East Liberty Sears store rose, fell with retailer

Kaufmann’s dominated. “This is where streetcar lines converged,” Mr. Greenwalt said. “It also was one of the largest, flattest pieces of land available in the city.”

The Pittsburgh Press quoted a Sears official on the rationale: “There is a growing tendency … to establish stores away from the congested traffic areas. If anyone had advanced this theory a few years ago, he would have been termed quite childish, but with the advent of a strictly automobile age, such an innovation is feasible.”

George Clark, who grew up in Highland Park and attended then-Peabody High School, now Barack Obama Academy, often went with his parents to the hardware and garden departments.

“You wouldn’t put it on the level of the Downtown department stores, but it was a wonderful store,” he said.

As a teenager in the late 1960s, he would often walk over with friends after school to the coffee shop near the back of the Sears store. “We would order a Coke and that’s where I learned how to smoke,” he laughed. “I would have one cigarette and walk back to Highland Park.”

Free parking was a Sears policy — and something of a novelty. The East Liberty store had 300 spaces when it opened.

“Ever since the company has introduced the system of free parking, it maintains that it has eased the nerves of the hurried shopper and has reduced the business of the Traffic Court,” The Press noted.

“A free tire service station will be maintained on the grounds,” the newspaper continued. “Here attendants will change tires and install batteries for purchasers.”

Saleswomen in the infants department would be dressed as nurses to “lend an atmosphere of delicate cleanliness and efficiency,” according to The Press.

Men wouldn’t have to be shy about visiting, the newspaper stated. The store was designed with the understanding “most men who wish to buy a hat, a monkey wrench or a tennis racket are unwilling to pay the penalty of walking through a women’s readyto-wear or millinery department to get it.”

The rush to build continued. “During one 12-month period in the late ’20s, stores opened on the average of one every other business day,” according to Sears. By 1931, the company’s sales through its stores topped mail-order sales for the first time. By 1933, Sears had grown to 400 stores.

Sisters Martha DeMarzi and Geni Smith grew up in East Liberty, living just behind the Sears building on Centre Avenue. Ms. DeMarzi wanted a bicycle when she was a child, but her parents said no.

So she would often visit the toy section in the lower level of Sears. “They had this platform with two Schwinn bikes on it, like an advertisement,” Ms. DeMarzi recalled. “Since we weren’t allowed to have a twowheeler bike, I used to go over to the store and I would stand there and look at them.” ‘Horrific blue cladding’ As city residents migrated even farther into the suburbs after World War II, developers tried to find ways to infuse new life into decaying urban areas. Once-thriving East Liberty was fading slowly. Developers designed new roads — hello, Penn Circle — and about half of the neighborhood was on a list to be demolished.

Sears decided to revamp its store as well, giving the brick facade a 1960s face-lift. In East Liberty, that meant a coat of blue porcelainized aluminum and plastic and marble panels, according to a form from the Pennsylvania Museum and Historical Commission.

Mr. Clark, vice president of the East Liberty Valley Historical Society, was not a fan.

“They put up this horrific blue cladding on it,” he said. “It destroyed it. The building had a Renaissance-type character with the rows of windows and they just covered everything in this blue stuff.”

In a 2013 article, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette noted a renewal effort for the entire neighborhood was a “total flop.” “The redevelopment scheme ... caused a massive exodus from East Liberty, which drove the area, as The New York Times put it, ‘into a 40-year coma,’ ” the newspaper noted.

Through the next few decades, the neighborhood would lose both population and businesses. One of those was Sears. The building was demolished in 1999.

A year later, Home Depot opened in its place — a harbinger of the new activity the East End neighborhood would begin to see in a new century.

Growing retail casualties

If East Liberty found new life in the new century, Sears, like many oldguard retailers, has struggled to regain momentum.

This year, Sears and Kmart, another part of the Illinois retailer’s family, announced plans to close 180 stores. Then another 150 stores. Then another 28 Kmart locations.

Across the industry, 2017 has set a record pace in retail bankruptcies. According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, early 2017 had already come close to the total in 2016. Between January and April alone, 14 retailers filed compared to 18 for the whole previous year.

Cranberry-based teen clothing retailer rue21 filed for bankruptcy in May, joining the ranks of Payless, American Apparel, Aeropostale, hhgregg and The Limited.

Sears is trying to right the ship. In its second-quarter earnings release in August, the company noted that it’s looking at options for its Kenmore and DieHard brands, as well as home services and auto center business “by evaluating potential partnerships or other transactions.”

Sears announced in July that it would sell appliances through online rival Amazon.com. The deal includes Kenmore smart appliances that can be synced with Amazon’s voice assistant, Alexa.

“The retail environment remained challenging,” Sears Holdings Corp. said.