By Paul A. Tenkotte
Special to NKyTribune
In last week’s installment, we reviewed the establishment of Shillito’s dry goods store in Cincinnati in 1830, the beginning of a 188-year lineage that ends with the closing of Macy’s downtown Cincinnati store in 2018.
In 1878, Shillito’s completed its new downtown Cincinnati store at Seventh and Race Streets. With founder John Shillito’s death the following year, his three sons -— Wallace, Gordon and Stewart -— carried on the business. They officially incorporated it in the State of Ohio in 1882, and in 1899, Stewart purchased the shares of his two brothers.
Shillito’s, Seventh and Race Streets, Cincinnati, circa late 1920s. Courtesy, Lawrence Brand Collection, Kenton County Public Library, Covington.
The John Shillito Company was an innovator and a trendsetter. Shillito’s catered to its customers, delivering merchandise to their homes via wagons pulled by beautiful Palomino horses. The department store even telegraphed customer orders for goods from Europe. Stewart’s son, John Shillito II, meanwhile, attended Harvard University. Graduating in 1911, he joined the family business.
In 1913, James Griffith and Sons undertook a massive renovation of Shillito’s downtown store. As part of what appears to have been a fireproofing plan, the six-floor open rotunda, or atrium, was enclosed. In turn, the floored-in areas of the old atrium provided more sales floor space. Six new elevators were installed. Quite possibly, it was at this time that the store completed a seventh-floor addition to the original six-floor building.
Perhaps the most popular attraction of the 1913 remodeling was the opening of a bargain basement store. Called the “Low-Price Basement Store,” it had its own direct entrances on both Seventh Street and Shillito Place (formerly called George Street). In a November 1913 newspaper advertisement, the store boasted that “Each week shows a marked increase in sales; the popularity of our Basement Store is growing; the bargains are being appreciated; practically every day something new is being added to the bargain list; our Basement Store is a complete organization within itself” (Cincinnati Post, November 18, 1913, p. 5).
Shillito’s interior, downtown Cincinnati, circa 1928. Courtesy of Towne Properties.
By 1920, Shillito’s led downtown Cincinnati department stores in total sales. However, in the next seven years, it slipped to fourth place. The irony of the decline was in vast contradiction to the prosperity of the Roaring Twenties. Something was wrong at Shillito’s. Indeed, the 1920s brought great challenges to the department store. In 1925, Stewart Shillito died, and his son, John Shillito II, inherited the position of presidency, as well as the store’s problems.
In June 1928, sixteen months before the Stock Market Crash of October 1929, the Lazarus family of Columbus, Ohio purchased the John Shillito Company. In the case of both department store families, the grandchildren finalized their signatures to the ending of one era and the beginning of another. John Shillito II and his four sisters, grandchildren of the store’s 1830 founder, sold the entire operation to the four Lazarus brothers -— Simon, Fred, Robert, and Jeffrey. They were grandsons of Simon Lazarus, a Jewish immigrant from Germany who established a dry goods store in Columbus in 1851.
The Shillito family completely departed from the family business in 1928. The Lazarus family wisely retained Shillito’s valued store employees, as well as its cherished retailing name. Jeffrey, the youngest of the Lazarus brothers, moved to Cincinnati to manage operations of Shillito’s.
The Lazarus family revitalized Shillito’s. Soon after purchasing it in 1928, they remodeled the 250,000-square-foot facility, adding thousands of more square footage to their sales floors. They moved warehousing to a new building they purchased on East Eighth Street near Broadway, and they expanded the sales space of the store to include the sixth floor.
The four Lazarus brothers. Source: Cincinnati Post, July 30, 1928, p. 10.
The sixth floor, formerly used exclusively for offices, became the new location of the gift, housewares, and toy departments. In fact, a new section of the toy department opened, called “Jungleland.” It contained “animated toy animals,” which the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune of November 11, 1928, predicted would be “destined to prove a delight to thousands of greater Cincinnati children.” In addition, the Lazarus family added 6.5 miles of carpeting throughout the store.
All floors of the store were remodeled, and the third floor, featuring women’s clothing, added “forty attractive fitting rooms,” containing “full length mirrors so arranged that the customer can get a full view of herself, front and back.” The second floor featured a “trousseau room,” where the customer could “rest in comfort while selections are brought to her for her inspection.” The fifth-floor furniture department included a fully furnished model apartment (Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, November 11, 1928).
The Lazarus family understood the power of modern merchandising and customer service. They established a “school of salesmanship” for their sales staff, instructing them that “the customer must be satisfied,” even if that entailed “a sacrifice or loss to the store.” A new “hospital room,” staffed by a registered nurse, was opened. And as part of their new merchandising efforts, the Lazarus family installed a modern large corner display window at Seventh and Race Streets, similar to the type becoming popular at extravagant department stores like Marshall Field’s in Chicago (Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, November 11, 1928).
By the mid-1930s, Shillito’s had regained its number one sales position among downtown department stores. In 1934, it installed air conditioning at a cost of $100,000. Yet the largest addition to the store was still to come — during the heart of the Great Depression.
In 1936-37, Shillito’s completed a mammoth $4 million addition to its downtown store. A giant new wing adjoining the original Seventh and Race Streets building carried the store an entire city block, eastward to Seventh and Elm Streets. There, near the intersection of Seventh and Elm Streets, a 300-car parking garage anchored the corner. The garage was of the so-called “new type ramp construction,” something we are all very familiar with today. In the 1930s, however, ramps were a novel approach, as many earlier parking garages utilized large elevators to bring automobiles up and down to different floors (Cincinnati Post, October 21, 1937, p. 4).
George F. Roth, Jr., a Northern Kentucky architect and member of the architectural firm of Potter, Tyler & Martin of Cincinnati oversaw much of the project. Roth designed the new Art Deco Indiana limestone façade that covered and unified the old and new buildings, with its horizontal banding, Art Deco motifs, bronze doors, and stylish bronze and nickel marquee. The grand opening was held in October 1937.
Next Week: World War II and the postwar period bring great changes to Shillito’s.
We want to learn more about the history of your business, church, school, or organization in our region (Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky). If you would like to share your rich history with others, please contact the editor of “Our Rich History,” Paul A. Tenkotte, at tenkottep@nku.edu. Paul A. Tenkotte, PhD is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Public History at NKU.
Shillito’s interior, downtown Cincinnati, circa 1937. Courtesy of Towne Properties.
The sleek new Art Deco façade of Shillito’s, unifying the old and new buildings, dated from 1937. Photo by Paul A. Tenkotte, 1985.
Art Deco elevators in Shillito’s dated from the 1930s. Photo by Paul A. Tenkotte, 2018.
