Lost Department Stores of San Francisco (Landmarks)

Lost Department Stores of San Francisco (Landmarks)

In the late nineteenth century, San Francisco’s merchant princes built grand stores for a booming city, each with its own niche. For the eager clientele, a trip downtown meant dressing up—hats, gloves and stockings required—and going to Blum’s for Coffee Crunch cake or Townsend’s for creamed spinach. The I. Magnin empire catered to a selective upper-class clientele, while middle-class shoppers loved the Emporium department store with its Bargain Basement and Santa for the kids. Gump’s defined good taste, the City of Paris satisfied desires for anything French and edgy, youth-oriented Joseph Magnin ensnared the younger shoppers with the latest trends. Join author Anne Evers Hitz as she looks back at the colorful personalities that created six major stores and defined shopping in San Francisco. Anne Evers Hitz is a fifth-generation San Franciscan and a great-great-granddaughter of one of the Emporium department store's founders, F.W. Dohrmann. She is the author of Emporium Department Store and San Francisco's Ferry Building. A graduate of UC-Berkeley, Hitz is a writer, editor and project manager who has had her own communications consulting firm in San Francisco for more than twenty-five years. She is a guide for SF City Guides, a group of local volunteers who give free walking tours of San Francisco.