Los Angeles is dead. It has a Marxist Mayor, a city council that sounds like a cross between the Russian Politburo and Hamas. Part of the city burned down and the politicians are looking for ways to kill off the rebuilding. Crime is on the rise, too few cops and no desire to protect the citizens. In fact, it is the policy of Los Angeles if you are here illegally and commit a crime, YOU will be protected from the Federal government—while getting lots of free stuff. DOOM LOOP is the proper term for L.A. today.
“With bare shelves and signage declaring discounts of up to 70%, the Macy’s department store on 7th Street in downtown Los Angeles is heading for its final days. Last February, the department store’s owners announced that 150 locations were going out of business. “Closing any store is never easy,” Tony Spring, chairman and chief executive officer of Macy’s, Inc. said in a statement. “But as part of our Bold New Chapter strategy, we are closing underproductive Macy’s stores to allow us to focus our resources and prioritize investments in our go–forward stores.”
This store was reopened ten years ago. Now it is a sign of the death of a community.
Downtown L.A.’s Last Department Store About to Close
The Macy’s on 7th Street is the descendant of stores dating back to the 19th century https://lamag.com/news/downtown-la-last-department-store-about-to-closeChris Nichols, Los Angeles Magazine, 3/3/25
With bare shelves and signage declaring discounts of up to 70%, the Macy’s department store on 7th Street in downtown Los Angeles is heading for its final days. Last February, the department store’s owners announced that 150 locations were going out of business. “Closing any store is never easy,” Tony Spring, chairman and chief executive officer of Macy’s, Inc. said in a statement. “But as part of our Bold New Chapter strategy, we are closing underproductive Macy’s stores to allow us to focus our resources and prioritize investments in our go–forward stores.”
This Macy’s reopened as part of The Bloc shopping center in 2015, but is a descendant of The Broadway store, which opened at this same location more than half a century ago. That store relocated from its namesake street four blocks east in 1973 in a spot it had occupied since 1896. The closure of Macy’s means that downtown Los Angeles will be without a full department store for the first time in almost 150 years.
Coulter’s was L.A.’s first department store, opening at Temple and Spring Streets in 1878, and was taken over by The Broadway in 1961. Every one of L.A.’s grand old home-grown department stores, including Robinson’s, Bullocks, and the May Company, evolved into Macy’s. Seventh and Broadway was once the nation’s busiest intersection, sporting the flagship Bullocks store, Clifton’s Cafeteria and the 2,450-seat State theater along a row of 13 cavernous vaudeville and movie houses. A tangle of overhead wires powered the largest electric railway system in the world, which dropped off shoppers at the intersection for a day of shopping and entertainment.
Downtown Los Angeles once made its name as the place to shop at fine stores, brimming with amenities like tea rooms, auditoriums, ticket agencies, free gift-wrapping stations, and dedicated personal shoppers paid on commission. Those grand edifices, along with luxury hotels, movie palaces and towering office buildings defined the center city for generations.
I never saw a crowd at this Macy’s and there are many newer places to shop downtown, from the discount bazaars of Santee Alley to the magnificent Apple Tower Theater store, the luxury boutiques at ROW DTLA and the fancy Swedish clothier Acne Studios on Broadway. We still have a Target, Uniqlo, and Nordstrom Rack around the corner from Macy’s, and a Ross and Burlington Coat Factory on Broadway, just not an old-fashioned department store.
As this last descendant of long-gone stores that were beloved by generations of Angelenos fades away, we look back on what shopping downtown meant in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries with historic photos from the Los Angeles Public Library photo collection.
I remember when that Macy’s was the Broadway. I recently found out it moved to that very location in 1973, two years before my birth(I’ll be 50 a week from today) a good 4 blocks away from where the original Broadway was. My mother, who was born and raised in Los Angeles, remembers going downtown to shop like it was yesterday. My father, to whom she was married until he passed away in July 2023, worked across the street from that very Macy when it was still The Broadway(he worked for the Los Angeles Community College District, but they moved to around the corner in late August 1993, about 2 1/2 months after I graduated from high school), so this is personal.