Old Hudson Locations that never made it to become Macy's

I know of two Hudson retail outlets that were closed in the 1970's. I was wondering if anyone had any knowledge if there were any more of these.

These two locations were located in East Dearborn and fell short of being full-fledged stores. One was on Michigan and Greenfield. When it was closed it became a K-mart, then later a Farmer Jack, and now houses a Kroger/ABC Warehouse. This location was known as a rainbow store. I can recall them having lively displays and remember them having live models at least once. The Rainbow Store was also known as the Basement Store and sold the lower lines.

I can also recall a location on W Warren Between Chase and Schaefer. It was attached to a large Hudson Warehouse and is roughly across from what is now Shatila Bakery. This store was like a cross between a full warehouse sale store and a furniture store. It sold an odd mix of stuff.

Both of these stores closed prior to the opening of the Fairlane Store.

Does anyone know of other examples of where these satelites stores may have existed but are no longer around? The closest thing I can think of to this was when Hudson's used to have a Warehouse sale and open up what is now Ford Field.

Lincoln Park had one but I am not certain of the years it was there. It was years before I moved to Lincoln Park. It, too, became a Farmer Jack's. It is now vacant. As Farmer Jack's it was just one floor. I understand that as Hudson's it had an escalator to an upper level. Prior to Hudson's it was a People's Department store.
The building is still vacant. It is in a shopping center at Fort Street and Emmons. The J.C. Penney's there is to close in January.

A Hudsons that never became a Macy's:
http://jlhudsontheatre.com/hudsonsbuilding.jpg
Just a matter of time.
If i could get the forum to show it as a pic not a url.....

so sad. that looming facade is hard to forget.

lalynch, thank you for your helpful contribution! do you think the closing of this store could be tied to the opening of another nearby store, say the one at Fairlane or Southland?

Stinks to hear about that JC Penny. That store is truely a one of a kind one. The wallet in my pocket right now came from that store. When I discovered it it reminded me of the JC Penny my mother used to work at on Grand River and Greenfield.

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Originally Posted by DetroitPlanner

lalynch, thank you for your helpful contribution! do you think the closing of this store could be tied to the opening of another nearby store, say the one at Fairlane or Southland?

Stinks to hear about that JC Penny. That store is truely a one of a kind one. The wallet in my pocket right now came from that store. When I discovered it it reminded me of the JC Penny my mother used to work at on Grand River and Greenfield.

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Yes, I believe so. We had Michael Hauser talk on J.L. Hudson's a few years ago and I believe he had mentioned something about Southland store taking foot traffic way from the Hudson's that we used to have here. I was at our J.C. Penney's the other night and I was overwhelmed at how costly J.C. Penney's is now. Then I went to Meijer's and found the exact same item for $3.00 cheaper than the sale price at Penney's. It was just a plastic storage container for Christmas ornaments.

There was another Hudson's Budget Store on John R near 12 Mile in Madison Heights. I understand the Pontiac Mall/Summit location was originally opened as a stand-alone HBS, and was remodeled and became a full line store later, although I don't personally recall this.

Hudson's Rainbow was a mid to late-70s attempt to re-brand & market HBS with a two-pronged approach. First was to remove the name "budget" from the name [[budget=compromise in quality in consumer's minds). Secondly, to experiment with spinning it off into a separate lower/mid-tier store. This was not to be, as the writing was on the wall.

The Dayton's half of the Dayton-Hudson parent corporation had opened its first Target store in suburban Minneapolis and the brand was successful from the get-go. That, coupled with the subsequent purchase of mid-tier Mervyn's by Dayton-Hudson completed the spectrum of a discount/mid-tier/upper end portfolio of brands. There was no longer a niche or need for Rainbow. Interestingly, Target, Wal-Mart, and K-Mart all opened their first stores during the year 1962---and the rest, as they say, is retail history.

Wow - this is interesting as I had never heard of any of those other Hudson's even though my mom and grandmother were both very devout worshipers of St. Joseph L. Of course we lived very close to Eastland so there was rarely need to go elsewhere.

I do seem to remember the term "rainbow store" being applied not to an entire store location but just to the basement of the Eastland [[and possibly other) mall Hudson's and it was where the "budget" stuff was supposed to be [[of course if you really wanted "budget" you went to Kmart, not Hudson's!)

Yes I seem to recall the one at Westland Mall having a "Rainbow Store" in the basement, too. That was decades ago, '70s or '80s, IIRC.

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Originally Posted by psubliminal

Yes I seem to recall the one at Westland Mall having a "Rainbow Store" in the basement, too. That was decades ago, '70s or '80s, IIRC.

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And it was a Budget Store before that.

The Southland store had one too, in the area occupied today by the men's department.

All of your recollections are correct. A staple at all Hudson's stores [[both downtown & branches) was the Hudson's Budget Store which was in the basement [[or a separate wing in stores with no basement). The stand-alone HBS in Madison Hts, Lincoln Park etc. were opened under that name as well. Both the basement stores & stand-alones were later re-branded as "Rainbow" sometime in the 1970s.

A bit of JLH trivia: during the depths of the Great Depression, the revenue from the Budget Store carried the entire behemoth building through the economic storm. Nobody could afford the high-end stuff on the upper floors in the kind of volume necessary to keep it afloat.

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Originally Posted by lalynch;1029s.s.96

Lincoln Park had one but I am not certain of the years it was there. It was years before I moved to Lincoln Park. It, too, became a Farmer Jack's. It is now vacant. As Farmer Jack's it was just one floor. I understand that as Hudson's it had an escalator to an upper level. Prior to Hudson's it was a People's Department store.
The building is still vacant. It is in a shopping center at Fort Street and Emmons. The J.C. Penney's there is to close in January.

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I watched the Lincoln Park Plaza being built as a kid from my folks backyard. The ACO hardware was a C.F. Smith grocery and where CVS was on the south end was a Packers grocery. The plaza started at these two buildings and construction moved north and south to the present configuration. It used to have a Winklemans and a Lerners clothing stores. Good Housekeeping Shop was also there. Saunders and S.S. Kresge and others. There was a opening inside where you could walk between Kresge's and Hudson's. I remember electronics being on the second floor at Hudsons. The opening of the plaza was quite a event. The Lincoln Park Fire Department bought it's new ladder truck down to show off. There is a picture of it on their website fighting a fire in downtown Wyandotte. The parking lot was always filled. Sadly not much now.

I can recall going to Pontiac mall in the early 70's there was a Hudsons store, but there was also a wing of the mall known as the annex. The annex had a budget store and a couple of other stores on one side of the mall and the regular Hudson's on the other. When I went back much later as an adult, that part of the mall had been sucked into the Hudson's store, making that store much larger. Can anyone verify this?

To piggy back on what was said earlier, Hudson's closed the Rainbow Stores right around the time that they were opening up the Mervyns and Target Stores in the area. I can recall reading that there was no need to keep the Rainbow Stores because they would be in competition with the Mervyns and Target stores. If you notice, the first Mervyns and Target stores were opened not too far away from the locations Hudsons had at that time.

There's also an interesting twist of incestuous corporate trivia here. Once the mid-tier and upper-tier department store sectors began to majorly tank, Dayton-Hudson renamed itself Target Corp, consolidated the upper-tier into one brand, [[Marshall Field's) and sold it off to May Department Stores. The Mervyn's brand was sold off to Cerberus. So in a convoluted way, this was a step-marriage between Hudson's & Chrysler.

I think Hudson's thinking with the stand-alone Rainbow stores was that they'd be able to do like Filene's in Boston, and spin-off their basement bargain store into a successful brand of its own. Of course the Basement has [[barely) survived Filene's itself, and Hudson's and its Rainbow are now long gone as well.

jjaba's mother and other Jewish ladies were only allowed to work in basement stores of the big downtown Detroit stores. She worked in Crowley's Basement Store downtown selling notions.
Correction, she worked in Crowley's SECOND basement store, two stories below sunlight.
Back in the 1930s and 1940s, it was thought that Gentiles were more qualified to work "upstairs". jjaba has always had a disdain for those so-called dept. store moguls. [[Blacks were only cleaners and elevator operators, or worked in the stockroom.) They too, were afforded "special" treatment of the racist owners.

No wonder so many Jews opened up their own stores. Better that, than the humiliations of the moguls. Not so good for Eastern European Yiddische Arbiters like us.
Detroit memories growing up,

jjazba, Westside Bar Mitzvah Bukkor.

I remember going to the Hudson Budget Store in Madison Heights.
All of the ladies wore that same smock and that logo with the intertwined H was everywhere.
I also remeber the annex at Summit / Pontiac Mall - they even had their chain-wide Christmas Celebration located there one year [[it seemed to move every year).

I am still loyal to the old Hudson locations despite the Macy's drop in service and quality. ..and aside from that, you can't even read their sign on the Oakland Mall location. It used to look like one big present or box with the nicely proportioned 'Hudsons' name on it.

For the Dyes sleuths does anyone know where the 2 Hudson's buildings in the images below were located?

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Originally Posted by p69rrh51

For the Dyes sleuths does anyone know where the 2 Hudson's buildings in the images below were located?

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Was the Company Warehouse on Warren in Dearborn?

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Originally Posted by p69rrh51

For the Dyes sleuths does anyone know where the 2 Hudson's buildings in the images below were located?

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I would assume the top pic is of the Elizabeth Street warehouse. The same one re-purposed by the wm ford family to build Ford Field, home of our beloved Detroit Lions.

the bottom pic looks like off of Fort and Grand Blvd. near the Ambassador.

I don't know if this is the same building as 35, but this was a Hudson warehouse on Lafayette. I can remember peering in it as a boy and seeing the floats.

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=detro...16.99,,0,-22.5

If it is the same building, its been modified quite a bit, though it has the same look.

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Originally Posted by DetroitPlanner

I don't know if this is the same building as 35, but this was a Hudson warehouse on Lafayette. I can remember peering in it as a boy and seeing the floats.

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=detro...16.99,,0,-22.5

If it is the same building, its been modified quite a bit, though it has the same look.

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You are in the right direction. the building was designed by Smith, Hinchman & Grylls but unfortunately is not the warehouse in the image above.

Fletcher Hardware Building 1915 West Fort built in 1920 West Side Industrial Detroit, MI.

There was one in Lincoln Park, MI on Fort St. at Emmons Avenue.

What amazes me, how all retail stores got along, were able to coexist, how our strip malls were 1/2 to 3/4 mile long with major outlets within them.
Back then, business was done in the mind set of the cost of doing business and "not" passing it onto the customers; that they knew the pie was big enough for all to get a big piece and be satisfy.
Back then, people retired being thousandnares and were dang happy about it; today, everyone wants to retire as a millionaire, and they want to do this in 5 to 10 years...
Oh how greedy all so many have become......glad I am in the twilight of my life, the doom on the horizon will be like none every seen...
Look out the 1%.........it's coming up fast....
lol

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Originally Posted by DetroitPlanner

I can recall going to Pontiac mall in the early 70's there was a Hudsons store, but there was also a wing of the mall known as the annex. The annex had a budget store and a couple of other stores on one side of the mall and the regular Hudson's on the other. When I went back much later as an adult, that part of the mall had been sucked into the Hudson's store, making that store much larger. Can anyone verify this?

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I don't remember that annex location being the rainbow store. The rainbow store was in the basement. The annex housed sporting goods as I remember it. What you said about later years is kind of backwards. The mall annex was turned into a Service Merchandise. When that closed, I think, was when JC Penney went into that spot.