Remembering Robinsons-May

Robinsons-May is one of the ten regional department store nameplates that Federated Department Stores will be phasing out in 2006. Robinsons-May consists of about 60 stores located in Southern California, Arizona, and Nevada.

Reaction to Robinsons-May's demise was pretty muted here in Los Angeles. People here don't feel the same sort of connection to Robinsons-May that people in Chicago have to Marshall Field's. Perhaps that's because Robinsons-May itself is the product of a mega-merger by two out-of-town conglomerates (May and Associated Dry Goods), or because Macy's has already absorbed two other local chains, Bullock's and The Broadway.

I would like to take a few moments to remember Robinsons-May and its predecessors.

A. Hamburger & Sons was arguably the first department store to operate in Los Angeles. In 1908, the company relocated to the brand new 500,000-square-foot building pictured above. The store was located at Broadway and Eighth Street, on what was then considered the edge of Downtown. St. Louis-based May Company acquired Hamburger's in 1923 and renamed it The May Company of California soon after.

J.W. Robinson Company was another early department store in Los Angeles. In 1915, the company relocated to the brand new 400,000-square-foot building pictured above. The store was located at Grand Avenue and Seventh Street, several blocks away from the Broadway shopping district but closer than its competition to the fashionable areas then developing west of Downtown.

May Company and Robinson's both prospered in the 1920's, as did their primary rivals, Bullock's and The Broadway. All four companies operated gigantic stores in Downtown Los Angeles that drew customers from throughout Southern California.

By 1930, Los Angeles had already become the nation's most car-dependent and sprawling urban region. Not only were the department stores' customers moving further and further afield from Downtown, but the concentration of automobiles, street cars, and pedestrians in the central district resulted in intolerable congestion. It was obvious that if Downtown merchants didn't open more car-friendly locations in the suburbs, they'd lose business to competitors who did.

The first branch department store in Los Angeles was Bullock's Wilshire, pictured above. Opening in 1929 a few miles west of Downtown, Bullock's Wilshire included a parking lot for 375 cars and complemented the 740,000-square-foot flagship at Broadway and Seventh Street.

Though Bullock's was the first to "branch out," May Company was far more ambitious in its expansion plans.

May Company opened the brand new 270,000-square-foot store pictured above in 1939, dwarfing Bullock's Wilshire. The store was located at the northeast corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue in the "Miracle Mile" district near Beverly Hills. While May's Downtown store remained open, this store replaced it as the "flagship."

May Company continued to expand after World War II. The next branch store was planned for the northwest corner of Crenshaw Boulevard and Santa Barbara Avenue (now known as Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard) -- unlike the Wilshire store, this location was not in an established business district, but on the suburban fringe of rapidly-growing southwest Los Angeles.

The 200,000-square-foot May Company Crenshaw store opened in 1947. Interestingly, it opened directly across the street from a new branch of The Broadway, which was rapidly becoming May's main competitor. The fact that both stores prospered in such close proximity in a "fringe" location hinted at the future success of shopping malls with several competing "anchor" stores.

The Broadway developed a shopping center along with its branch store (May Company did not). This shopping center was a precursor to the modern mall -- its tenant mix was "integrated," meaning that the stores were hand-picked by Broadway to complement its store and provide a full breadth of shopping choices.

The first true shopping mall to open in the Los Angeles region was Lakewood Center, located in the iconic master-planned suburb of Lakewood that was being constructed on farm fields near Long Beach. When the first phase of the mall opened in 1952, it included a 350,000-square-foot May Company branch, pictured above.

In 1954, May Company decided to scrap plans for a branch near Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street in favor of a more suburban location in the rapidly-urbanizing San Fernando Valley. This drawing of the proposed 420,000-square-foot store at Valley Plaza demonstrates May's early recognition of the importance of access to Southern California's developing freeway network.

Robinson's was slower to expand during these years. Unlike May Company, Bullock's, and The Broadway, Robinson's didn't open any branch stores prior to World War II. After the war, Robinson's opened a branch in posh Beverly Hills but did not embark on an ambitious expansion program like its competitors did.

Robinson's and May Company were both units of national department store companies based elsewhere but they retained their local identities. Los Angeles was an important and growing market; after 1960, both chains anchored many of the new shopping malls popping up throughout Southern California and extended their market area from Santa Barbara in the north to San Diego in the south.

In 1986, May Department Stores, parent company of May Company of California, acquired Associated Dry Goods, parent company of Robinson's. May chose to maintain the chains' seperate identities, perhaps because Robinson's image and stores were generally more upscale than May's.

Associated Dry Goods had also been the parent company of Goldwaters, a chain with stores in Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico. In 1989, May decided to consolidate Goldwaters into other regional chains. Stores in New Mexico and Tucson, Arizona were rebranded as Foley's (the Tucson stores would later revert to Robinsons-May), while stores in Nevada were rebranded as May Company and stores in Phoenix, Arizona were rebranded as Robinson's.

In 1993, May merged its Robinson's and May Company divisions into Robinsons-May. The names on all the stores were changed, although Robinson's had never operated in Nevada and May Company had never operated in Phoenix. There was a fair amount of overlap between the two chains in Southern California, but no stores were closed initially, probably to protect market share against Bullock's and The Broadway. At many malls, Robinsons-May operated two stores, and continues to do so to this day. Some stores were eventually closed, however.

Robinsons-May seemed to have the upper hand in the Los Angeles area for awhile, but its two primary competitors were soon consolidated too. Federated Department Stores acquired R.H. Macy Co. in 1994 and decided to rebrand its Bullock's stores as Macy's the following year. In 1996, Federated acquired Broadway Stores (formerly known as Carter-Hawley-Hale) and The Broadway was also rebranded as Macy's. Robinsons-May and Macy's were now on more-or-less equal footing, co-anchoring many of the region's malls.

Where there once were four major "mid-line" department stores in Los Angeles, now there will be only one: Macy's. It's true that Robinsons-May won't be sorely missed -- the only thing still "local" about the stores these days is the name on the front -- the stores themselves have become so homogenized that there's little to distinguish them from May's other divisions or even from Macy's Southern California stores. However, I salute the decades of Los Angeles retailing history that the name represents. Goodbye, Robinsons-May!

Props to Richard Longstreth, author of "City Center to Regional Mall," which contains much of the information (and some of the photos) displayed in this post. The book is a must-have for anyone who's interested in the growth of Los Angeles.

Note: I will speculate on the effects of the Federated-May merger on the Los Angeles market (i.e. the numerous stores that will be closed) in an upcoming post. I will speculate on the effects of the merger on the Phoenix market in another upcoming post.