History
The mall's present anchor tenants include Sears to the north, JCPenney to the east, Macy's to the south, and Nordstrom to the west. Crate & Barrel and L.L.Bean anchor the lifestyle addition on the western part of the mall property.
When the mall was originally built, a Horne's store occupied the present Nordstrom location, and a Kaufmann's was in the present Macy's spot. Horne's was the second largest of Pittsburgh's department store chains, and this store had been the anchor of nearby Northway Mall; the two locations coexisted for about a year after the move. Kaufmann's was the third largest of Pittsburgh's chains, and its store moved in from a standalone location about a mile north on McKnight Road. Today, that location houses Giant Eagle, Dunham's Sports, and Stein Mart.
The Nordstrom location has a complicated history. It was intended to be a Gimbel's but was never occupied because the Gimbel's chain was sold and liquidated around the time the mall opened. The spot was then taken over by Horne's. It operated as Horne's from 1987 to 1994, when Federated Department Stores purchased the Horne's chain and rebranded its stores with its own regional Lazarus name. The store operated as Lazarus until Federated renamed it as Macy's in March 2005. Four months later, Federated purchased the May Department Stores Company, which operated the Kaufmann's anchor store at the south end of the mall. Now Federated owned two anchors in the same mall, operating under different names. In March 2006, Nordstrom announced plans to build a new store on the Gimbel's/Horne's/Lazarus/Macy's site, after tearing down the building and an adjacent two-level parking structure. May quickly closed the Macy's store and began converting the much larger Kaufmann's to a Macy's. In September 2006, the former Kaufmann's became Macy's. Macy's then renovated the entire store with replacement of flooring and lighting, also relocating the furniture department to the original Horne's furniture galley located in the parking lot. After a two-year construction period, the Nordstrom store opened on October 24, 2008.
Read more about this topic: Ross Park Mall
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“These anyway might think it was important
That human history should not be shortened.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out.”
—G.M. (George Macaulay)