Page 1 of 1
JCPenney in 1962-1963
Posted: 30 Sep 2025 08:54
by jleyerle
Kind of morbidly obsessed with JCP in their inflection-al years around 1962, when they changed so much...all at once....moving from small dry-goods stores to mall stores, taking on hardlines and credit and catalogues...
There was one of these newly built mall stores (South County Center, St. Louis) that was a weird obsession to me growing up...it was not at the mall where we usually shopped (Crestwood Plaza) but was kind of the "next closest mall" Later in the 70s was traumatized by one year of back-to-school shopping when my mom decided to shop at JCPenney and found I needed Husky SuperDenim, but fit ok with Regular Toughskins from Sears
Have been on the archive site with the first JCP-branded Catalogue in 1963; and found an ebay listing for a "General Merchandise Division of JCP" catalogue in 1962, but wondered if anyone had seen that catalogue anywhere? Apparently in and around Milwaukee there were "General Merchandise" catalog stores in and around the neighborhoods....wonder what that was about.
JCP putting in major appliances and hardlines--apparently in fall/winter 1962 they started rolling appliances out to a couple dozen of the retail stores (assume larger stores within a region). Does anyone know where they were, or has anyone seen newspaper advertising about it?
So as not to entirely miss the theme of this website, JCP owned a supermarket chain which operated low-cost supermarket annexes alongside discount stores pretty widely scattered through the US. Have never seen a comprehensive listing of those stores--there is some material from Omaha, NE (Hinky Dinky) which was tied up with this supermarket chain somehow.
Re: JCPenney in 1962-1963
Posted: 30 Sep 2025 16:44
by Groceteria
Can't shed a lot of light on this subject, but this would be a great place to start:
https://archive.org/details/jcpenneyann ... enney1917/
Annual reports from 1917 to 2010.
Re: JCPenney in 1962-1963
Posted: 30 Sep 2025 19:56
by jleyerle
Already been through these; unfortunately 1961 is missing (!) which is kinda right in the middle of the period of my curiosity. Kinda need to use a Newspapers.com account but I'm disinclined to sign up for that.
Re: JCPenney in 1962-1963
Posted: 30 Sep 2025 21:50
by Groceteria
jleyerle wrote: ↑30 Sep 2025 19:56
Kinda need to use a Newspapers.com account but I'm disinclined to sign up for that.
They do offer a 7-day free trial. You probably already know that, though.
Re: JCPenney in 1962-1963
Posted: 03 Oct 2025 04:16
by pseudo3d
If you really need something to look up on Newspapers.com I might be help you out, especially if it's a full article.
jleyerle wrote: ↑30 Sep 2025 08:54
Kind of morbidly obsessed with JCP in their inflection-al years around 1962, when they changed so much...all at once....moving from small dry-goods stores to mall stores, taking on hardlines and credit and catalogues...
There was one of these newly built mall stores (South County Center, St. Louis) that was a weird obsession to me growing up...it was not at the mall where we usually shopped (Crestwood Plaza) but was kind of the "next closest mall" Later in the 70s was traumatized by one year of back-to-school shopping when my mom decided to shop at JCPenney and found I needed Husky SuperDenim, but fit ok with Regular Toughskins from Sears
Have been on the archive site with the first JCP-branded Catalogue in 1963; and found an ebay listing for a "General Merchandise Division of JCP" catalogue in 1962, but wondered if anyone had seen that catalogue anywhere? Apparently in and around Milwaukee there were "General Merchandise" catalog stores in and around the neighborhoods....wonder what that was about.
JCP putting in major appliances and hardlines--apparently in fall/winter 1962 they started rolling appliances out to a couple dozen of the retail stores (assume larger stores within a region). Does anyone know where they were, or has anyone seen newspaper advertising about it?
So as not to entirely miss the theme of this website, JCP owned a supermarket chain which operated low-cost supermarket annexes alongside discount stores pretty widely scattered through the US. Have never seen a comprehensive listing of those stores--there is some material from Omaha, NE (Hinky Dinky) which was tied up with this supermarket chain somehow.
Hinky Dinky did about 30 leased supermarket department operations (nine of which were JCPenney's Treasury stores) nationally and Puerto Rico, and those leased operations were spun off from them in 1970 as Supermarkets but
quickly bought by JCPenney, with the deal closing in December 1970. According to a 1972 article they operated "45 supermarket departments in Penney stores, Treasury stores owned by Penney and discount department stores owned by others". A 1977 article confirms what I remember hearing before...that only three JCPenney stores had a grocery department, though this
Facebook album has evidence of five stores. I'm guessing that by that time it closed it was down to three.
When it came to introducing heavy appliances, I found an article that they'd be manufactured by Hotpoint (General Electric) and be rolled out to select stores in spring 1963. Another article indicates that it
started in the West Coast with the urban stores getting theirs first.
Re: JCPenney in 1962-1963
Posted: 07 Oct 2025 18:03
by rich
I've seen shopping center descriptions that included JCP dry good stores ranging from 20K-80K sf and some of the largest were built during the mid-50s, so they predated any plans to expand into full line department stores including hardlines. The norm was around 40K sf and some of those and the larger stores were two stories. Some of the 80K sf stores operated as defacto full-line stores---many were replaced and a few were enlarged (usually if the center evolved into a mall), but at least one (Congressional Plaza in Rockville MD) operated until the early 1990s. Those bigger stores would have been the stores that received the appliances and additional lines before the true full-line stores opened and they were all over the US. JCP seemed to guess which centers would dominate their local markets.
Re: JCPenney in 1962-1963
Posted: 21 Nov 2025 11:00
by jleyerle
Yeah, these fragments are exactly my point.
--regarding Supermarkets Interstate---in reading about them they did kind of a strange "non-warehoused" mode of business (note that in the ads in the FB compilation there are -no- private label items...strictly name brands. Apparently they had a good bit of success going into markets (have read that they had some locations in Louisville, KY) where the competition were all using trading stamps. They would go in (under whatever discount store they operated in) and undercut the competition. Only fairly late in their existence did they brand as "JC Penney Supermarket"...and some of this was testing out a combined operation (southern Illinois) branded as JCPenney.
--regarding their move into malls---presumably their testing of hardlines occurred where they had a concentration of the bigger dry-goods stores---suspect it MIGHT have been Milwaukee/Chicago or Louisville (particularly since Hotpoint manufactured most of their appliances in those metro areas). I would expect that it wasn't too geographically widespread for reasons of distribution and service economics. They always had (later) a "available in larger JC Penney stores" disclaimer on their advertising for hardgoods.