When Downtown had Department Stores

  An online story attributed to a local radio station this spring could have been a model for click bait. Its headline: “25 stores that are no longer at Boise Towne Square Mall.”

  The story listed the 25 stores, which include Sears, Kinney Shoes, Radio Shack and other household names as well as some lesser known establishments – Justice, Gymboree, Cosset …

  The scope of the story was limited to Towne Square, but it isn’t the only place that’s lost stores through the years. Many downtown Boise stores suffered a similar fate.

  The old Sears Store on West State Street, for instance. It was a go-to place for everything from suits to power tools. When my wife and I were remodeling Maintenance Manor, a North Boise fixer-upper, I was practically on a first-name basis with the clerks in the tool department, buying everything from wrenches to a power saws there. 

  Fixer-upper doesn’t begin to describe Maintenance Manor’s appalling condition before we started working on it. My handyman father-in-law advised us to knock it down and have a new house built on the lot, wise counsel we completely ignored in favor of spending 13 years turning it into a livable  home. Sears supplied most of the tools to do it.

  My most vivid memory of the old Sears store, however, is of a hapless couple who had gone there to buy paint. As they negotiated a turn coming out of the parking garage a bit too fast, their Volkswagen flipped over. Multiple cans of paint opened, drenching the car and its occupants with Sears Best baby blue. They looked like drowned Smurfs. 

  That would never happen at the Towne Square Sears, of course. It doesn’t have a parking garage. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever left its parking lot wearing paint. 

  Virtually all of the city’s department stores were in or near downtown in those days – Sears, Falk’s, the Cash Bazaar, the Mode, Ltd., JCPenney and C.C. Anderson’s, which later became the Bon Marche.

  Falk’s – the name eventually was lengthened to Falk’s ID – was the setting for a harebrained prank played by a young boy yet to learn the difference between a funny practical joke and a foolish one. The young boy was yours truly. 

  I’d have been four or five then.  The Falk’s store’s elevator shaft had grates that you could peer through and see the elevator below. The elevator’s ceiling had an opening directly above the operator. It seems almost quaint now, but at the time you didn’t push buttons to go to  your destination floor. An operator did it for you. 

  Looking down the darkened shaft to the brightly lit opening above the operator, I succumbed to abject foolhardiness, got a mouthful of water from a nearby drinking fountain and spat it down the shaft. It took about two seconds for the moist and hopping mad operator to leave her post and find my mother.

  Mom was furious. Its was the angriest she ever was with me. It wasn’t just that her son had done something wrong, but that it had deeply embarrassed her. Our shopping trip ended immediately. She  marched me outside to her Nash Rambler and drove straight home. My punishments included a spanking and being grounded until I was 27.

  The Cash Bazaar was more of a low-cost department store. It was where my teenage rock group bought the sport coats that we wore onstage. They were made of vaguely foamy material in a blazing,  red-orange color that made fire-engine red seem soothing. They were hideous. We loved them.

  C.C. Anderson’s was the favorite store of every kid in town. This was  largely due to C.C. himself. Mr. Anderson roamed the store in his elegant, three-piece suits, its pockets filled with candy for the store’s youthful customers.

  Anderson’s was home to the Empire Room, a mezzanine-level restaurant that served some of the best burgers and flavored Cokes in town. A shopping trip with Mom to Anderson’s was an event never to be missed. Luckily, the store had escalators. No tempting elevators shafts with nearby drinking fountains.

  The Mode, Ltd., was the most upscale downtown store. It was the only store in town with a “tea room.” Women congregated there to drink tea, snack and exchange pleasantries. I don’t recall ever seeing men there. They wouldn’t have been excluded, but they wouldn’t have been especially comfortable, either. It was by and large a women’s domain.

  The rest of the store wasn’t. My father took me there during my teenage years to buy me a winter coat. He wanted it to be a good quality coat, and the Mode was known for high quality merchandise.I still have that coat all these years later. A gray Pendleton with a black, furry collar. A bit fancy for everyday winter wear, but perfect for occasions when you need to dress up.

  Now the department stores are concentrated at Towne Square. Longtime Boiseans will recall that city leaders tried for years to get the mall built downtown. When the dust settled, with Towne Square in the suburbs and a redeveloped downtown, a former mayor was asked what he thought of what downtown had become. He said it wasn’t what he’d envisioned, but it was okay.

  Okay and then some. It’s a great downtown. But a really great department store would make it even better.

Tim Woodward’s column appears every other Sunday in The Idaho Press and is posted on woodwardblog.com the following Mondays. Contact him at woodwardcolumn@gmail.com