Enchanted Village
From the 1940s until 1972—and again in the early 1990s—the Jordan Marsh flagship store in Boston's Downtown Crossing was home to the Enchanted Village, a lavish Christmas display which at its height took over an entire floor of the department store and was also spotlighted in its display windows. The centerpiece of the display, besides Santa, was an eight-set Lionel electric train display. From what started as a marketing gimmick, the Enchanted Village quickly became a legendary Boston tradition and an annual mainstay of the city's holiday season. Macy's discontinued the Enchanted Village in 1998 when it was moved to City Hall Plaza. More recently it has been housed in the Hynes Convention Center.
On June 16, 2009, the Enchanted Village, including all props and figures was sold at auction, as the City of Boston could no longer afford to be a major sponsor of the annual event. It was sold to Jordan's Furniture (which is a unit of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and had no connection to the former Jordan Marsh), and is on display during the holiday season at the Avon, Massachusetts location.
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Famous quotes containing the words enchanted and/or village:
“We worshipped,
we parted green from green,
we sought further thickets,
we dipped our ankles
through leaf-mould and earth,
and wood and wood-bank enchanted us.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“But I go with my friend to the shore of our little river, and with one stroke of the paddle, I leave the village politics and personalities, yes, and the world of villages and personalities behind, and pass into a delicate realm of sunset and moonlight, too bright almost for spotted man to enter without novitiate and probation.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)