Department Stores, Mail Order, Shopping, and Display of Goods [index]
Abelson, Elaine S. When Ladies Go A-Thieving: Middle Class Shoplifters in the Victorian Department Store. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Appel, Joseph. A Business Biography of John Wanamaker, Founder and Builder. New York, 1930.
Appel, Joseph H. Growing Up with Advertising. New York: Business Bourse, 1940.
Arceneaux, Noah. “The Wireless Window: Department Stores and Radio Retailing in the 1920s.” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 83:3 (Autumn 2006): 581-595.
Beal, Thomas David. "Selling Gotham: The Retail Trade in New York from the Public Market to Alexander T. Stewart's Marble Palace, 1625-1860." PhD dissertation, State University of New York- Stony Brook, 1998.
Benson, Susan
Porter. Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American
Department Stores 1890-1940.
Bjelopera, Jerome P. City of Clerks: Office and Sales Workers in Philadelphia, 18701920. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005.
Bradley, Patricia. “John Wanamaker’s ‘Temple of Patriotism’ Defines Early 20th Century Advertising and Brochures.” American Journalism 15, no. 2 (1998): 15–35.
Bronner, Simon J., ed., Consuming Visions: Accumulation and Display of Goods in America 1880-1920. New York: Norton, 1989.*
A collection of essays by different scholars writing about the emergence of a consumer culture that placed emphasis on accumulation and display of goods in public and private spaces as a symbol of social and economic status and development. The authors employ a material culture approach to examine the acts, customs, and institutions that created and reflected the new culture of consumption. Individual essays examine the rise of the department store and retail display, changes in interior design, museum collections, rural consumption, and the increasing importance of "style," among other topics. The collection, along with the extensive references included with each essay, make this a valuable resource for the study of material aspects of consumer culture.
Buckley, Jim. The Drama of Display. New York: Pellegrini and Cudahy, 1953.
Centennial Book of the John Wanamaker New York Store, formerly A.T. Stewart, 1823-1924. New York: 1924.
Cohen, Lizabeth A. "From Town Center to Shopping Center: The Reconfiguration of Community Marketplaces in Postwar America." American Historical Review 101 (October 1996): 1050-81.
Curry, Mary E. Creating an American Institution: The Merchandising Genius of J.C. Penny. New York: Garland, 1993.
Elvins, Sarah. Sales & Celebrations: Retailing and Regional Identity in Western New York State, 1920-1940. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004.
Emmett, Boris, and John E. Jeuck. Catalogs and Counters: A History of Sears, Roebuck, and Company. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950.
Esperdy, Gabrielle. Modernizing Main Street: Architecture and Consumer Culture in the New Deal. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Federhen, Deborah A., et al. Accumulation and Display: Mass Marketing Household Goods in America, 1880-1920. Winterthur, DE: Winterthur Museum, 1986.
Ferry, John William. A History of the Department Store. New York: Macmillan, 1960.
Fischer, A. T. Window and Store Display. Garden City: Doubleday, Page, and Co., 1921.
Fitz-Gibbon, Bernice. Macy's, Gimbels and Me: How to Earn $90,000 a Year in Retail Advertising. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1967.
Friedman, Walter A. Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004.
Fullerton, Ronald A. “The Art of Public Relations: U.S. Department Stores, 1876-1923.” Public Relations Review 16:3 (Fall 1990): 68-79.
Godinez, F. Laurent. Display Window Lighting and the City Beautiful: Facts and New Ideas for Progressive Merchants. New York, 1914.
Gruen, Victor, and Larry Smith. Shopping Town, USA: The Planning of Shopping Centers. New York: Reinhold, 1960.
Hardwick, M. Jeffrey. Mall Maker: Victor Gruen, Architect of the American Dream. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.
Hendrickson, Robert. The Grand Emporiums: The Illustrated History of America's Great Department Stores. New York: Stein and Day, 1978.
Hine, Thomas. The Total Package: The Evolution and Secret Meaning of Boxes, Bottles, Cans, and Tubes. Boston: Little, Brown, 1995.
Howard, Vicki. “‘The Biggest Small-Town Store in America’: Independent
Retailers and the Rise of Consumer Culture.” Enterprise & Society 9
(September 2008): 457–486.
Hower, Ralph M. "Urban Retailing 100 Years Ago." Bulletin of the Business Historical Society 12 (December 1938).
Hower, Ralph M. History of Macy's of New York, 1858-1919. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1943.
Iarocci, Louisa M. "Spaces of Desire: The Department Store in America." PhD dissertation, Boston University, 2003.
Kimbrough, Emily. Through Charley's Door. New York: Harper, 1952.
Kowinski, William S. The Malling of America. New York: William Morrow, 1984.
Leach, William
R. "Strategies of Display and the Production of Desire," in
Leach explains major changes in retail practices and the rise of the urban retail store in the late 19th century. He outlines a cultural shift from a "Land of Comfort" in which Americans were surrounded by natural abundance and restraint to a "Land of Desire" centered on accumulation and the creation of wants and desires by advertisers and store windows. A key element in this shift was the use of electric lighting, colored glass, realistic mannequins, and music to transform a shop into a "retail environment," creating a spectacle and attracting potential customers. John Wanamaker of Philadelphia, in particular, was a major innovator in the use of these modern techniques. Leach expanded greatly on these points in his 1993 Land of Desire. See following entry.
Leach, William
R. Land
of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture.
Lebhar, Godfrey M. Chain Stores in America, 1859-1950. Chicago: Crain, 1952.
Longstreth, Richard. The Drive-In, the Supermarket, and the Transformation of Commercial Space in Los Angeles, 1919-1941. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999.
Longstreth,
Richard. “Sears, Roebuck
and the Remaking of the Department Store, 1924–42.”
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 65 (June 2006):
238–79.
Mahoney, Tom, and Leonard Sloane. The Great Merchants: America's Foremost Retail Institutions and the People Who Made Them Great. rev.ed. New York: Harper and Row, 1966.
Marcus, Leonard S. The American Store Window. New York: Whitney Library of Design, 1978.
Mayo, James M. The American Grocery Store: The Evolution of a Business Space. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993.
O'Connor, John E. and Charles F. Cummings, “Bamberger’s Department Store, Charm Magazine, and the Culture of Consumption in New Jersey, 1924-1932.” New Jersey History 1984 102: 34 (1984): 1-33.
Pitrone, Jean M. F.W. Woolworth and the American Five and Dime: A Social History. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003.
Radtke, Terry. "Shopping in the Machine Age: Chain Stores, Consumerism, and the Politics of Business Reform." in The Quest for Social Justice, Alan D. Corre, ed. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992.
Ressequie, Harry E. "Alexander Turney Stewart and the Development of the Department Store, 1823-1876." Business History Review 39 (Autumn 1965) 301-322.
Robbins, Pamela D. "Stack 'em High and Sell 'em Cheap: James "Doc" Webb and Webb's City, St. Petersburg, Florida." PhD dissertation, Florida State University, 2003.
Smith, Mary Ann. "John Snook and the Design for A.T. Stewart's Store." New York Historical Society Quarterly 58 (January 1974): 18-33.
Spears, Timothy B. 100 Years on the Road: The Traveling Salesman in American Culture. New Have: Yale University Press, 1995.
Stranger, Howard R. “The Larkin Clubs of Ten: Consumer Buying Clubs and Mail-Order Commerce, 1890–1940.” Enterprise & Society 9 (March 2008): 125–64.
Taft, William Nelson. The Handbook of Window Display. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1926.
Twyman, Robert W. History of Marshall Field & Co., 1852-1906. Philadelphia, 1954.
Weisman, Winston. "Commercial Palaces of New York: 1845-1875." Art Bulletin 36 (December 1954): 285-302.
Wenger, Diane. "Delivering the Goods: The Country Storekeeper and Inland Commerce in the Mid-Atlantic." Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 129 (January 2005): 45-72.
Whitaker, Jan. Service and Style: How the American Department Store Fashioned the Middle Class. New York: St. Martin’s, 2006.
White, Sophie. “A Baser Commerce: Retailing, Class, and Gender in French Colonial New Orleans.” William and Mary Quarterly 63:3 (July 2006): 517-550.
Wood, Barry James. Shop Windows: 75 Years of the Art of Display. New York, 1982.
Zukin, Sharon. Point of Purchase: How Shopping Changed American Culture. New York: Routledge, 2003.