought by Macy's, the signs were quickly changed, though if you look carefully, you can still spot the traces:

(By army.arch on Flickr)

 

[mrsmartman 200]

The Downtown Seattle Woolworth's store, located at 3rd Avenue and Pike Street, in 1986. The store opened in 1940 and remained in operation until January 1994. After a period of vacancy, the building became a Ross Dress for Less store in late 1995. This view is looking south on 3rd Avenue, and three Metro Transit trolleybuses are northbound.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Downtown_Seattle_Woolworth%27s_in_1986.jpg

[Odainsaker 2,137]

I always think of Woolite detergent and mothballs when I think of Woolworth's, but then, cheap consumer household goods was the whole point of the five-and-dime store.  I admit, while in touristy Midtown, Manhattan, the most important stores for me were not Macy's or Tiffany's, but the Walgreens on Times Square and the Kmart by Penn Station for the basic personal hygienic items.

 

Here is the San Antonio's Woolworth Building, which opened in 1921 at 321 Alamo Plaza on the corner of Alamo and Houston Streets:

This was a choice site joining the city's busiest plaza with the east gateway onto Houston Street, which was at the time the city's primary retail street.  Nowadays, Houston Street is a lot quieter.  Previously on the site was the Maverick Bank Building, whose five stories once made it the tallest building in San Antonio when it was built in 1884.  More interestingly, the new Woolworth's entry on Alamo Plaza directly faces the historic Alamo site itself, on of the great tourist traps of America.

In the 1944 shot above taken from atop the Woolworth Building you can see the famous Alamo and its gardens, the Alamo's memorial cenotaph, rival retailer Joske's in the right background, and even a War Bonds billboard in front of the Shrine to Texas Liberty calling on civilians to buy war bonds to support the war against Japan.  Had the Alamo Heroes Monument been built instead of the current cenotaph, this view would be taken up by a corner of the proposed outlandish tower's giant pedestal.

Liberty ironically loomed over the Woolworth's on Alamo Plaza again on March 16, 1960, during the Civil Rights movement, when the lunch counter at this Woolworth's became the first lunch counter in the South to peacefully and voluntarily integrate, the first victory in a nationwide anti-segregationist sit-in protest launched by university students originally targeting the Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.  It was hoped the quiet resolution worked out in San Antonio by city officials, business owners, church leaders, and civil rights activists to stave off a threatened San Antonio sit-in protest and boycott would offer a peaceful, alternative example of desegregation for the deeper South, and many retailers and restaurants across Texas and in other big Southern cities soon also began voluntarily desegregating.

Heaven and Earth Overturned--blacks could now order at a white restaurant, sit amidst the white patrons, and eat white peoples' food:

Sadly, other parts of the South were less amenable, and only a few years after this small victory, Mississippi would be burning.

San Antonio has a relatively small African-American population, making up only 7% of the population in this is historically minority-majority Hispanic city, however, San Antonio does now annually boast among the largest Martin Luther King, Jr. Day marches in the U.S.  This year's march this past January was expected to have 200,000 participants, but estimates afterwards put the number of people at 300,000.  San Antonio's first African-American mayor, Ivy Taylor, was only elected last year and was originally temporarily appointed in 2014 to replace Julián Castro, who was appointed to President Barack Obama's cabinet and who is rumored to be Hillary Clinton's lead pick as vice presidential running mate.

After Woolworth's closed in the 1990s, the building was leased for a Ripley's Haunted Adventure haunted house and a Tomb Rider 3D Amusement Center and Arcade.  Neighboring buildings house a Guinness World Records Museum, a Ripley's Believe It or Not! Auditorium, and a Ripley's Believe It or Not! Wax Museum.

Many feel that these amusement theme park uses do not fit in with the expected solemnity of a national historic battle site and that they add to the tourist trap atmosphere.  Others argue that trying to stamp out free commerce in order to enshrine the hallowed solemnity of liberty in the city's most crowded downtown meeting place is utterly, hopelessly futile.  Still others want to actually demolish or relocate the historically preserved commercial buildings,  the Crockett, Palace, and Woolworth Buildings, which sit on land once within the outer walls of the former Alamo mission compound, so as to recreate the Alamo battle site as it once was in 1836 as an urban version of Gettysburg National Military Park.  Yet, still others want to demolish all the surrounding historically preserved commercial buildings so as to make a monumental modern plaza in triumphant scale.

With the both last summer's designation of the Alamo as UNESCO World Heritage Site and the 2014 donation of rock star Phil Collins's multi-million dollar private collection of Alamo historical artifacts under the condition that they be placed in an as-yet-unbuilt, $100 million Alamo Museum, the pressure is on for City and Texas leaders to finally do something with the disorganized site.  The state has already made the first move, first taking direct control of the Alamo site from its non-profit caretakers, and last fall outright purchasing the three Alamo-facing commercial buildings, including the former Woolworth Building.  It is not known what State intends, with many preservationists fearing coming demolitions and pointing out the need to remember its Civil Rights history, but most watchers actually expect that the three preserved commercial buildings will themselves be retrofitted to become the future Alamo Museum for the Phil Collins's Alamo Collection:

If this plays out, the former Woolworth Building on Alamo Street could someday permanently house Jim Bowie's knife, Davy Crockett's rifle, and Santa Anna's sword!

Interestingly, the biggest upsurge in international visitors as a result of the Alamo's UNESCO World Heritage Site designation is expected to come from Japan and China, whose museum visit to a Spanish-Mexican-Texian historical site will be in an African-American Civil Rights historical site.  I ironically hope that the 1944 picture of the Alamo from atop the Woolworth Building is itself displayed inside the museum...War Bonds against Japan and all!

 

_________________________

 

EDIT:  The Rivard Report on March 30th published an interesting commentary on redeveloping Alamo Plaza and it's impact on surrounding buildings such as the Woolworth Building:  "Re-creation vs. Real Life, Creating a Balanced Interpretation for Alamo Plaza."

Egads, I didn't know the City had once considered demolishing this stretch of buildings just to make a giant parking lot.  I do like that the article points out that a huge parking garage stands behind this wall of buildings, and if these buildings are demolished for some misbegotten Alamo recreation, then instead of having historically preserved, 19th-Century façades charmingly facing the Alamo, we will end up having the stark backside of a concrete parking garage facing the Alamo.  Rivard also mentions that State's purchase of the buildings and the Alamo's redevelopment is being spearheaded by Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush, eldest son of Jeb, nephew of Dubya, grandson of Bush Sr., and the future political face of the Bush dynasty now working his way up the ladder.  He has avoided indicating what the ultimate fates of the buildings will be.

[Chevsapher 0]

Here's a website you guys might like... http://www.deadmalls.com/

[RRetail 7,912]

Very neat topic you got going on here. 

[citybuilder234 37]

Where's Toys"R"Us? That's another defunct retail store.

[Sniffeh 121]

There used to be a store chain in the South called Fred's. We had one in the town I live in in 2018. But it closed, and I heard they were closing a lot of the stores. I don't know if they're still around.