Eight

SHOPPING

Julius Thurin opened his first store in Louisville, Ohio, in 1878. Thurin’s moved to Canton in 1918 and became a prominent home-furnishings store in the community. Originally located at the northeast corner of Piedmont Avenue NE and Second Street, Thurin’s moved to 524 North Market Avenue in 1925. In later years, the company opened additional locations at 137 Sixth Street NE, Country Fair Shopping Center at 4105 West Tuscarawas Street, and Hillsdale Shopping Center at 2821 Whipple Avenue. The Market Avenue location was razed in 1977, along with Loew’s Theatre, to make room for the Canton Towers apartments.

Livingston’s was located on the bottom floors of the Renkert building on the corner of Market Avenue and Third Street NE, where the Kenny Bros. Store was originally located. The 10-story building is constructed of four-inch paving brick and has a footprint of 42 by 200 feet. A 1963 Livingston’s advertisement in a Player’s Guild program for the production of Guys & Dolls said, “When you shop here . . . you’ll find it most rewarding to browse around our store without distraction and in pleasant surroundings.” The store offered an interior-decorating service to customers at no charge.

Vicary’s was a leading clothing store for Canton’s fashionable men for many years. When the Union Clothing Manufacturing Company folded in 1891, C.N. Vicary was appointed liquidation administrator and came to Canton from LeRoy, New York. He and a partner opened the small tailor shop and men’s store shown here at 38 and 40 North Market Avenue. As the business grew, Vicary’s moved to 228–234 North Market Avenue, where the Parisian was later located, and then relocated to 314 North Market Avenue. Vicary’s moved to Belden Village in 1970.

Stern & Mann, Canton’s legendary department store, opened in 1887 when Max Stern and Henry Mann bought Winterhalter Millinery Store on South Market Avenue. When they first opened, Stern & Mann sold mostly hats but also stocked ribbons, buttons, fabric, and some dressmaking supplies. The clerks were stationed behind the counters and did not roam the floor helping customers. Stern & Mann moved to a colossal new building on the corner of Cleveland Avenue and Tuscarawas Street in 1925, shown here. Four generations of the family operated the store before the doors finally closed in the early 1990s.

J.C. Penney leased space at 201 North Market Avenue in 1933. The department-store chain started in Kemmerer, Wyoming, in 1902, and by 1943 there were locations in every state. During McKinley’s time, the building housed a department store called Zollinger’s. J.C. Penney became an anchor store of the new Mellett Mall (now Canton Centre) in 1965, where it is still located today.

Kobacker’s opened at 501 North Market Street in 1935. The building had been built by Frank Case in 1920 and originally housed the Klein-Heffleman Company and Ross stores. At first, Kobacker’s leased the building, but in 1941 the department store’s owners decided to purchase it. Kobacker’s carried everything from women’s fashions and menswear to curtains, rugs, and blankets for the home.

Maurice Rapport, a Russian immigrant, owned a chain of women’s clothing stores in Western Pennsylvania and Northeast Ohio. The Canton store was located at 500 North Market Avenue. Rapport also owned the Town Shop, located on the first floor of the Onesto Hotel. A 1963 Rapport’s advertisement in a Player’s Guild program featured the slogan “Fashions for Daytime, Playtime and Datetime.”

Located at 301 Market Avenue South, Simpson’s Cigar Store was a popular gathering place for almost 60 years, particularly among sports enthusiasts. When it closed in 1950, Simpson’s housed Stark County’s only sports ticker. Customers could check the store’s large scoreboard for whatever sport was in season, from inning-by-inning baseball scores to college-football results. The store also carried unusual brands of tobacco. Its founder, W.R. Simpson, was quite fond of creative marketing stunts and once purchased a cow that he tied up outside his store in the heart of downtown Canton.

Frank Winfield Woolworth opened his first successful store in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1879. Woolworth’s, the first “5 and 10 cent” department store, grew to over 3,000 stores across the globe. Canton’s first Woolworth store opened at 221 South Market Avenue in 1913. Three years later, a second location opened at 221 North Market Avenue. Over the years, more stores opened across town, and Woolworth’s was one of the original tenants when Mellett Mall (now Canton Centre) opened in 1965. The original downtown store closed in 1960, and the mall location closed in 1994.

Shortly after Woolworth opened his first store, John G. McCrory opened his own “5 and 10” in Scottsdale, Pennsylvania, in 1882. McCrory originally spelled his name “McCrorey,” but he was so frugal he legally dropped the e in order to spend less money on lettering for his store signs. The chain also grew quickly, operating more than 1,000 stores at the height of the chain’s popularity. McCrory’s was originally located at 227 North Market Avenue in Canton in 1925. In 1987, it opened in the old Kresge Department Store location at 301 North Market. It closed in 1995.

William Thomas Grant opened his first variety store in Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1906. When he died in 1972, there were almost 1,200 W.T. Grant stores nationwide. The Canton location opened in 1925 at 401 North Market Avenue.

Rhea Davis worked at Mary Lee Candies in 1939. At the time, there were two Mary Lee Candies locations—212 and 439 North Market Avenue—and they were part of a larger chain of candy stores with locations in Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Elyria, Lakewood, Painesville, Sandusky, Springfield, Toledo, and Warren, as well as Michigan and West Virginia. The store at 212 North Market Avenue appears in the Canton city directory from 1927 to 1939. The second location is listed from 1939 to 1948. (Courtesy of Dawn Walter.)

By the 1940s, downtown Canton was a bustling shopping district with lots of traffic (both cars and pedestrians). Dozens of stores—small and large—lined Market Avenue. One of the most popular shops in the above photograph was Shirley Shoes, located at 214 North Market Avenue. A 1955 advertisement in the sesquicentennial commemorative booklet for the beloved shoe store read, “Where matching beautiful shoes with accessories is a fine art.” (Above, courtesy of Jim McVay; below, courtesy of Al Longbrake.)

The Ohio-based department-store chain Halle Bros. began in Cleveland as a small fur shop and millinery in 1891. The Canton store opened in 1930 at 624 North Market Avenue. Halle’s is remembered fondly for its superior service and high-quality merchandise. The store operated in downtown Canton for 25 years and returned to Canton in 1970 when the chain opened a location at Belden Village. That store was closed in 1982.

The first Polsky’s store sold dry goods in Akron in 1885. After a traveling salesman sold the owners some ready-to-wear women’s skirts, the store became a leading source for women’s fashions. Polsky’s opened its Canton stores in 1955, purchasing the Halle Brothers locations in downtown Canton and at the Country Fair Shopping Center. Another location later opened at Mellett Mall, but in 1978 all four Polsky’s stores—downtown Canton, Mellett Mall, Akron, and Fairlawn—closed. (Courtesy of Jim McVay.)

Many Cantonians have fond memories of the elaborate window displays in downtown department stores during the holidays. This child stares in wonderment at the array of Christmas gifts in Polsky’s window in the early 1960s. (Courtesy of Al Longbrake.)

Mellett Housing Project was named after newspaperman Don Mellett, who was gunned down in his driveway in 1926 for exposing organized crime. The project was a series of barracks-like apartment buildings constructed by the federal government in the 1940s as homes for workers at the Westinghouse Naval Ordnance Plant. The homeowners joined together to develop a shopping center. In 1963, they announced plans for a 300,000-square-foot mall on 33 acres on the southwest corner of West Tuscarawas Street and Whipple Avenue SW. J.C. Penney and O’Neil’s signed on to become anchor stores, and the mall opened in 1965. (Courtesy of Jim McVay.)

Originally, the mall consisted of six separate buildings in an open-air configuration. A roof was added later. Original stores included Gray Drugs, Betty’s Beauty Salon, Cleveland Fabric Shops, Norman’s Shoes, Sherwin-Williams, Troy Laundry and Dry Cleaning, Woolworth’s, London’s Candies & Ice Cream, and Montgomery Ward. Over the next few years, several downtown department stores—including Harvard Clothing Store and Rapport’s—opened satellite stores in the Mellett Mall. Though many reaffirmed their commitment to downtown, it was becoming clear that the future of the retail industry would be concentrated in the growing suburbs. The name of the mall was changed to Canton Centre in 1981. (Courtesy of Jim McVay.)

Plans for a new shopping mall on the outskirts of town in Jackson Township were announced on June 23, 1966, with Higbee’s and Sears as its anchor stores. Although some were worried about the effects on the downtown shopping district, plans for Belden Village Mall went ahead, and it opened on October 1, 1970.