Windows at Sears were decorated for Christmastime

history columnWhen a million-dollar Sears department store opened in Glendale in the mid-1930s, it brought glorious wraparound windows to the corner of Central and California avenues. At Christmastime, a display of holiday items filled the windows, attracting viewers from all parts of the city.

The new store was called “Sears’ finest in the West” in a full-page advertisement in the annual edition of the Glendale News-Press on Jan. 29, 1938. The ad read, “The story of Glendale is the story of one of the most remarkable municipal growths of modern times. Fifteen years ago, Glendale was a small town on the outskirts of a big city. Today, it is a big city in its own right. It is as big as such American cities as Topeka, Kansas, or Charleston, South Carolina.”

The ad described Glendale as the established trading center for the vast San Fernando Valley, boasting of hundreds of fine stores and shops. “It is but natural, therefore, that Glendale should also possess a great department store.”

Sears decorated their windows for the Christmas season for many years and residents remember them with great fondness.

Sue Barsam Van Dalsen, a 1961 Hoover High School graduate, said that when she was young, her parents would drive her and her brother downtown to see the Sears windows.

“We would see Santa at Sears and also drive down the Tunnel of Lights, which was really fun. The Sears windows were decorated beautifully.”

Carole Lynn Hatem remembered when the Sears windows were decorated for Christmas. She grew up in Los Feliz and graduated from Marshall High in 1962, but she and her mother, Iva Supple, would often shop in Glendale. “We went to Sears and also to Hedy’s on Brand Boulevard.”

“I remember the Sears Christmas windows,” said Rhoda Stuart Backer, whose mother, Dorothy Stuart, worked at Sears as the yardage buyer. “Sears was the only high-end department store in town when I was young, except for Webbs,” said Backer, who is a 1951 alumnus of Glendale High School.

Judie Taylor Anderson, a member of Hoover High School’s Class of 1960, worked at Children’s Corner, a nursery school on Glenwood Road, near the present Boy Scout Council headquarters, while attending Glendale College. She used to transport the children home from the school.

During the Christmas season, she would drive them by Sears so they could enjoy the brightly illuminated windows and the large-scale nativity figures.

“They loved seeing the windows and the nativity set,” she said.

Joan Johnson Smith said that her mother used to take her shopping at Sears when she was a very young girl.

“My parents owned Johnson Music Co. on West Broadway, where an Islands restaurant is now,” she said. “I was always there [at the store]. We would often go down Brand to see the Christmas decorations,” said Smith, a 1951 Hoover High School grad. “I remember the red bells hanging from the cascades across the street. They changed it every once in a while, there weren’t red bells every year.”

Smith added that the Sears windows were plastered over many years ago, but even though the windows are gone, memories of their glory remain vivid to those who saw them.

* KATHERINE YAMADA can be reached by calling features editor Joyce Rudolph at (818) 637-3241. For more information on Glendale’s history, visit the Glendale Historical Society’s web page: www.glendalehistorical.org, call the reference desk at the Central Library at (818) 548-2027; or visit the Special Collections Room at Central (open by appointment only).

Note to Readers: “Thank you to all of you who have shared your stories and your photos with me this past year.

Every time I visit with a longtime Glendale resident, I learn more about the city’s past. And, a big thank you to George Ellison, of the Special Collections Room at the Glendale Public Library, who has been so helpful with finding background information for many of the stories.

Another thank you to Chuck Wike, Community Relations manager at the library, who scans and sends in all the photos to my editor, Joyce Rudolph.