Boston Department Store Blog

Hi, John!!
Happy New Year!!

Yes, Filene's was the last of the Boston BIG stores to maintain a very active restaurant on the top floor of the Burnham building.

Not sure if it lasted into the 2000's but I do know it was there into the 1990's.

It was a feature from the start of the store in this building(1912) and changed "themes" and menu types over time.

The name I recall....is The Greenery for most of my memory scope:rolleyes:

The 1956 Christmas blog update has an ad all about eating at Filene's while out shopping....lots of variety.

Christmas%2BBoston%2B1956-135.jpg



The place had the feel of an airy greenhouse....great high ceiling and lots of plant style decor.

You could use your Filene's charge to pay for lunch....another plus in those days:rolleyes:

Hope that helps!!

Charles:rolleyes:

http://shoppingdaysinretroboston.blogspot.com/


PS....I did another Filene's update back in 2009....take a peek:)
http://shoppingdaysinretroboston.blogspot.com/2009/06/recalling-some-happier-days-for-filenes.html
 
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When Jordan's and Filene's got out to the shopping malls, did they also have restaurants? (Lazarus did in Columbus, Ohio, where I grew up. People have fond memories of eating there.)
 
Ron Newman said:
When Jordan's and Filene's got out to the shopping malls, did they also have restaurants? (Lazarus did in Columbus, Ohio, where I grew up. People have fond memories of eating there.)
Click to expand...

Yes, they did - notably Jordan Marsh. You can clearly see where the restaurant used to be in the Jordan Marsh at the Burlington Mall. They're the only windows on the facade and they have been unfortunately blacked out because the spaces were all repurposed and reconfigured.

The article clipping that Charles posted also notes Filene's Chestnut Hill restaurant.
 
When my mother would bring me shopping with her in the early 1960s, we didn't eat at Filenes, but we would go to the counter diner type restaurant in one of the other stores. I seem to recall they specialized in a deviled ham sandwich, or something similar, and all the ladies would go there for their special 'treat' when they shopped. I think I probably got my first grilled cheese sandwich there - with a pickle!
 
Hello to Jon Frum and All!!!

Happy New Year!!!

A few of you wrote about eating in the old stores of Boston....well, let's look back at the retro Boston store lunch experience.

The theme of the first update for 2012:

Tickling Your Taste Buds in Retro Boston’s Once Great Stores


http://shoppingdaysinretroboston.blogspot.com/

Come and enjoy!!!

Charles:rolleyes:
 
Jordan Marsh was famous for the blueberry muffins and Ghilcrest for the coconut macaroons, were there any other 'famous' Boston shopping foods?
 
Hello, Boston Observer!!
I hope you checked out the update that was all about foods in the department stores of old that was posted in January:
http://shoppingdaysinretroboston.blogspot.com/2012/01/tickling-your-taste-buds-in-retro.html
Many folks enjoyed the steamed hot dogs sold in Filene's Basement and the hot pretzels as well.
If any more ideas pop up...I shall post them here:)

Charles:rolleyes:

Hello, All!!!

A bit of Christmas in February!!!

Welcome to TheMBTADog, a wonderful photographer and a new blog contributor!!

Come and see his fine images!!!!

Charles:)

http://shoppingdaysinretroboston.blogspot.com/
 
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Thanks, I forward the page to a friend of mine is thinking of having the macaroons and blueberry muffins in her new restaurant. She has both recipes.
 
Hey, charles65ofboston, make sure you pick up the latest issue of Yankee magazine. There is an interesting memoir of a lady who was a 'Marsha Jordan' girl back in the 70's.
 
Downtown could sure use that full-scale supermarket floor today. I wonder why that alone wasn't enough to keep the store going.
 
Hey, Ron:)
A very innovative project indeed for 1962!
But as I wrote in the blog...Location was the big factor. Citymart's management was trying to pull "the family" in...and the location alone worked against it. Raymond's would suffer as well once it relocated in 1966...I shall do an update on the final years of Raymond's soon as they tried to make a go of it at 518 Washington Street.

Charles:rolleyes:


New March Update!!!

Find out all about the short-lived Citymart, a Boston experiment in creative retailing and building reuse from the early 1960's.

Charles:)

http://shoppingdaysinretroboston.blogspot.com/2012/03/citymarta-boston-tale-of-reuse.html
 
Absolutely loved this article. I'm a bit of an elevator and escalator geek myself and I was trying to piece together the fragments of the past that I and others remember. I know the Filene's elevators ended up getting modernized by Montgomery in the 90s and were originally Otis Autotronic.

It's an absolute shame that none of these incredible pieces of equipment exist anymore. Boston in general entirely erased it's own department store history. NYC has Macy*s, Chicago has Marshall Fields, St. Louis has Famous Barr, etc all with their original stores. What did we get in the end? A fragment of the Jordan Marsh complex. The most generic dingy box you could ever imagine, complete with one piece of junk Westinghouse hydraulic elevator. No tourist in these days would ever guess that Boston was once a world-class shopping city from the picture of DTX they see today. There's no grandeur to the department store experience here anymore and that grandeur once encompassed incredible banks of escalators rising 9+ stories and massive ornamented elevator banks.
 
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