A Grande Dame’s Farewell : ‘We’re celebrating the life this store lived, as well as mourning its death,’ says an employee of the downtown Robinson’s.
Death with dignity did not seem a likely option. Not with “50% off” signs on every floor.
Not with stripped walls, gaping spaces and denuded shelves--all roped off with the neon yellow tape usually reserved for the scene of a crime.
Like a dowager duchess in her final throes, Robinson’s stately downtown store was carved open and laid bare this week--a garage sale atmosphere accompanying its final gasps. The 78-year-old store closes forever this week.
“It’s pathetic,” said one ex-Texan, 37, who never developed a real “relationship” with the store. But he could tell, he said, as he bought a silk paisley robe (reduced from $165 to $40), that it had once been “a very classy place.”
Thousands like him, who zipped in for bargains, felt the same momentary tug--but no real pain in the gut: “Sure it’s sad. But hey, stores come and go just like people,” shrugged an ad man clutching a designer comforter and matching king-size sheets.
Not exactly right, but close.
In an era that lasted about 80 years--until the 1980s--great department stores seemed like real people--with personalities of their own, loyal followers, even some who considered themselves friends and family.
Robinson’s--decidedly upscale, but never glitzy--was the rich Conservative of the downtown neighborhood. Trustworthy, tasteful, subdued--and always politely welcoming.
In the days before World War II, an era when men went to work and women shopped, the store at 7th and Grand bustled with women who had “dressed” for the trip downtown from Pasadena or Hancock Park.
“People never wore work clothes to shop here until World War II,” one longtime customer recalled. “They got all gussied up.” Their chauffeurs hung out in Robinson’s coffee shop. Their toddlers played in the child-care room, safe and supervised while Mama tried on frocks or selected slipcover fabrics for furniture.
“I remember playing happily on the swings,” said Judy Brooks, a longtime customer, who recalls that Bullocks (just a few blocks up) had “a beautiful hardwood slide.” But Robinson’s had “superior service” and carried “everything you could ever want for your home or yourself.”
“If you were a Robinson’s customer, you didn’t really feel at home in other department stores,” another longtime customer said. “And your friends were usually Robinson’s types, too. Birds of a feather, you know. . . . “
Those were the days before suburban branch stores existed, before MasterCard, Visa and American Express. If you were middle or upper class--or aspired to be--your badge of status was a charge card from a fine department store. And though there were cross-shoppers (people who secretly shopped somewhere else every now and then), most were loyal to the emporium of their choice.
For many, that was the seven-story downtown legend that this week lay dying beneath cut-price chaos. But all wasn’t really as heartless as it seemed.
Robinson’s executives refused to allow pictures to be taken of The Mother Store in her bedraggled state--”out of respect” for the beauty she once was.
And many long-time salespeople were holding a kind of wake--laughing through tears, bubbling with tales of better times. “We’re celebrating the life this store lived, as well as mourning its death,” one of them said.
Down in jewelry repair, a cozy corner on the main floor, three women told a reporter they consider themselves Robinson’s “real kin”--Judy Metoyer (18 years on the job), Gigi Gillingham (17 years), and Gillingham’s niece, Stacey Gillingham (8 years).
“I loved this place so much that I made my niece study at the Gemological Institute of America so that she could come work here with me,” the older Gillingham said. “I would have never believed this place would close. It is our life. The customers are our friends. They wouldn’t go anywhere else to have things repaired.”
Metoyer, who drives to work from Long Beach every day, said she briefly tried other jobs closer to home--but “none even came close to the joy I felt working here. It’s our home--and we’re its family.
“We remember when there was a tearoom, a pharmacy, books, notions, an optical store, a food and liquor shop. Our last watchmaker was 86 when he died--and he worked until the very end. His granddaughter worked here, married a customer, and still works in watch repair.”
They remember Van, the pharmacist: “He really cared,” Metoyer said. “If a customer was sick, he’d go there himself to deliver medicine--this was never an ordinary place.”
The three will not lose their jobs, nor will they even have to separate. Like many other employees in Robinson’s stores slated to close, they will work at branches that remain open in the newly merged Robinson’s-May Co. group. (In addition to the downtown store, the Robinson’s scheduled to close are: Woodland Hills, Sherman Oaks, Pasadena, Glendale Fashion Center, and Westminster Mall and Brea Mall in Orange County.)
On an upper floor, Mae Ng was working in the ravaged shell of what used to be her pride and joy: the children’s shop. Ng remembers when she started there, in 1961: “We had everything--fine baby clothes and furniture, all the accessories. Then came the suburban branch stores, then the discount stores and we started going downhill.”
Ng was wearing a perky corsage given to her by a customer who’d shopped there for decades and came to say goodby. “We embraced and hugged and cried,” Ng said, showing a shoe box filled with sentimental greeting cards sent by customers she had helped. “Thank you for all the fine, kind and courteous service all through the years. You are a very special person,” read one.
“Some people ask me how I could have done this for 31 years,” Ng said. “They simply don’t understand. I was a specialist in infants’ wear. It was my profession. I helped a lot of moms in the Baby Boom.” There was nowhere else she wanted to go, Ng said, because “I was surrounded by love and joy every day--it was happy here. And we always had beautiful, hand-picked merchandise. I can look back honestly on my career--and I honestly don’t find a single wasted year. I feel completely satisfied.”
Ng will retire this week, she said, to spend “quality time” with her family.
Veronica McFarland, waiting in line to purchase a quilt, was miffed about the impending death of the downtown store for different reasons. The savings representative at Long Beach Bank in Pasadena said “it’s a historical monument. The beautiful floors alone should be enough reason to keep this place intact. I grew up coming here with my parents, and I think a building this age should be preserved. . . . I am only 26 years old--and this place gives me a feeling of what old America used to be.”
