Boston Store has been 'The Heart of Milwaukee' for more than a century

Years back, it declared itself to be "The Heart of Milwaukee."

Today, its pulse is weak and its future seems to be doomed.

Boston Store, the last survivor of a trio of full-line Milwaukee department stores that once included Gimbels and Schuster's, figures to be among the stores closing after the winning bidder Tuesday for its parent company, Bon-Ton Stores Inc., was a liquidator. 

"I think people here are going to miss the Boston Store," said retail consultant Dick Seesel, owner of Mequon-based Retailing in Focus. 

"Even though some of the strategic choices they made may not have worked out," he said, speaking of Bon-Ton overall, "I think their brands are going to be missed in their hometown markets."

And not just by shoppers. For older residents, Boston Store is one of the last links to the days when downtown Milwaukee hummed with activity and Wisconsin Avenue was lined with movie theaters and retail. Situated squarely in the middle of a commercial strip running from the river to the public library, Boston Store was a key part of the action.

The two-level store that stands today at 4th and Wisconsin, while bright and attractive, is a tiny fraction of what once was eight floors of merchandise offering virtually everything a machinist at Falk or an office clerk at Schlitz could want: records and tapes in the basement; wine, liquor and men's apparel on the first floor; women's and teen fashions on the second and third levels; furniture on the fourth; appliances and hardware on the fifth; domestics on the sixth; and a golf shop, a ski shop and "Harry's Cafe" on the top floor.

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Bringing big names to town

Beyond the abundant merchandise — so much at the retailer's various locations that Boston Store once operated the second-largest department-store warehouse in the country — was the firm's participation in community life.

Its marketing crew brought big names to town — musician Ray Charles, movie legend Cary Grant, heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey. At Christmas, a "monorail" hung from the ceiling of an upper floor at the downtown store for kids to ride through Toytown.

At one point, Boston Store fielded a fleet of horse-drawn trucks to make deliveries across Milwaukee. In the 1940s, the retailer started a free air-delivery service for customers in outstate Wisconsin cities, flying their purchases out of Maitland Field on what now is the Summerfest site.

Boston Store's roots, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society, go back to 1897, when Julius Simon, who had come to Milwaukee from Portage, opened a small store at North 3rd Street and West Highland Avenue. Three years later, he moved to the spot where the downtown store still stands.

Simon specialized in fabric, clothing, carpets and shoes, and leased space to other merchants. Among them were Chicago's Stone Brothers, who sold jewelry and leather goods, and Carl Herzfeld's hosiery and undergarments department. By 1906, Herzfeld and Nathan Stone had bought out Simon's interest in the entire operation and renamed it Boston Store.

(Other, unrelated retailers have chosen the same name. There have been "Boston Stores" in Wichita, Kan.; La Porte, Ind.; and Erie and Wilkes-Barre, Pa.)

Milwaukee's Boston Store built an addition in 1911 and another in 1921. By then, the store was described as having 17 acres of floor space.

The business passed out of local hands in 1948, when it was purchased by Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores, then the largest department store chain in the country.

By the late '60s, Boston Store had five Milwaukee-area locations, including the still-operating stores at Brookfield Square and Bayshore. Stores at Southridge and Northridge followed in the '70s. In the mid-'80s, the Gimbels at Mayfair mall was converted to a Boston Store.

Not long before the Gimbels deal, Boston Store had become part of P.A. Bergner & Co., which in 1991 sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from creditors. That set off a dizzying series of changes.

Bergners emerged from bankruptcy in 1993 as Carson Pirie Scott & Co., which was acquired by Proffitt's Inc. in 1998. The following year, Proffitt's bought Saks Inc. and assumed that name. Stability returned in 2006, when York, Pa.-based Bon-Ton bought five department store chains from Saks, including Boston Store.

Bon-Ton has owned Boston Store since then. The company has not turned an annual profit since 2010.

Lou Saldivar and Paul Gores of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.