(upbeat music) - [Man] Downtown was an absolute and utter adventure.

- For a child, it was Alice in Wonderland.

- And you'd see Cleveland in the distance.

It just looked like a dream city.

- It was because it was an event.

You went downtown, you spent the day downtown.

- As a little kid, everything was magical, everything was huge, everything was bigger than life.

- Downtown was the Land of Oz where you can, instead of seeing it on a screen, you could actually go into it.

- The minute you saw those big buildings looming in the distance, it was like Oz.

- [Narrator] Public Square, Euclid Avenue, East Ninth Street, Main Street in Akron, all vital places for business and entertainment in Northeast Ohio.

But there was a time when these places were magical and each hold special memories of the way we shopped.

From the 1920s through the 1960s, it was the golden era of downtown shopping.

That was before the heyday of malls and interstates, a time when downtown was the place to be, to eat, to shop, to see and be seen.

- It was an event.

You would, well, we always took the bus downtown.

So I mean, by the time you took the bus downtown, you made a day of it.

You'd go from store to store.

We'd always eat.

I mean, it was just, I don't know, much more of an adventure, much more exciting than going to the mall.

- Neighborhood stores, by their size and by the fact that they were usually individual stores, were limited in the merchandise that they could offer, this high style that they could offer.

So yes, you had to come downtown.

Downtown was a magnet.

- Downtown was downtown.

I mean, you lived in the suburbs and you thought of downtown as the place to go for eating, for entertainment, and for shopping.

- Oh, it was a wonderful feeling because they had all the different stores in downtown Akron and they were always beautifully decorated.

And that was what they would call a family affair.

Everybody would go downtown and it was called window shopping.

- [Narrator] You had to plan the day.

You didn't just jump into the car and go to the mall like we do today.

And part of the magic was just getting there.

Your journey downtown took you through different neighborhoods, past industrial sites, and into this world of one of a kind places to eat, to see first run movies and stage shows, and to shop at stores with everything imaginable.

Some people drove, but a lot more took the bus, the rapid transit, or the street car.

- Come down from Collinwood in one of those wonderful street cars.

That in itself was worth everything else.

- Special was you got on a street car, cost a penny.

If you wanted to transfer at certain places, it was free.

Otherwise it would cost another penny.

Your mother took you by the hand and marched you down to the Bailey Company or the May Company.

- And it was hard getting them cars started in the morning with the coal.

And they were hard.

I used to start at five o'clock in the morning.

And the fella got out of the car once and he said, "Why ain't the stove going?"

I said, "If you could get it going, do it."

He walked up, he come back, he said, "I'm sorry.

"I'll never say anything more."

- One of my assistants used to say, "I'm embarrassed to say that one of my biggest memories "of coming down at Christmas time in Cleveland is "the smell of buses because I used to come "with my mother and grandmother and we'd be on buses, "so that's part of my Christmas memory."

- I still recall when I was 11 years old, I was finally permitted to go downtown by myself.

I used my allowance and paid the bus fare and went downtown.

And it was sort of, you know, coming out, coming of age.

- The favorite memories were you're 12 years old, your parents let you loose.

You get in a bus, you're going downtown, you're going down on 25th Street and everything, you're in the bus, and then you get to go downtown and you're all by yourself.

Going out to get some lunch, going out to get records and everything.

- It was the only place to go.

The suburbs as you and I know 'em today, that wasn't why Cleveland Heights existed.

Cleveland Heights existed because it was where you live when you weren't downtown.

Shaker Heights existed on the string of that railroad that took everybody downtown.

- A lot of us lived through the Depression years and we didn't have all the distractions and the material things that people have now.

So to go downtown and to maybe have a few dollars in your purse that you could spend was a big deal.

You know, it was exciting.

- You're just in awe of the size of the buildings, and you know, and everything that was going on downtown, all the people down here.

It was just a fun place to be.

- [Narrator] It was fun because before you went down there, you made sure that you looked like downtown.

- Oh, this is too big.

Look this way.

- It was a day, it was a mini vacation.

The whole family was scrubbed mercilessly, cleaned up, put in their best clothes.

You went downtown, you were on your best manners.

You were supposed to behave.

- Your hair was combed, you're washed up, and maybe you had even took a bath that morning.

Even if you had taken one at night, you washed over, took a bath if you knew you were going downtown.

Cleanliness was next to godliness.

There's no question about that.

But you were all duded up to go downtown.

That was almost like going to church.

Okay, we'll go downtown.

- My mother has a picture that's been in her wallet forever.

Every time she opens her wallet, I see this picture.

And it's my brother, my sister, her, and myself.

Some fella came up with a camera, took our picture, and handed her a card.

I guess a woman or a female couldn't come downtown without her gloves, white gloves.

You had to dress up.

You couldn't come downtown casual.

- When you went downtown, you did wear a hat or this little fur number like you just got from Russia.

And then you also wore gloves.

- Back then, whenever where you went anywhere, you always wore gloves, a hat, and carried a purse.

You put them on and you would pull the fingers down like this to get them to fit.

- My daughter especially loves these chartreuse.

Here's some blue ones.

You know, if you, if you went downtown, you wore these.

You didn't wear them up your arm.

You put them on, let's see, wrong hand.

You would put them on like this and then you would crunch them, okay?

And they always match.

They had to match something in your outfit.

These were a pair of my Easter gloves one year.

And they were just wonderful, wonderful to wear.

There are a lot of women out there who may watch this and say you never felt dressed unless you wore your hat and your gloves when you went downtown shopping.

- I remember my father telling me that, well, when you walk down Euclid Avenue, you stand up straight and you stick out your chest.

You don't just slump going down Euclid Avenue.

- [Narrator] After you got all dressed up, you needed to decide where to go.

And there were plenty of great choices.

- Halle's would be the Cleveland equivalent of Saks Fifth Avenue.

Higbee's would be not Saks but would try to be close to a Bloomingdale's, would sort of be a little notch below.

But right in there.

May Company would be more in the league of a Macy's or a Gimbels.

- In those days at the high end, there was the Halle Brothers Company and that was known as the carriage store.

There were doormen, uniformed livery doormen on the Euclid side and the (indistinct) Road side.

Probably the next level down would have been the Higbee Company, May Company, Sterling-Lindner, and William Taylor were all pretty much clustered as the next level.

I would say Higbee's in those days was immediately below the Halle Brothers Company.

And then Bailey's was the store for everybody.

I mean, it was more of a budget operation.

- [Narrator] In Akron, downtown shoppers had similar choices.

- If you would just stand there in the corner of State Street and watch the people go back and forth, they would be going to Polsky's and then they'd go over to O'Neil's and that's what you saw.

Lots of people going across the street from one store to the other.

- Polsky's was more of a designer type of merchandise.

O'Neil's was noted for bargains and remnant days and warehouse sales.

That was the difference between O'Neil's and Polsky's.

- We had another department store, Yeager's.

And Yeager's was kind of the trendy place, a little more expensive, an older looking building that was more like the place for the establishment to go to shop.

My mother always felt comfortable with O'Neil's.

I felt comfortable with O'Neil's.

- [Narrator] Downtown Cleveland and Akron had plenty of other shops for you to trek through to find everything from the strange to the sublime.

How about all those great dime stores like Kresge's, Grant's, and Woolworth's?

- It was great.

(laughs) I remember shopping in there a lot because that's what I could afford.

It was aisles and aisles of notions and just anything you could want, you could find there.

From thread to bras.

Everything all in one place, and popcorn too.

- It was just not a little cheesy store, it was a whole big bustling, you know, I don't know, there's a kind of a little mini community.

And it was like there was one place after another to go through.

So you go to the dime store and you go to the music store.

Euclid had stores all the way down it that you could go to.

- Richman Brothers.

You could go down to Richman Brothers and get a suit with two pairs of pants for $18.50.

Later on, they raised the price to $22.50.

- I also remember I.J.

Fox when they were downtown.

That was closer to May Company, so it was further down the street and they had really nice clothing.

It was like two or three floors.

There was an elevator operator and they also had, that's where they had the furs and the leathers, coats and things like that.

- [Narrator] Those who continued on up Euclid Avenue toward Halle's often made a point of walking by the window of Beattie's Jewelry for one special reason.

- Just that he always had the tiny jewels in some kind of a design.

It would be a butterfly or it would be the American flag at the 4th of July.

- [Narrator] It's a Cleveland shopping tradition that's been going on since the early 20th century.

Lucy Beattie does it now but her grandfather started it before World War I.

And it was her father Milton Beattie who crafted and carried the designs to the front window for more than 70 years.

- He passed away two years ago at 97.

And he was working until the last week of his life out here and doing those designs.

And all of that time too, he was the one who carried it back and forth because he used to say, "Now you young fellows, your hands shake."

He said, "So you better let me carry that out, "put it in the front window."

So we used to roll our eyes but stand aside when Milton was putting the design in the front window.

- [Narrator] Beattie's has been in this Euclid Avenue location since 1932.

A journey here is a trip back to that golden era of downtown shopping.

- People will come in today and say, "Oh my goodness, I was in here 45 years ago.

"And you know, why, "this little room is just exactly the same.

"It hasn't changed at all."

And indeed it hasn't.

- [Narrator] On the other end of the spectrum was the Bond's Clothes building at East Ninth and Euclid, which ushered in the sci-fi look to downtown Cleveland.

- There was a, what I would call a flying stairway.

From the second floor, it went up to the third floor, but the stairway was open, there were no walls on either side.

And I had never really seen any structure do a stairway like that.

And I thought, boy, for a store, what a great look.

- [Narrator] Most people were happy with the things they bought downtown, but not every purchase was a good one.

- For Easter, I should say he bought a new suit.

One Sunday, it was Sunday.

We went to church for Easter Sunday.

My father's sitting there and he found a thread.

He pulls the thread and next thing you know, the sleeve fell out of his suit.

And that ended my father's buying at Bond's.

- There were stores on St. Claire, was called Capitol Clothes, where my parents took me and I got a suit, a coat, and a cap.

Nobody wore a cap, at least in our neighborhood.

For 13 bucks.

And if you hit a rainstorm before you got on the street car, the pants were already up to your knees.

- [Narrator] How about the nut house right next to the May Company?

They would pump out the smell of those roasted nuts through this vent out into the street to draw you in.

The roasters aren't there anymore.

They've been replaced by raw sushi.

But in Akron, you can still get fresh roasted nuts and that wonderful smell at The Peanut Shoppe on Main Street.

- It was located right next to Loew's Theater, which is now the Civic Theater.

They had a little statue that was made like a peanut and it had legs on it, which was a peanut man, and he had a black silk top hat on.

- [Narrator] Mr. Peanut is still there and so is that great aroma.

- If you were within maybe 20 feet of the store, you got the smell of, well, we had fans in the windows to throw the smell out in the street.

- The smell was fantastic.

You could smell them, these roasting peanuts out on the main sidewalk.

You didn't even have to go in the shop to get the benefit of a whiff.

- [Narrator] Each store also aimed to create the most alluring display windows.

The idea was to get people talking about these incredible displays to get you downtown and into their stores.

- I worked for the May Company during its glory days when the Christmas windows were planned and worked on for months previous to the grand event, when they had a fabulous budget for display, when they had, oh Lord, the display department must've had perhaps upwards of 20, 25 people in it.

- [Woman] Halle's used to change their windows on Thursday nights and people would stand on the street and wait until the curtains were put up to see what the new windows were going to be.

They had such excitement.

And that was a big thing too to see who was doing what in the windows.

- We'd spend hours on end down there, just sometimes just looking through, after she would do the shopping, we would look and what was fascinating is to see the difference in the displays, the window display.

That was an art, to watch these creative talented people change the different displays from season, based on the seasons.

(indistinct) - [Narrator] The care and attention given the windows was a reflection of the care you found inside as a customer.

- I remember the, probably the salespeople the most because they were nice and they were, you know, there's a lot about customer service before we called it that.

- It was a softer time in life.

Maybe that's the best way that I can identify it.

It was the so-called Eisenhower years where things were sort of laissez faire.

- [Narrator] Service was paramount for a store to survive downtown, something you don't see much of today.

- But I've been in some stores that they could care less whether you're there or not, they keep looking at their watch, you know, they're just doing some time and grabbing a few bucks an hour.

And some of that's lost because downtown Cleveland, well, I'll tell you those girls, guys, they take care of you.

You wanted some trousers, come out and try this.

Do you want some suits?

Oh, they'd tailor the suit to you if it was too short or whatever, you know?

So some of that was important, I think.

- People who waited on you in stories generally were very accommodating.

Most of them were pleasant.

Many of them were very patient.

- An example would be, if a customer asks you for directions to another department, you were not allowed to point or to tell them.

It was your duty to escort them to that area and to introduce them to someone in that particular department - You'd have to get them in this when the other's signed, but I'll write you up as credit for here, okay?

- Stores like Halle's were remarkable.

Halle's had uniformed doormen.

You walked into it and you did get that type of service.

If you asked where something was, you were taken there.

It was very personal.

- The elevator operators had uniforms, the doormen had uniforms, and my husband being a delivery man, they had uniforms too.

And Sterling's uniforms were always the blue and they had the logo on them and their name and Halle's were always green and red, which Halle's colors were green.

It was their identity while they were working.

- [Narrator] Maybe all this attention from the clerks came from the people who ran the stories.

This was during an era when many of the downtown operations were locally owned.

The owners and management knew their employees and customers and treated them as family.

- May Company was a very family oriented company.

I mean, even back in the 40s, when I've saw the articles on it, back in the 40s, when you come back from the war, they would do interviews, they'd have parties for them.

I mean, it was incredible.

- They recognized the importance of creating the right atmosphere for the employees.

I mean, another good example is Sam Halle, Walter Halle, Chez Halle, all generations would be at the front door in the morning to greet employees when they came in.

When an employee was there 25 years, they were given $1,000 and a reception and had their family come in to meet their Halle family.

The employees were so important.

I don't care whether you were sweeping the floor or what you were doing, Sam Halle probably knew your name.

- As a family owned store, they treated their employees like family.

And they always told the employees that we should treat each customer as though they were a guest in our home.

- [Narrator] The downtown stores employed plenty of people to make that family work and make the guests feel welcome.

- They had 3,500 sales people in a building that was only six stories high.

So you can imagine how many people were downtown.

- That's what's so remarkable about department stores is they provided employment for thousands and thousands of people, mostly women who hadn't worked before.

And it's one of the great social changes in American history is as retailing grew, particularly department stores, women who had very limited opportunities to work in the late 19th century, teachers or nurses, suddenly found another avenue open to them.

Not that it was extremely well-paying, but department stores, clerking and department stores.

If you went to a department store, there was somebody behind every counter.

There was immediate help.

- Halle's was a wonderful place to work.

Once you worked at Halle's and you were what I call Halle-ized, you were marked for life.

Because the experience I had at Halle's was an experience that taught me how to live.

- This company puts no premiums on tricks or dishonesty.

And when in doubt about making a decision, be honest and you'll never be wrong.

- People were kinder.

They were more respectful of other people.

Whether you were the customer or the salesperson, they tried to take very good care of you and let you know that they did appreciate your business.

- [Man] It was a people company.

It was, I guess it was the times.

- [Narrator] It was a time of street cars, white gloves, window displays, and attentive clerks.

All that together made shopping special.

It was the way we shopped.

Part of the adventure of downtown shopping was the treasure hunt for great deals.

Veteran shoppers took this challenge seriously.

- When we would go downtown, she was looking for bargains.

So that meant we were going to go from one store to the next to the next.

She had already had articles in the paper, I guess, advertising.

So she knew, she had already, like a general.

She had already mapped out her plan.

- We'd start our shopping trip, starting at May's, and we'd go all the way down the street.

And we'd go, let's see, past Bonwit Teller, go down the basement, see if they had any deals.

- The first stop was always the terminal tower, the observation deck.

Spent some time there.

Then I guess it's Higbee's.

Always look around Higbee's.

Across the street to May's and then head up Euclid and stop in every store just to look around.

- [Narrator] But occasionally the genteel customs of the times were forgotten when there were bargains to be had.

- The bargain basement was quite an experience.

It almost brings to mind the old movies where people would fight over the girdle and rip it in half or pull the sleeves out of sweaters.

And that's somewhat the way it was, just like a couple of days before Christmas and when they had the markdowns after Christmas.

- When we had a big sale, we used to see people there at 10 o'clock in the morning outside the doors, ready, ready to come in and find bargains.

- I remember these May Day sales that we had.

We didn't do any kind of work whatsoever on the floors because there'd be so many people in here.

And especially in the lower level, I mean, you couldn't even walk down there.

There would be clothing everywhere.

People struggling over I want this, I want that.

I mean, it was tremendous sales back then.

- I have memories of coming to downtown Cleveland as a youngster.

My mother would always go on Tuesdays only because Tuesday was double stamp day at the May Company and Bailey Company.

- [Narrator] Stamps were a way for stores to build customer loyalty to keep you coming back.

You were given stamps when you bought stuff.

And when you saved up enough, you could come back, redeem your stamps, and get more stuff.

- Eagle Stamps, this was sort of a bonus at May Company.

And I think my mother shopped mostly at May Company so she could get the Eagle Stamps.

For every 10 cents you purchased, you were given a little Eagle Stamp.

And you had a book and the book was worth $3.

And when my mother would come home from shopping, she would hand over these Eagle Stamps and we kids would have to lick them and put them in a book.

- Green Stamps, Eagle Stamps were my mother's passion and she collected them.

And I do recall that one time, 1953 or 54, she had filled an Eagle Stamp book.

I've been told this because I wasn't there with her.

And she went to May Company and what was she going to cash it in on?

Well, they had a new building toy set called American Plastic Bricks, and she bought this for me.

And as a kid, I became hooked on toy construction sets and American Plastic Bricks.

Now I think the irony of this is she got this for an Eagle Stamp book.

And today I've been trying to recapture my childhood, so I've been shopping for American Plastic Bricks on eBay.

And fortunately, my mother's not around to hear how much I'm paying for the bloody bricks.

- [Narrator] One reason stamps used to be so popular was because money was tight and credit was hard to get.

When charge cards were introduced, it was a real status symbol to have one.

But the first one was not today's familiar plastic.

It was the much coveted Charga-Plate.

- Back in those days, we didn't have Visa or MasterCard.

We had a charge plate that was made out of a soft kind of tin.

I know my mother used to say, "Don't bend it."

That's how soft it was.

- It was one metal charge plate and each store had their own little notch.

So depending on what store you went in, they had the the machine.

And if it didn't fit in the notch, then you couldn't charge there.

- You use the same little metal thing about this big and you only had to carry the one, for every store had its own little notch.

- My mother, my sister, and I each had one.

And it came in sort of like a little leather case and you carried it in your wallet and you guarded it with your life.

(laughs) - [Narrator] The Charga-Plates weren't the only piece of early technology that shoppers still recall.

Take a tour around Dillard's downtown Cleveland store today and you'll find these old clocks where the lights below the clock face were part of an ingenious color coded paging system for employees.

If your combination of colored lights came on, well, the boss wanted to see you.

Or check out these holes located near the high ceilings on the main floor.

They're all that remain of yet another favorite memory.

- Like many department stores of old and specialty stores, they had what's called a tube system.

Whereas when you purchase something, whether by cash or check or whatever form of payment you were using, there was a tube which they would take the end off of, insert the pertinent information, and send it via these tubes to a room of women who would take care of this and then send it back, your receipt in that tube.

- How the person, the cashier that did the money thing, how she knew how to get it back to the right spot, I never did figure out, but it got there.

- [Narrator] It operated on the same concept used at bank drive-throughs today, but each cashier station had its own tube, so hundreds of tubes went to clerks all over the store.

The canisters were numbered, as were the tubes, so the people who were at tube central made change and usually got it back to the right clerk and customer.

- You put it in there and it would suck it up to someplace.

Goodness knows where.

And about two minutes later, it would come back down and drop into a box and the person's change and receipt would be in there.

This did save on not having cash registers.

- [Narrator] Now, how did that work again?

- Just a nice brass canister that you twist open.

Put the change in there, put the dollar bills in there, fold them up, twist it shut, lift the top of the dead end part of the tube, drop this in, canister goes through the tube, up into the office, they make change.

- They had the pneumatic tube and you know, you can still hear that sound, that whoosh as it went off.

- [Narrator] There were interesting ways that people got around the stores as well.

Moving from department to department was half the fun.

- Halle's was fun because they had the woman who worked the elevator.

And that was fun, I used to like to watch her.

In fact, my sister and I would go home and we had a glass sliding door on our bathtub and we used to play Halle elevator lady.

(laughs) - People who worked at Higbee's and ran these elevators were mostly young girls in high school.

And even a couple of my aunts and my husband's aunts as young teenagers ran elevators.

And it was very prestigious because you wore white gloves and it was a very proper sort of job.

- And it was a whole group of core people.

The young ladies that would do it, they went through training classes, how to greet the people, how to proceed to operate the elevator.

It was actually a training class for running the elevator.

First off, they would push a button that was on the outside.

And then that would light up on this panel, showing right here what floor they operator needed to go to.

So the person would just close the door and it's like this.

And once they would get to the floor, they would just open the door and then with the handle like that.

Greet the person, have them come in, and just have a conversation with them, talk to them, ride them to their floor, and tell them which one's located on all that different floors.

- Another thing I remember about O'Neil's were their beautiful elevator girls.

And there was always a captain and she stood out in front and had a little clicker and let each girl know when the elevator should go on its way.

- I was a kid, I was an escalator person.

I love the escalator.

- It was sorta almost like a amusement park ride to a certain extent, because you know, you're going up and around and you could see all the things that are going around too.

- Always enjoyed the escalators as a kid.

They had to ride them, they get narrower and narrower and narrower.

And we knew we were getting near the top when they were real narrow and I couldn't stand next to my brother.

- The other thing was our escalators at Higbee's, the new escalators to the front of the store, moved quite quickly.

There was a verve about going into Higbee's.

When you jumped on the escalator, you were shot to the next floor and you really had to plan your strategies, getting on and getting off.

- I do remember Higbee's and up until a few years ago, they still had the old wooden trade escalators.

And they rattled and creaked and everything.

And I do remember those as a kid, a little bit leery to get on it because they were rickety old things.

- [Narrator] Some of the greatest memories of downtown are centered around food.

The busy shopper could always get a bite to eat at the locally owned fast food restaurants and diners of the day.

In Akron, it might be corned beef at the Stone's Grill or hot rolls at Kaase's.

Clevelanders recall the Clark's Restaurant's treasure chest for kids, Hough Bakeries cakes and cookies, and Boukair's mile high sundaes.

And you probably couldn't go wrong with a stop at the corner diner or dime store luncheonette.

- Maybe once a week, my mom would give me the money.

I would have my lunch at the lunch counter in Woolworth's.

They had about the best chicken pot pie you'd ever know.

I'd get that for 25 cents and five cents for a Coke.

- I'd go over to Kresge's or Woolworth's and sit at the lunch counter there.

And yeah, very fond memories of that kind of a food operation.

They were bazaars, if you will.

They were very interesting.

They were fun places.

- We would have the whole place jam-packed.

The people all seemed to walk all down on East Ninth Street.

And I was really crowded.

Boss came in after it was all over, he checked the register and he says, "You took in over $100 all by yourself."

And it was hamburgers for 15 and coffee was 10.

So I did pretty good.

- [Narrator] Another simple dining experience was clearly a downtown favorite.

- We would end the day by going to, and I have really great memories of that, I'd be ready to pig out, is to go to the Forum, which was up on Ninth Street.

Cherry pie, chicken.

Fill my plate, maybe go back a second time for a second helping.

- Well, you'd walk in and you'd pick up your tray and everything.

And then you could just go down this line and you got to choose your food.

And I always had their broasted potatoes and probably chicken.

That was my favorite lunches.

- It was a very nice cafeteria, it was like a school cafeteria.

It wasn't as formal as some of the other places downtown.

- I don't know if you remember the old Forum, you know, very popular, very popular.

When it up and disappeared, a lot of people was heartbroken because a lot of times, people would just come down for that evening meal, you know, because they had such a diverse selection of foods there.

You know, and I, as a child, you know, I really enjoyed coming out there.

A lot of times when we got through shining shoes, we would go get us a dinner.

- [Narrator] For dessert or a treat, you had to stop and get something that could only be bought in Cleveland.

A concoction with a taste all its own, the Frosty.

- I guess the thing that really stands out in my mind more than anything, especially being a kid, is going, the last thing we would do before we went home is go to Higbee's for their malted.

And I mean, that was like the highlight of the entire day.

- We're in the lower concourse of Higbee's.

And this is approximately where the Frosty bar used to be.

And when you came into Union Station from your train, it wasn't a trip unless you came into Higbee's and had a great Frosty.

- [Narrator] They were so popular at Higbee's that May somehow got the secret recipe and built their own Frosty bar.

- Ah, yes, the legendary Frosty bar at May Company's.

No, but always, that would be one of the places you'd have to stop.

Go to May Company, go down there and get a little glass.

And they filled it with a nice, cool little chocolate Frosty.

And (sighs).

- Oh, the frosted malts.

That was the original milk mustache.

When you got in the basement of both stores, you could buy a frosted malt.

- [Narrator] Fear not, you can still get an original recipe Frosty.

- This is the machine that the Frosty was developed on.

Now, most people had it at Higbee's, or some people say May Company, and that was after it had been developed here and the recipe borrowed.

I had to be good all day when I was a kid to get one of these and it cost 15 cents at the time.

- [Narrator] It turns out that Mr. Weber, founder of Weber's Custard and Ice Cream in Fairview Park, is recognized as the originator of that unique Frosty recipe.

Today, David Ford continues the tradition using these rare 69 year old machines.

- It turned out to be an excellent sales tool.

Once you, they never gave you a spoon.

So once you're busy eating it and you're eating it down about that far, it won't come out until the heat of your hand basically warms it.

And then when you're going like this, it'll slide down and get you on the nose.

I was hoping it'd be more liquid.

- It's one of those tastes of Cleveland, especially as a kid.

And like, as soon as you taste it, you remember going, yeah, this, I remember this from downtown.

- I have that all the time.

People come in, they taste this, and they're just blown away.

They just, I mean, you can see the years drop off their faces.

They become children again.

We had one woman start crying.

She said, "Oh, my mother just passed away.

"And I remember when she took me, you know, "when I was a child, down to Higbee's, "down the basement to get it."

And that's everyone's experience.

They immediately, as soon as they taste it, it takes them back to their childhood.

It's like the cheapest time machine you can think of.

- [Narrator] Another great part of being downtown was all the restaurants.

In Akron, there was the Garden Grill or the Georgian Room.

In Cleveland, people fondly remember Halle's Tea Room or the Mayfair Room.

But the place that sparks the most affection was on Higbee's 10th floor.

- We would go to Higbee's and then we would stop for our lunch at the Silver Grille.

- What's special about it is the fact that it is a reminder of a period of time when all department stores in the United States, Canada, Europe had tea rooms and restaurants.

- First of all, the Silver Grille was a beautiful restaurant.

It was a perfect example of art deco architecture.

It had very good food.

It was a great place for businessmen to meet for lunch.

Ladies who lunched in those days lunched there.

- [Narrator] Even though it was a grownup place with beautiful table settings, linen tablecloths, and real silverware, it also holds a special place in the heart of many boys and girls.

- This is the truck that little boys used to have their lunches taken in.

- [Narrator] It was kind of like the original Happy Meal.

In the Silver Grille's early days, children would be given their meals in wooden buffet like this one that was brought to the table.

Later on, small metal toy stoves were used but they stayed at the Silver Grille.

And then kids were given cardboard souvenir stoves to take home, as well as barns, a space capsule, and the famous Higbee's truck.

- So these were kinds of ways that children certainly were a part of this experience, which was very, very clever merchandising as well.

Because again, made children welcome, you know, to partake of all the other kinds of opportunities of seeing what a department store was like.

- [Narrator] Now, we've been talking about the Silver Grille in the past tense.

It's true it's no longer open but the space still exists.

As thousands of others did, we took the elevator up to Higbee's 10th floor.

With us is Ann Zupancic, who ran the kitchen there for 20 years.

- I remember how crowded the long the lines we used to have.

- [Narrator] She hasn't been here since the day it closed in 1989.

The sign still greets us, but struggles to do so.

- Lots of memories here.

Remember the fish behind there.

We used to have a lot of fish here.

- [Narrator] All the original chairs and tables dating back to 1932 are here, stacked neatly.

The silver grills look the same as they did the day it opened.

The goldfish pond, home to thousands of fish who entertained kids and adults for more than 50 years.

Time feels like it's standing still here on the 10th floor of Higbee's.

You can almost imagine sitting down and ordering one more serving of beef stroganoff at the Silver Grille.

- [Man] To this day, people still discuss the Silver Grille.

- [Narrator] Minorities were able to experience many of the joys of downtown, but they didn't always have the same positive shopping experiences that others remember.

- We were not allowed to eat.

They would close the booth when you would go in and in order to eat, they would say, "This is not open and we cannot serve you."

- You would find different clerks that would not wait on you, would make excuses why they couldn't wait on you.

- [Narrator] Bob Render's mother told him the story of the day she went to buy a dress and all but one of the clerks refused to help her.

- But you could communicate through body language that that's what they were saying.

You know, one, what are you doing here in the department store?

Let alone, what are you doing in this particular department?

But she said there was a woman that got up from the couch, went to her, treated her very kindly, and very graciously asked her, could she help her?

And she formed a very good relationship.

She said it was a Jewish woman who waited on her.

And from that point on, she would find out when this woman was on duty, what her off days were.

And if the schedule rotated, she would find out all of that and made sure that she saw that particular clerk.

- [Narrator] While some stores were a problem for minority shoppers, many such as Rosenblum's were happy to service minority clients.

- Well, they serviced, basically they started servicing the black community.

We got credit, you know, it was one of the first places down here to do it.

That's where these boots came from.

These are 30 year old boots.

They were courteous, they were friendly.

- [Narrator] In Akron, African-Americans who were shunned at some of the stores along Main Street spent their money at shops on Howard Street, which sought out minority shoppers.

But things changed for the better when many of the downtown department stores took active roles in civil rights.

- Higbee's, for instance, pioneered in integrating sales staffs.

And sales staffs were eventually integrated.

And essentially by the 60s and 70s, blacks were shopping at the downtown department store.

- They were just beginning to hire blacks.

I went down and applied for it and they hired me.

I was surprised.

- [Narrator] Pleasant surprises also awaited many downtown Cleveland shoppers who took a chance and ventured off the beaten path.

- There was a mystery about downtown, I guess, a little bit.

Not only the big stores, but then you'd go to say like Prospect and that was kind of like a little bit of those forbidden zones.

It was a little bit grittier on Prospect but they had Record Rendezvous.

You walk in that old record store and there was just racks and racks of all these great albums and everything that you didn't find in the regular chains.

- I bought these on January 23rd, 1960.

- [Narrator] Lois Denny was at Record Rendezvous that day.

She knows that because like a lot of teenage girls, she wrote it all down in her diary.

- But this one was Teen Angel.

Yeah, by Mark Dinning, and that was a big hit in January 1960.

- My mother basically stuck to the stores, the main stores on Euclid Avenue.

Occasionally, we might go down Fourth Street.

Yeah, I would go to Record Rendezvous 'cause I liked to tell her while they're shopping.

And when I got of age, she gave me, kind of let the umbilical cord go from me and let me kind of venture out on my own a little bit while they might've been at another department store and then I would just catch up with them.

- [Narrator] The 1960s ushered in changes for downtown Cleveland and Akron.

The cultural revolution of that era was not lost on the owners of the downtown stores.

- At the time, I was hired to be the teen coordinator and put together a program.

And the program was a very large teen program but what it did was bring hundreds down and thousands downtown on a Saturday.

And there were a variety of things.

We did fashion shows that had bands that played at the same time and thousands would turn out for that.

We had teen twists breakfast.

Didn't seem to matter what you did or the time of day, but the teens would come downtown for it.

It was so that Halle's could get, as Mr. Halle used to say, more with it.

- [Narrator] To keep in line with the changing roles of women, Halle's even brought in a liberated Santa.

- Santa Claus is a sexless position.

And if you're qualified and you can ho-ho-ho and be quite jolly, I don't see why a woman shouldn't be hired.

- [Narrator] While social adjustments and pop culture changed the look and feel of downtown, urban sprawl that began in the 50s also made a huge impact.

- The decline of department stores probably begins in the 50s.

That's not to say it was precipitous or immediate.

Some stores, Higbee's continued to do very well indeed.

But by the 60s, all the stores were beginning to branch out.

Higbee's and Halle's, May's were branching out as Parmatown.

- I can remember opening, my father opening, the May Company Parmatown store which opened in 1959.

- There were those who thought, hey, this is marvelous, it'll just be more money.

And those who said, hey, it's just going to draw our customers, our Parma customers away from downtown.

- And as consumers, of course, were going outward, then if you're in retail business, where are my customers?

Well, most customers were still close in but clearly there were more and more customers that were further out.

Still within this county, of course, you know, but they were more and more in Parma, more and more in Fairview Park.

- I think the malls pretty much took care of it.

Nobody wanted to come downtown and have to deal with that when they can go to a mall in their backyard or in their neighborhood.

- [Narrator] The first of the large downtown Cleveland stores to close was Sterling-Lindner.

In late 1968, the city knocked it down as part of a drive towards urban renewal.

- You know, this is the only time that tearing down means progress.

You understand that?

- [Man] Yeah, which way you gonna bring that?

- [Narrator] Little did they realize then that it wasn't just a building being demolished, it was a reflection of a changing tradition and a way of life.

In shooting this program, we found a neat little nugget.

These photos from around 1930 show a sign painted on the terminal tower, promoting the construction of the new Higbee's department store.

Here we are present day on the 10th floor where the Higbee's auditorium used to be.

The walls have been all stripped away to make room for new office space.

But look what we found, the remnants of that old Higbee's sign, a piece of the past that's part of the future of downtown Cleveland.

- The key now for downtown is developing the residential base, getting more and more people to live there.

That's what will create the new downtown.

That's what will make it even more attractive, particularly for the younger people living in the suburbs to come down for a movie and even do some shopping at Christmas time.

- [Narrator] Did someone say something about shopping downtown at Christmas time?

("We Wish You A Merry Christmas") While shopping downtown was special, shopping downtown during the Christmas season was really special.

- It just had this grand opulence to it that even as a kid, you appreciate.

At Christmas time, you come down and it's a whole wonderland.

- [Narrator] When you're a kid, everything seems bigger than life.

But even for adults, this next downtown memory was really big.

- There was a store called Sterling-Lindner-Davis, which had a, and as a child, it looked like it was 300 feet tall, the most unbelievable Christmas tree in the lobby.

- As a child, you really were in awe because it was huge.

- Oh gosh, it was so high.

I don't know how to describe it.

If you would ask me today, I would say it was probably 10 stories high.

- Oh, it's just unbelievable to see a tree that tall and that glittery and the size of those ornaments.

- I always wondered how they got that darn thing in through those doors.

- [Narrator] Yeah, how did they get that thing in there?

In those days, stores would decorate for Christmas after Thanksgiving.

Following their turkey dinner, the Sterling-Lindner elves would unbolt the front doors of the store and wait for the green monster to arrive.

- They usually brought the tree in on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, after the store closed, probably at five thirty or six o'clock.

They closed off Euclid Avenue and a big truck came in with the tree on a flatbed and they took the front doors off and brought the tree in and set it up overnight.

And then on Sunday, which the department stores were not open on Sunday, the crew came in and decorated it.

- As far as I know, most of the men that pulled it in and some of their sons like me were just volunteers.

It seemed like it took forever, but it was probably only 15 minutes.

But it had to be pulled in by hand.

It was on a dolly and they pulled it in.

And in the middle of the store, there was a staircase that went down to the basement, so they had to kind of go along the side of that and bring it around.

And we only stayed basically until the tree was set and they started to pull it up.

- Putting the tree up was a real job we had.

In the Sterling court, I don't know how many stories high it was, five or six stories.

Anyhow, they had a grid up above where you could drop lines down.

And they had window washers' buckets that people sat in and they could control the ascent.

And they were handed ornaments by somebody who was behind them and they would put them on the tree slowly, decorating the thing from top to bottom.

It was a tremendous job.

And the tree of course was alive and it grew several measurable inches while it was in the place.

- [Man] Around the base of the tree, they had a picket fence, a white fence, and then a plaque that usually said where it came from and how high it was.

- I went in and I couldn't believe it.

Of course the ornaments were to scale.

I mean, they had ornaments the size of three bowling balls.

You know, it was unbelievable.

- [Narrator] That's no lie.

Pat Boris and her husband worked at Sterling-Lindner and were given boxes of the ornaments when the store closed.

- This is one of the many ornaments that hung on the tree and they're very heavy.

They're blown glass.

This one is made in Austria and the little tag is still on it.

2,500 ornaments on the tree and tinsel and icicles and then the metal bells.

I say that I used to work at Sterling-Lindner, the first thing they say is, "Oh, I remember the Christmas tree."

And that was really what they were known for was the beautiful Christmas tree, sort of like the Rockefeller tree in Rockefeller Plaza.

- But there was another thing about Sterling's at Christmas that totally intrigued me and that was that they too had a special room for children at Christmas.

The thing that totally enthralled me there was this winter wonderland that you walk through.

And when you arrived at the end, there was Francis the talking mule waiting for you.

He would talk to you and then he would send you this wrapped package down a chute.

And that memory just like totally fascinated me.

Back then, I mean, he was the big rage.

He was it.

- I was a Santa Claus at Sterling-Lindner.

And I did know enough that my grandpa used to bring me down there when I was a little five, six year old kid and they had the biggest tree in the country, as far as I knew.

And Santa Claus was under that tree.

So when I applied for the job, I thought, hey, this is not only Santa Claus, but this is the Santa Claus.

- [Narrator] Cleveland's downtown had the look and feel.

It was so right that when it came time for Hollywood to make a Christmas classic, they came to Cleveland.

Turning back the clock to a simpler time was "A Christmas Story."

Set in the 1940s and shot in Cleveland because of the historic look of its neighborhoods, stores, and downtown.

- [Woman] That movie really reflected, I think, when you look at that, what downtown was all about.

It had this sense of you had to be there to understand it.

You had to hear the bells.

You had to see the lights.

You had to see the mechanical windows.

You had to see this hustle and bustle and the people loaded with packages.

It's an environment that you absolutely cannot capture in a mall.

- [Man] When I watch "Christmas Story," you have fond memories of what downtown used to be like and the memories.

- [Narrator] The stores' display windows created a lot of those memories.

- All the stores had animated windows, wonderful windows that were fabulous not only for children, I say they were for children of every age.

But you wanted to be part of that and you felt like you were missing something if you didn't go downtown.

- No matter how cold it was, it was never too cold to just stand there and put the nose on the window.

And it was truly a fairyland.

- Every single window had something in it that was animated.

It would be little figurines singing, they might be elves in a workshop.

I can't remember exactly what each one was but for a child, it was Alice in Wonderland.

- [Narrator] Famous life photographer Margaret Bourke-White took these Depression-era pictures of Halle's Christmas windows in 1934.

The reality of the bad times was softened by the fantasy world of these displays.

- When I looked at those windows, I knew that I was not about to get these beautiful dolls or things like that, but it still was a thrill to just see the scenery and the action and the Santa Claus and the elves.

You know, it was fantasy, but it was beautifully done.

- Their Christmas windows were on par almost between Polsky's and O'Neil's but O'Neil's had the edge.

- Well, the Christmas displays were the greatest of all but the display artists were marvelous and they had beautiful figurines.

- On the bus, if you heard people saying, "Oh, you've got to go to May's, "you've got to see the whatever it is shop, "you've got to see the ice skating window this year."

And you had helped install them, of course, it gave you a glow of pride and oh yes, vast amounts of customers and traffic would be attracted by a specific display and they would come downtown just to see that.

- [Narrator] Kids coming downtown also got to play Santa at a special shop where they bought little gifts for mom and dad.

- Probably the best shopping experience I had was when I was really little, I went to the Twigbee shop.

And that was a place in Higbee's where adults were not allowed.

It was too much fun.

I think about all of the different things that were on the little tables that you could buy and I just think about, you know, the parents who, when they got those gifts, made them seem like they were the most wonderful thing but they probably was like, you know, the 13th pen that you'd given your mother.

- [Narrator] If you were a kid or even a parent, things like the Twigbee shop, Sterling-Lindner tree, and window displays were just to whet your appetite before you had an audience with the jolly elf in the red suit.

And for many people, even Santa had to take a back seat to a Cleveland original, the Keeper of the Keys.

- It was the only place you could go to see two things.

One, the real Santa Claus, because only the real Santa Claus would be downtown.

And see Mr. Jingeling, because there was only one Mr. Jingeling anywhere, anywhere, period.

- Hi, boys and girls.

I'm Mr. Jingeling and I'm so glad to be back here with you on television.

Did you have a nice Thanksgiving day yesterday and had some turkey or something tasty?

Doesn't matter though, as long as you got together with people you loved and you celebrated.

- Mr. Jingeling really was more popular, I think, at Halle's than Santa Claus was really.

And I think part of that had to do with the promotion that was done with the show.

- You know, it certainly is going to be a puzzle, figuring out who dropped this down my chimney and what's inside.

Well, I'll see you Monday, boys and girls, and I'll kind of wait for it to open it up and then we can open it up together and see what's inside and I'll try to find out who sent it.

I can hardly wait.

See you then.

- I remember seeing his show during the Christmas season.

And it was something that we would make sure we were there watching so we would catch Mr. Jingeling.

In fact, he was a character that had almost the stature of Santa Claus.

- [Narrator] So what was the story on Mr. Jingeling and how did he get this job as Santa's Keeper of the Keys?

- I work for Santa Claus.

I'm a locksmith and I make keys and wind up things for the toys.

And it's a job I've enjoyed very, very much, ever since the time, well, long time ago when Santa Claus lost his key to the toy warehouse where we keep all the toys just before we put them on the sleigh for Christmas.

Well, I made him a key to fit that door.

We got in there, got those toys, and got them delivered.

And Santa was so happy and so nice about it, he made me his Keeper of the Keys.

♪ Mr. Jingeling, how you ting-a-ling ♪ - Keeper of the Keys.

♪ On Halle's seventh floor ♪ ♪ We'll be looking for you to turn the key ♪ ♪ For we have a date underneath your Christmas tree ♪ (laughs) - I designed the graphics on the key and they were die cut and printed off in the thousands.

And those keys were used, I think, up until the time Halle's closed.

And so I guess I can lay claim to not being Mr. Jingeling, certainly, but designing his good luck key that was put around the neck of thousands and thousands and thousands of kids in Northeastern Ohio.

- And they all tell Mr. Jingeling about, oh, we got your keys and they have little sayings about them and reminding.

And they say, "Well, what do they open?"

And I just said, "Well, what else?

"They're the keys to your heart."

They're a symbol of Christmas.

Favorite part, it's the smiles and the eyes for boys and girls.

And that's a pretty good two-way street.

I get it.

I get the love from them.

Did then and I can see it in their eyes, and that's about as good a deal as you get at Christmas.

Better than the presents and the gifts, I think.

♪ I'm Mr. Jingeling, how I ting-a-ling ♪ ♪ Keeper of the Keys ♪ ♪ On Halle's seventh floor ♪ ♪ We'll be looking for you to turn the key ♪ - [Narrator] The question remains, what was so special about shopping downtown?

The Frosty bar, the Silver Grille, Mr. Jingeling, May's, O'Neil's, Polsky's, Halle's, Higbee's, the Sterling-Lindner tree.

By themselves, they don't mean that much.

They're made of bricks and mortar.

The merchandise is made of cloth, leather, paper, or plastic.

The food is quickly eaten and you're hungry a few hours later.

But all those things were a way to bring people together, to enjoy the warmth of each other's company, to connect as one big community and celebrate the human spirit.

It all happened downtown and it was the way we shopped.

(upbeat music) "The Way We Shopped" is an affectionate look at the downtown shopping days of yesteryear.

But what of today?

What's happened to those beautiful monuments to a simpler time?

These days, downtown Akron and Cleveland are literally being recycled.

The old Polsky's in Akron is now a modern building for classrooms and offices.

And O'Neil's has been transformed into a beautiful office complex.

- I'm very upbeat about Akron.

I think it's made a remarkable, almost spectacular recovery from an economic body blow that might've devastated some other cities.

- [Narrator] Many of the landmark retail buildings have also been restored.

In the summer of 2000, parts of the old May Company were rehab for new tenants.

By the way, here's some footage you won't see anywhere else.

We had a chance to tour the old May Company before the renovation began.

The carpeting, the woodwork, the display cases just the way they were when May Company was open.

Down the street, Halle's was recycled into office space with retail on the first floor.

And the Higbee's tradition continues at Dillard's with its marvelous main floor and architectural details that can't be duplicated in a mall.

- Downtowns to me are becoming the new neighborhoods.

And that is a lot of what's driving this.

It's important to save these landmarks not only for their architectural value, but just for their value of being gathering places for people.

When you come downtown in Cleveland now, when you walk through Tower City now compared to what it used to be, you just, you see this beehive of activity going on and cities need that.