Hudson’s: Hub of America’s Heartland

Amazon.com Price: $24.95 (as of 06/05/2019 17:07 PST- Details)

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Description

This can be a great book for someone wanting to know the history of J.L. Hudson’s Department Store. It is a should-have for Hudson memorabilia collectors. For generations, it used to be as synonymous with Christmas and fashion as it used to be Detroit. The store at Woodward and Gratiot avenues used to be absolutely massive, evolving with the Motor City until it became the tallest department store on this planet. By the point it finished growing, the store’s size almost defied belief. The store used to be 2,124,316 square feet, making it second in size among department stores to only Macy’s in New York. Even then, Macy’s is only 26,000 square feet bigger. The store used to be spread out over 32 floors: 25 floors, two half-floors, a mezzanine and four basements. At 410 feet, Hudson’s used to be the tallest department store on this planet. The building had 51 passenger elevators, 17 freight elevators, eight employee elevators and 48 escalators. Its largest freight elevator could accommodate a semi trailer. The store had 39 men’s restrooms, 50 for women and 10 private ones for executives. The largest used to be a women’s lounge on the fourth floor that had a whopping 85 stalls. Joseph Lowthian Hudson and his father were running a men’s clothing store in the lumber town of Ionia, Mich., when the Panic of 1873 struck. When the sawmills were shuttered, their customers couldn’t pay their bills. Then Hudson’s father died. Three years later, Hudson went bankrupt, paying his creditors 60 cents on the dollar. Hudson dusted himself off and began over in Detroit. On April 2, 1881, Hudson opened his first store on the ground floor of the old Detroit Opera House. In 1888, he used to be such a success, he looked up the entire creditors he had shorted in the bankruptcy proceedings 12 years earlier and paid them in full – with compound interest.

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