What Is Christmas Without the Department Store?

Robert David Sullivan writes that the Main Street America department store is a holiday tradition, a grand public crossroads for celebrating the season.

1 minute read

December 12, 2011, 8:00 AM PST

By Tim Halbur


Sullivan explains that department stores were always a rocky business for profitability, but they were central to public life in most towns, particularly at the holidays:

"[T]here was something about the downtown department store that can't be captured at a mall, let alone a website. It functioned as a crossroads of urban life, a quasi-public space that blurred class divisions and proudly saw itself as part of the city around it. The downtown department store strove to be a civic institution as grand and as original as an art museum or public library - an ambition hard to detect in their latter-day descendants at the malls or the chain discount stores that now drive holiday retailing."

Thanks to Robert David Sullivan

Sunday, December 11, 2011 in Boston Globe

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I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching. Mary G., Urban Planner

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Mary G., Urban Planner

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