Sunday, May 25, 2008

Dayton's (later Marshall Field & Company, currently Macy's), 700 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Exterior view circa 1977. (Robert Hendrickson, from The Grand Emporiums: The Illustrated History of America's Great Department Stores)

2 comments:

  1. Must...get...this...book!

    Do you actually have this one, Steven? If so, do you recommend it? Maybe the library here has it...I'll have to check on that. A couple others on the Amazon page looked intriguing as well.

    Come on, everybody...sing it with me:

    "You're gonna make it after....."

    Wait -- was that in front of Dayton's or Donaldson's? I can't remember offhand....

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  2. I have this book...and I love it :-)

    A little backstory on the book...when I was little, my local public library had a copy, and I checked it so many times, it was almost like it was mine. I eventually outgrew the Franklin County Library's retail history section, but I never forgot the book, along with several others that eventually became part of my collection.

    Fast forward to now. I had this book on my Amazon.com wishlist for about three years and didn't buy it because I got burnt by a Marketplace seller several years ago (they never sent the book) and never fully recovered. Still, I always look to see if a book is cheap enough to take the risk.

    One of the sellers that had the hardcover version was a retailer called strandbooks, which turned out to be the Strand Bookstore in New York. If you're near Union Square and you love books...YOU MUST GO THERE!

    Since I go to New York all the time these days, I decided to pop in and see if they had it last week...and they did. It's like Christmas in May! Rereading it has been a pleasure, and the vintage pictures are amazing.

    The MTM title montage was filmed in front of both Dayton's and Donaldson's in Minneapolis. The Dayton's sign is visible in the first part and Donaldson's "OPEN TONIGHT" neon sign is visible a little later.

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