The department store was not just a fixture of American life for most of the 19th and 20th centuries. It was American life. It was as much the norm to buy clothes and homegoods at one as it was to wear clothes and have a home.
Malls and the “big-box” store have largely replaced this necessity now. But on on this date 35 years ago, Jan. 28, 1984, the Macy’s Department Store in the LaSalle Building at Huron Street and Adams Street closed for good, making it the last department store to operate in downtown to this day.
When Blade photographer Herral Long snapped this picture on Apr. 10, 1969, of a new LaSalle’s store sign being erected by James Prottengeier and Ned Fairbanks, the wave had not yet crested. LaSalle’s in 1965 had just celebrated its 100th year of business. The store opened on Summit Street in 1865,. Then called LaSalle & Epstein's, it welcomed Toledo’s population of just 19,000 to come sample its wares in an advertisement in The Blade. The LaSalle Building was completed around 1917. Macy's had bought Lasalle's in 1924, but it did not operate as a Macy’s in name until 1981.
By 1994, the building had fallen into such disrepair that the 9th and 10th floors had to be razed and a new roof built just to save the building. The “roof” being replaced was a stretch of the term: The covering was so threadbare and in some cases simply nonexistent, that large swaths of moss were growing on the carpet on the 10th floor.
Several developers made false starts at the property — stop me if you have heard that before — but it finally was turned into fine downtown apartment living in the mid ‘90s. To this day, nothing significant has since taken hold in the vast expanse of the first floor where clocks, tops, smocks, and crocks were once sold. But at least no moss is growing inside.
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First Published January 28, 2019, 5:00 a.m.
