Meta (Whirled Peas)

They've been working on renovating the long-vacant building on Hennepin that used to house Shinders and somehow that work has revealed a sort of meta-ghost.  It's not particularly visually interesting, and I'm not sure whether it's really faded paint or the shadow of long-gone lettering.  But if you look very closely, you can see that it says "Snyders."

When I was a kid, there was a Snyder's drug store in strip mall just up the road (ah, the pleasures of suburban living) and a Snyder Brother a little further down near Silver Lake Road and 694.  Youthful me could not quite figure out how these stores could include the same surname but not be related to each other.

Now that the local drug store landscape seems to be made up only of CVS, Walgreens and a few independents (and, yes, Target and Walmart), I thought I'd let this "sign" be an inspiration to try to find out.

So the first thing to note is that the two stores may not have actually shared a surname, and instead I could be conflating homophones (yes, dear reader, I've been known to do that).  The "brothers" store (from which I remember painted faces of happy looking pharmacists on the wall and in the print ads), might have contained some combination of "sch" or "ie", but I can't recall.

So let's start with Snyder's, whose demise was not so long ago.  It traces its history to Max Snyder who sold cigars in downtown Minneapolis starting in 1928 (perhaps at this location?).  The drugs came along in 1931, and by 1939 Snyder Drug was incorporated.  Then a few decades passed, until a bankruptcy in 2001 that started the process of selling off locations to Walgreens and CVS.

Snyder Brothers has left less of a digital trail.  This lawsuit suggests that I'm not wrong in remembering that it existed, and I even got the spelling right.  This comment includes them in a list of chains that helped speed the demise of independent pharmacies.  But that's about all I've got.  At least my memory isn't totally faulty.

As for those drugstores of my youth, the Snyder Brothers, along with the strip mall that used to house it, is gone, replaced by an LA Fitness.  The Snyder's was replaced by a Liquor Barrel. So at least you can get some kind of drug there.

Can't Get Enough

Let this sign be your guide.  Should you be trying to go shopping at Freeman's, that is, this is where you should be parking.  You may face a small challenge, however, in that Freeman's no longer exists.  Instead, this sign is on the back of what's referred to as the Coliseum Building.

The store opened in 1917 and survived until 1975.  Which means I'm not nearly old enough (okay, maybe nearly, but still) to remember when it actually existed.  It's near the intersection of E. Lake St. and Minnehaha Ave., which apparently used to both be an intersection of streetcar lines and a home to no fewer than five department stores.  Here's what the place looked like in around 1920.

In my head, I remember dropping my brother off for a Bad Company concert in this building shortly after getting my drivers' license.  If there's any validity to that memory, it was probably due to the ball room.  There are ongoing plans for redevelopment and refurbishment of this historic building.

There is no word whether the proprietors are related to Hennepin County Attorney (and former gubernatorial candidate) Mike Freeman, or his father, former Minnesota governor and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Orville Freeman.

Maybe Sesame Seed Bun but No Special Sauce

Meanwhile back in the warehouse district, we've got the McDonald Bros. Co. a wholesaler of china, crockery and glassware.  It was the business of Matthew McDonald "who for a considerable period was one of the owners of an extensive wholesale and retail china, crockery and glassware." He was born in Pennsylvania in 1848 to Irish immigrant parents and started his china business there before relocating to Minneapolis in 1884. It sounds like they were on Nicollet first, but moved down Fifth Street to this location near First Avenue, where they apparently expanded into retail. Matthew died in 1910, leaving the business in his brother's hands.

Members of the McDonald family apparently prospered enough to house themselves on the lovely Lake of the Isles Parkway, where Frank McDonald, a department manager, lived in 1917. Millard McDonald, one of Matthew's sons who graduated from law school and served in the aviation forces in the first world war, lived over on Blaisdell Avenue in 1910.

The building apparently had a major fire in 1895, which lead to the death of five firemen, at the time the deadliest fire in the history of the Minneapolis fire department.

There's a cool shot here and a close-up on Fickr and here's the building in 1902.

Foreign Lands: Beaver Pelts During Typhoon?

Once again, this isn't technically a ghost, as the business is still in operation, but as I just got back from China, I thought I should try to bring you something from overseas, and this is as close as I got.

This sign is in Hong Kong, near the intersection of Des Voeux Central and Chiu Lung Street, or, more parochially, between the China-like part of Hong Kong and the New York-like part.  I was a little surprised that there would be much of a market for fur in Hong Kong's humid subtropical climate, and yet it's apparently one of the world's biggest exporters of fine fur.  Apparently status trumps common sense and morality.  I guess that shouldn't be a surprise.

See a product label here and a related sign here.

Foreign Lands: Austin With A Tarpaulin? Behave!

Sometimes in this "business," signs defy your expectations. Before I Googled (sorry, Larry Page, but I'm going to continue using it as a verb), I didn't think I'd be able to find out much about Powers Dry Goods. I figured it would be a long forgotten, single-location retailer in St. Paul that the internet never heard of.

But no. Its even got its own wikipedia page. Powers was a department store, founded under a different name, but renamed in 1881 when it was acquired by the Powers brothers of St. Paul. In 1903, The New York Times (pdf) announced the arrival (to something) of Mr. Knox and Miss Holland of the company as buyers. At it's peak it had 7 locations in the Twin Cities.

It was acquired again by Associated Dry Goods in 1920, which itself was acquired by Donaldsons. Minnesotans of sufficient age will remember when Donaldsons and Daytons were the two rival department stores, when each of the "dale" shopping centers around the metro area was anchored by both. Those days ended when the company was acquired again in 1987 and all the locations were converted to the Carson Pirie Scott brand, which didn't work out so well. After bankruptcy, Daytons ended up buying them (an interesting development from a competition perspective), but like nearly all department store tales these days, the story ends in a ultimate acquisition by Macy's. All hail the conquering May Company!

This sign is at 4th & Wacouta in Lowertown. It's previously been featured on Writing On The Wall and Flickr, while Nokohaha has an old postcard of the Minneapolis location and some additional history. The Historical Society gives us visual evidence of the sale of war bonds to ladies in Minneapolis (no word on whether the counterman went to stag parties at the Calhoun Building) and of a monstrous, man-eating, precursor to Disney's Flounder ostensibly created as a Christmas display in 1949.

Finally, yes, I'm try to set new lows in dorky post titles.

Dedicated Followers of Fashion

I started to put this one up the other day, so I had to double-check that that I didn't actually post it. I'm not sure why I like this particular shot so much, except that I like the parallel lines of the sign for Nate's Clothing and the street sign. So, yeah, that's me pretending to be arty.

Nate's is no longer operating from this location, but apparently was downtown for 92 years before moving on out to the suburbs in 2008. At the time, the space was to be converted to offices (what else), but I'm not sure what's there now. A Flickr user got this cool shot of the old sign out front. I don't recall seeing it, so I'm betting its no longer there.

The building, at 401 1st Ave. N., is apparently also known as the Manufacturers Building, and dates to about 1910.

Yippie Ki Yay [Expletive Deleted]!

This one says H.A. Juster Co., distributor, which seems to be a clothing/textile company. Below that are ads for Mayo Spruce, which seems to have been a t-shirt company from the 1950s, and Blue Bell Wrangler, reflective of the early days of the Wrangler jeans company.

Assuming that this is the same company or a predecessor or ancestor of Juster Brothers, there are also many interesting photos available from Historical Society. Several of them are interiors from the 1920s of a textile factory, although the main store front seems to be at nearby but different location. I'm not sure where the interiors are. Also the old store front looks really familiar, but isn't at the listed location anymore. Juster Bros. apparently sponsored a Gopher football radio show in 1948. 1942 apparently was a good year for writing strange sales letters.

There are a bunch of shots of this one available of Flickr and elsewhere, including several that caught better light and weather than me. It's at the back of 319 1st Ave.