Department stores

Every major American city once had a home-grown department store, and most of them are now defunct.  Seattle had the beloved Frederick and Nelson (where I worked in the flower shop) and The Bon Marche (where I wasted many hours at excellent sales.) Before my time in Seattle, there was Rhodes Department Store, a hat and gloves shopping destination with a library and free lunchtime organ concerts. You could buy anything you wanted on the seven floors, and there were hundreds of employees eager to provide courteous personal service.  Well, now we get Macy's.

I just finished a Rhodes Department Store finding aid at MOHAI.  It covers a collection of historical photographs documenting Rhodes stores in Seattle, generally simple stuff to describe.  In this case, sorting out the rise and fall of the stores and family politics turned into a complicated story, and I wallowed around in a happy research hole for several months.  And this is why I love working at MOHAI-- fascinating projects, and no one stands over my shoulder saying, "Hey, how about that finding aid?" What a pleasure.

These are Seattle Rhodes shoppers buying citrus fruit at a special sale in about 1925. And what's a department store without a scary Santa?   Clicking this link will take you to more photographs in the MOHAI collection.