Defunct businesses

R

rwk

Active member
I was thinking of doing some reskins of defunct businesses, mostly from the Mid-Atlantic areas of the US. Levitz Furniture, JB Van Sciver Co. furniture, Lionel Kiddie City, Hess's, Bamberger's, Best, etc. using buildings from the DLS like davesnow buildings. His license allows reskins and reuploads. Those are businesses of my childhood from the 1970's to 1980's that unfortunately went bankrupt or liquidated or bought by another store. These would look great on routes set in the 1970's or 1980's. Van Sciver disappeared in 1984 and Bamberger's were converted to Macy's Dec. 1986. Hess's became Bon-Ton around 1994. Lionel Kiddie City closed 1993. Best was a showroom catalog store that also closed by the mid-90's.
 
I remember a lot of those. Remember Caldor, Ames or Bradlees? Well, whatever you decide to do would be appreciated.
 
There's also Zayers, Grants, Kresge's Department Stores (became Kmart later). Service Merchandise, FW Woolworth's, Anne and Hope, and others. Man there are so many that disappeared in the last 40 years or so.
 
I remember the A&S department store in Downtown Brooklyn. I thought that Hess is company that owns gasoline stations.
 
Here's a few more. I'm not sure how widespread they were though.

A&P

Grand Union

First National

Purity Supreme

Montgomery Ward

Jordan Marsh (now Macy's)

Bloomingdale's (now Macy's)

Gilchrist

Filene's Basement

John
 
I would like to do some old grocery stores like A&P and Albers. Now if only I can find some good color pictures I'll be firing up the old way back machine on some more of Dave's great series of stores. Converting old B/W into color is a long slow process, but can yield some very cool old stores.

Dave
 
Here is my first reskin, a J.B.Van Sciver furniture store that would have been in a suburban location. The stores basically closed in 1984, the last stores to close were in Whitehall, PA (formerly in downtown Allentown until 1980 or so) and Cherry Hill, NJ. The manufacturing was formerly in Camden, NJ. They made early American and country style furniture. Levitz is another furniture store that bit the dust, guess Raymour & Flanigan took over, lol. Just like how Home Depot and Lowes killed all the independent lumber stores, and Walmart killed the mom and pop stores. My mom bought bedroom furniture for me or my brother back in the 70's from Van Sciver, but we recently put the desk out at the road, because the longer drawer was falling off and wouldn't stay when glued. Someone took the desk. Hope it had a good home.
I wonder if it was worth anything because the company is defunct. We just gave it away for free. I took pics of the desk before it went to remember it by.

10697377_10204383140555255_9211733863592811370_o.jpg
 
That's a nice reskin.

Sorry to hear about the old desk. We too have old furniture we've gotten attached to. My bedroom set is over 65 years old. It's intact, although beaten up, but it's something we can't get at the same quality today.

Levitz used to have stores around my area. I wondered what happened to them because they disappeared around late 2007 or early 2008. I think they were originally headquartered in Florida.

John
 
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