Background Information
Prior to the beginning of America’s Industrial Revolution in the mid-19th century, most retail operations were small and merchandise was locally manufactured. However, the Industrial Revolution brought railroads, telegraphs, and the capacity for mass production. These changes made larger retail operations possible.
In the late 1830s, when settlement in the Fox Valley began in earnest, small locally-owned stores opened to serve the needs of the area’s new residents. These stores were generally specialized, dealing in one type of merchandise and serving a relatively small area. For example, Appleton residents would likely visit different shops, all owned by their neighbors, for their groceries, clothes (a tailor and a milliner shop), tools and horseshoes (a blacksmith or hardware store), furniture (a chair factory), medical needs (drug store), lanterns, plates, or other household goods (tin shop), shoes (boot and shoe shops), buckets or barrels (cooper shop), etc. They did business with someone they knew and who knew them. They also probably made some purchases on a daily basis, like that of fresh groceries they did not make or grow themselves, because home refrigeration was as yet unknown in the Valley. People also likely made some purchases through barter, exchanging goods or services for their purchases in a time before local banks or when they could not afford to pay cash.
The Industrial Revolution brought a big change in the way that Americans did business. The first harbinger of change was the 1846 opening of A.T. Stewart’s “Marble Palace” in New York City. Stewart was a Scots-Irish immigrant whose ideas about retail practice and retail establishments foreshadowed a revolutionary change in the way Americans shopped. The “Marble Palace” was a large store with a marble façade. It offered “free entrance”, meaning that customers could browse on their own and not be attended by a clerk at all times. Rather than going into a store with the purpose and intention of making a specific purchase, customers were free to look around, to make spontaneous purchases, and to treat shopping as a pastime. Shopping transformed into a leisure activity for those with the money to buy more than the necessities. Stewart’s stores carried all of the trappings of the Victorian middle-class lifestyle. These included factory-made draperies, carpeting, china, and prints for the home. He offered low mark-ups and used local newspapers to advertise “sales.” Though he sold mainly wholesale to other retailers, these ingredients – low prices, factory-made products, and advertising – were incorporated by other up and coming retailers who would take shopping from a local, personal experience into a science of manufacturing desire through marketing and display.
By the late 1800s, John Wanamaker of Philadelphia, Marshall Field of Chicago, and Henry Siegel and Frank Cooper of New York had begun to build their retail empires on the strategies introduced by Stewart. These large companies offered easy credit and lured customers with advertising, low prices, and lavish window displays – much like retailers of today. According to author John Steele Gordon in his book, An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power, “Even in rural areas that were still beyond the reach of the railroad, new merchandising techniques opened up new markets. Peddlers increasingly took advantage of improved roads to sell such newly available manufactured goods as pails and tubs, cloth, tools, and ‘Yankee notions’ to housewives along their routes, lessening the loneliness that pervaded so much of rural America in the nineteenth century.”
In the 1890s, mail order giant, Sears, Roebuck and Co. emerged on the market, serving many farmers who were fed up with the high retail prices of rural general stores. Because Sears, Roebuck and Co. bought in bulk, the company was able to offer lower prices. Relying on the railroads, rural free delivery, and post offices, the company delivered products right to the customer’s door.
Appleton’s first department store was C.J. Pettibone’s. Though owned by a merchant in Fond du Lac (who did own a few other stores in other Wisconsin communities), the store was managed by a talented employee handpicked by Pettibone. George F. Peabody moved to Appleton to manage the store and eventually purchased a controlling interest in the store. Peabody ran Pettibone-Peabody’s until his death in 1909 and was a well-known and very involved member of the community. His will reflects an interest in local philanthropy and his generosity is evidenced by Peabody Manor (a home for the elderly now merged with The Heritage), Peabody Conservatory (now Lawrence Conservatory), and Peabody Park, among other ventures.
Sometime in the 1950s, Prange’s Department Stores (out of Sheboygan, WI) purchased Pettibone-Peabody’s. It is this event that signifies the end of local management/ownership of the department store in Appleton. And, it is an event emblematic of the retail situation all over the Valley at the time. With the opening of the Valley Fair Mall in 1954, additional advances in transportation, and the growing consumer culture, the 1950s ushered in an era of national chain stores in the Valley.
Along with the influx of national chain stores came the decline of independent retailers and downtown blight. According to the National Trust’s National Main Street Center, “Land-use and transportation policies have fueled sprawl and undermined the viability of older commercial centers. Chain store developers routinely receive multi-million dollar subsidies that are rarely offered to local businesses. State and federal tax policies tilt the playing field as well, giving national retailers an advantage over their smaller rivals.” Evidence also suggests that far less of the profits generated by national chains remain in the community – much of the money leaves the state.
Downtowns in the Fox Valley, including Appleton and Menasha experienced the blight caused by national chains drawing customers away from local downtown businesses. By the 1980s, it was clear that something needed to be done to sustain the central commercial districts. In Appleton, the City Center Mall emerged as a response to the problem and an attempt at revitalization.
The decline of locally-owned businesses and the rise of nationally-owned chain stores in the Fox Valley greatly affected and continues to affect the economy and community of the Fox Valley area. As chain-stores build on the outskirts of towns, they draw businesses away from the downtown area, leaving empty storefronts and a suffering tax base. Citizens experience a less personal shopping experience when the owners of the businesses are large, out-of-state conglomerates. Much of their retail dollars exit the area as well. The Fox Valley continues to try to negotiate this issue, determining where to draw the line between low prices and a focus on local entrepreneurship.
