Charles Himelhoch dies at 101

**dtowncitylover** · December-07-20, 03:48 PM

Another Detroit golden age department store loss. RIP Mr. Himelhoch and condolences to his family.

Charles Himelhoch, CEO of Himelhoch's department store, dies at 101 [[freep.com)

Interestingly, the store is now re-founded as an online venture by his daughter. Link in the article.

**Danny** · December-07-20, 03:53 PM

He will truly missed. I used to go that store 37 years ago with my cousins to shop. It was a different store at the time and was operated as a mini mall.

**Gistok** · December-07-20, 04:25 PM

Did anyone else remember the dining room table set display on the Washington Blvd. side of Himmelhoch's? That was the window display where the table was set... but the candles had all melted [[bent over) from years of the summer sun roasting them. I found that funny.

**Lowell** · December-08-20, 10:36 AM

Originally Posted by Gistok

Did anyone else remember the dining room table set display on the Washington Blvd. side of Himmelhoch's? That was the window display where the table was set... but the candles had all melted [[bent over) from years of the summer sun roasting them. I found that funny.

Indeed, the Himmelhoch's Restaurant was ghoulish. For me, it evoked the eeriness of Dicken's description of Miss Havisham's frozen-in-time room from Great Expectations.

Certain wintry branches of candles on the high chimney-piece faintly lighted the chamber, or, it would be more expressive to say, faintly troubled its darkness. It was spacious, and I dare say had once been handsome, but every discernible thing in it was covered with dust and mould, and dropping to pieces. The most prominent object was a table with a long tablecloth spread on it, as if a feast had been in preparation when the house and the clocks stopped all together. An epergne or centre-piece of some kind was in the middle of this cloth; it was so heavily overhung with cobwebs that its form was quite indistinguishable; and, as I looked along the yellow expanse out of which I remember its seeming to grow, like a black fungus, I saw speckle-legged spiders with blotchy bodies run home to it, and running out from it, as if some circumstance of the greatest public importance had just transpired in the spider community.