Shopping district

“ WHAT strikes the visitor to London most forcibly, as he enters the heart of that city’s fashionable shopping district, is the almost entire absence of ostentation in the shop-windows, the studied avoidance of garish display. ”

“ The point of highest value, responding in scale and location to the growth of the city, moves from the first business centre towards the best residence district, the crest of the wave being usually the middle of the retail shopping district, frequently strengthened by exceptionally large and handsome buildings, and occasionally checked by cross traffic streets. ”

“ There is nothing to stop highway traffic from coming onto the business block and upon arrival a traveler may make free use of the facilities available there. In short the town and its shopping district are accessible to and freely used by the public in general and there is nothing to distinguish them from any other town and shopping center except the fact that the title to the property belongs to a private corporation.' 326 U.S., at 502-503, 66 S.Ct. ”

“ There were regions open to the sweeping winds and rain, which were yet lighted throughout the night with long, blinking lines of gas-lamps, fluttering in the wind. Narrow board walks extended out, passing here a house, and there a store, at far intervals, eventually ending on the open prairie.
In the central portion was the vast wholesale and shopping district, to which the uninformed seeker for work usually drifted. It was a characteristic of Chicago then, and one not generally shared by other cities, that individual firms of any pretension occupied individual buildings. ”

“ Adjoining the buildings in the middle of the mall are sidewalks for the use of pedestrians going to and from their cars and from building to building. In the parking areas, roadways for the use of vehicular traffic entering and leaving the mall are clearly marked out. The general public has unrestricted access to the mall property. The shopping center here is clearly the functional equivalent of the business district of Chickasaw involved in Marsh. ”

“ One beneficial result of the elevated road between stations is in affording shopkeepers along the route an opportunity to display advertising signs and goods on the upper floors. Where the elevated stations are only five blocks apart, as on the 6th Avenue line in the shopping district from 14th to 23d Streets, no building being more than 600 feet from an elevated station, the crowds from the different stations intermingle, so that all stores on the short stretches between the stations are benefited by the travel. ”

“ The shopping center premises are open to the public to the same extent as the commercial center of a normal town. So far as can be determined, the main distinction in practice between use by the public of the Logan Valley Mall and of any other business district, were the decisions of the state courts to stand, would be that those members of the general public who sought to use the mall premises in a manner contrary to the wishes of the respondents could be prevented from so doing. ”

“ Through convenience of location to the community of customers about them—often, too, by the giving of credit—many of these little shops and stores furnish a social service that cannot be performed by the larger stores, which are mostly to be found massed in the central shopping district. ”

“ Business men and well-to-do women in the shopping districts resemble people one may see in any other city, but away from the heart of town one encounters numerous farmers and their wives who have driven into town in their old buggies, farm wagons, or little motors to shop and trade, just as though Kansas City were some little county seat, instead of a city of the size of Edinburgh. ”

“ The growing ease of communication with central shopping districts, the rapid changes in fashion with the consequent large variety which only a large establishment could afford to carry—all these factors have helped along the movement. There are limits to such a movement, for small tradesmen will always hold the repairing trades, and the sale of perishable goods ”

“ Besides the main currents of travel, the little feeding streams are closely watched, such shops as hatters, tailors, lunch rooms, men's furnishing goods, etc., locating in the men's district near the office buildings. The grade of shops on the streets leading from the office sections conforms to the character of the passers-by, high-class shops being where employers pass, and cheaper shops where clerks go, while push-carts and hawkers catch the office boy trade. ”

“ People are reluctant about moving into empty neighborhoods, and businessmen aren't keen about opening up business places before the customers are available. But I think it'll work out all right. There's a plaza not far from here that will provide a place to shop until the local markets are functioning, and Valleyview is part of a centralized school district. ”

“ The chief attracting power of such a retail section seems to be the insurance to customers against failure to find within the section what they seek. Undoubtedly the selection within this special district is normally better than that in all the rest of the city combined, and shoppers are saved the time, trouble and uncertainty of seeking through scattered shops. While one shop may attract a customer and another make the sale, such an interchange of customers is probably in the long run closely balanced. ”

“ And finally, another disadvantage, affecting important city interests, has been the increasing tendency toward the diversion of trade from established retail commercial concerns located in the central business district to enterprises newly founded in outer sections, often without the city boundaries. ”

“ Rising above the industrial area of the water front is the business district, with modern department stores, hotels, apartment houses, and lofty office buildings alternating with middle-aged structures and dingy shops, second-class hotels, second-hand stores, and chop houses. North, west, and south from the city center, wide boulevards and streets ascend steep hills to a broad plateau, given over to residence districts and com- munity retail centers. ”

“ It is a busy place, the entrepôt and distributing-point for an immense district, with good shops, some factories, fair hotels, and the usual deformities and refinements of civilisation. Peltry shops abound, and sportsman, hunter, miner, teamster, emigrant, can be completely rigged out at fifty different stores. ”

“ The fact of vital interest is that, despite confusion from the intermingling of utilities, the order of dependence of each definite district on the other is always the same. Residences are early driven to the circumference, while business remains at the centre, and as residences divide into various social grades, retail shops of corresponding grades follow them, and wholesale shops in turn follow the retailers, while institutions and various mixed utilities irregularly fill in the intermediate zone, and the banking and office section remains at the main business centre. ”

“ A small, compact business district centers in a few blocks along the highway, and along the railroad tracks are grain elevators, warehouses, and feed stores. Shading the quiet residential streets are large trees, many of them planted by the early settlers. On Saturday and during the planting and harvesting seasons the streets are lined with cars and all the stores are busy. ”

“ There are no manufacturing establishments or industrial enterprises of any importance and no business houses of any size in the entire district. The only stores are small shops or booths of one room, seldom more than 10 or 15 feet square and usually even smaller than that. ”

“ Subject to some few exceptions, a shop within the metropolitan district is a “market overt,” the keeper of which is free, without fear of the law, to buy or sell anything he pleases, from a malachite snuff-box to a Prayer-book bound in ivory, or from a cedar-wood workbox to a set of gold solitaires. ”

“ One square from Arch street is Market, designed years ago by the far-sighted Quaker to be just what it is today—a great commercial thoroughfare of one of the metropolitan cities of America. At its feet the ferries cross the Delaware to the fair New Jersey land. Up its course to the City Hall—or as the Philadelphian will always have it, the Public Buildings—are department stores, one of them a commercial monument to the man who made the modern department store possible and so doing became the greatest merchant of his generation. ”

“ With the increase in size of cities and the general change in habits, retail purchasers find it increasingly troublesome to go to a central market, and attach an importance to the convenience of purchasing from neighboring local provision dealers, and of having the goods delivered. ”

“ You gentlemen must realize that 63d and Halstead is a business district where no such thing was ever before done because they have their own business association and no peddlers were allowed on the street, they have got their stores to worry about. ”

“ The economic development of the United States in the last 20 years reinforces our opinion of the correctness of the approach taken in Marsh. The largescale movement of this country's population from the cities to the suburbs has been accompanied by the advent of the suburban shopping center, typically a cluster of individual retail units on a single large privately owned tract. It has been estimated that by the end of 1966 there were between 10,000 and 11,000 shopping centers in the United States and Canada, accounting for approximately 37% of the total retail sales in those two countries. ”

“ We believe, however, that the record fully supports the District Court's findings that shoe stores in the outskirts of cities compete effectively with stores in central downtown areas, and that while there is undoubtedly some commercial intercourse between smaller communities within a single 'standard metropolitan area,' the most intense and important competition in retail sales will be confined to stores within the particular communities in such an area and their immediate environs. ”

“ Scarcely anything but provisions are sold in the weekly market, the farmers of the district now resorting to the markets of Brecon and Hereford. There are good monthly stock fairs and a hiring fair in May. There is rich agricultural land in the district.
Hay was reputed to be a borough by prescription, but it never had any municipal institutions. ”

“ The women of wealth shop usually in the morning between 11 and 2 o'clock, so that even in their case the west or south side of the street has some advantage of shade. In southern cities where shade is even more important, the relative value of the four corners of two intersecting business streets is well defined, the southwest corner being the most valuable, the southeast next, the northwest next, and finally the northeast corner. This refers only to retail shopping fronts, the corners having a different order of preference if desired for other purposes, such as hotels or office buildings. ”

“ The pressure of business is steadily bringing the mercantile district higher up the island, and compelling the residence sections to go farther to the northward. Persons in passing from their homes to their business go down town in the morning, and in returning come up town in the evening. ”

“ A glance at the map shows the convenient and equitable location of Diamond Street, and its importance as a thoroughfare to supplement Liberty Avenue in handling the traffic of the Point District.
Market Street Widening
Coming, as it does, directly opposite the Sixth Street bridge, Market Street ought to be a very important cross-town connection; and because the buildings are generally small and old, and most of the lots are so deep as not to be seriously injured by curtailment, a widening is suggested throughout its length. ”

“ The district comprises the most ignorant and most vicious portion of the city. It is full of low grog-shops, houses of ill-fame, low gambling-houses, and sailor boarding-houses, whose keepers enjoy protection and immunity, for which they pay by the most efficient electioneering services. ”

“ It is in the rear of the selfsame red-brick building at the westerly edge of Herald Square—that same main structure that we have already begun to study in many of its fascinating details—that we find the core of the receiving department of the Macy store. It is a hollow core. A tunnel-like roadway, two hundred feet in length bores its way through the building, from Thirty-fifth Street to Thirty-fourth. Through this cavernous place, lighted at all hours by numerous electric arcs, there passes, the entire working-day, a seemingly endless procession of motor-trucks, wagons and other carriers. ”

“ There is no more life in Patrick Street than in Russell Square of a sunshiny day; and as for the Mall, it is as lonely as the chief street of a German Residenz.... That the city contains much wealth is evidenced by the number of handsome, villas round about it, where the rich merchants dwell; but the warehouses of the wealthy provision-merchants make no show to the stranger walking the streets; and of the retail shops, if some are spacious and handsome, most look as if too big for the business carried on within. ”

“ I mean I don’t like New York—wouldn’t live there if you gave me the place—but it showed a sort of go-getting spirit. It was no easy job getting a full staff together to run a department store operation, when any city the size of New York must have a couple thousand stores. You know what I mean? It’s like running a hotel or anything else—how are you going to get people to work for you when they can just as easily walk down the street, find a vacant store and set up their own operation? ”