Woolworth's closure hits twenty-five years

Twenty five years ago this month marked the end of the five-and-dime era: F.W. Woolworth's called it quits after more than a century.

The once mighty retail pioneer announced on July 17, 1997, that its 400 remaining stores, a fraction of what it operated in its glory days, would close for good.

In the pre-Dollar General era, Woolworth's dotted the nation and four continents with stores and famed lunch counters.

Woolworth's opened its first 5-cent stores in Utica, N.Y., and Lancaster, Pa., in 1879.

By 1929 it had about 2,250 stores from coast to coast.

Woolworth's boasted in its newspaper advertisements: "Our stock is the most remarkable one we have ever offered and we invite everybody to inspect the choice importations that are on exhibition in our elegant new show windows."

Woolworth's came to eastern New Mexico soon after large numbers of people began to arrive with the railroad, in the late 1920s.

In Clovis the store was located at 321 Main, where the Crafters Mall stands today.

Above the store, Attorney Otto Smith conducted business for years. Next to Smith was a "4-room brick house," according to a 1929 advertisement in the Clovis News-Journal. Today the one-time attorney's office and apartment above Woolworth's are home to storage for the Crafters Mall.

Woolworth remained at its original Clovis location until 1977, when it relocated to Hilltop Plaza. The Clovis Woolworth's closed in the early 1980s.

In Portales, Woolworth was a main attraction on the town square at 100 S. Ave. A, across the street from the movie theater.

Even old-timers can't remember when it opened, but it closed in the early 1970s, replaced by Wacker's department store and, today, the Roosevelt County Chamber of Commerce.

Woolworth's was where Sharon Davis remembers buying "about a half gallon" of Evening in Paris cologne for $3, she wrote on the Old Portales Memories Facebook page.

Like today's dollar stores, Woolworth's offered everything from toys and sporting goods to clothes and candy for "discount prices."

But its beginning was slow. The first store in New York failed, so Frank Winfield Woolworth tried again immediately in Lancaster, Pa. Woolworth and his brother Charles brought the "Woolworth's Great Five Cent Store" sign to Lancaster from Utica, according to company legend.

Woolworth's capitalized on the commercialization of the holidays and was the first store to sell manufactured Christmas tree ornaments.

The brothers initially priced their goods at either 5 or 10 cents - a policy that Woolworth's kept in place for several decades.

Its history reflected changes in America.

Woolworth's "whites only" lunch counters in Southern states were sites of protests during the Civil Rights era, most notably a February 1960 demonstration in Nashville that ended in the arrest of future congressman John Lewis.

When Woolworth's centennial rolled around in 1979, the Guinness Book of World Records proclaimed it the largest department store chain in the world. At the time, there were 4,000 Woolworth's across the globe.

But Woolworth's soon saw its fortunes decline. Consumers drifted away from downtown shopping and chose to spend their money at suburban malls or big box retailers.

Woolworth's also faced competition from discount retailers that included K-mart and Target.

By the summer of 1997, it was all over for the Woolworth name.

The retailer converted about 100 of the discontinued five-and-dime stores into more profitable specialty operations, including Northern Reflections and Foot Locker. The remaining 300 were shuttered.

"We made the very difficult decision to close our domestic F.W. Woolworth general merchandise operations to help assure the continuing profitable growth," said CEO Roger N. Farah at the time.

"This company has invested significant resources in trying to revitalize the F.W. Woolworth chain, including time, money and management's attention. However, despite our best efforts and the hard work of the F.W. Woolworth team, the business continued to lose money and it became clear that F.W. Woolworth would be unable in the foreseeable future to return to profitability as well as meet our minimum performance standards."

Ray Kelly of The Republican in Springfield, Mass., contributed to this report.