The glory days of holiday shopping in downtown Omaha

City sidewalks were busy sidewalks and dressed in holiday style back in Omaha’s yesteryear.

Stroll back to 1952, the year after Bob Hope’s “The Lemon Drop Kid” cemented “Silver Bells” as a Christmas standard. To downtown Omaha we go, to the city’s shopping hub.

J.L. Brandeis, Thomas Kilpatrick, Montgomery Ward, J.C. Penney department stores. Two F.W. Woolworth five-and-dime stores, a block apart. Kresge’s dollar store.

Natelson’s and Goldstein-Chapman for women’s clothes. Berg’s and Browning, King & Co. for men’s clothes. Herzberg’s and Nebraska Clothing for women’s and men’s apparel. More than 15 jewelry stores and about the same number of shoe stores. Three men’s hat stores. Specialty stores such as Orchard & Wilhelm and Davidsons for furniture, Hospe’s for pianos and Calandra’s for cameras.

And among the choices weary shoppers had for lunch were Northrup Jones and Bishop’s cafeteria.

Now let’s walk into the history of some of these stores.

J.L. Brandeis and Sons was downtown’s flagship store. The most floors, the grandest Christmas displays. The Macy’s of Omaha, on the southwest corner of 16th and Douglas Streets.

Jonas Leopold Brandeis (1836-1903) was born in Austria and immigrated to the U.S. as a butcher at 20. He owned stores and was a fur and grain buyer in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, before coming to Omaha in 1881. He first was a wholesaler at 1207 Farnam St. He opened his first store, the Fair, at 506 S. 13th St., in 1885 (not 1881 as many histories have it). It stirred up retailing in town. He lit his store windows, put pictures in newspaper ads and released balloons carrying coupons good for a free suit of clothes.

Arthur was the first of his three sons to become a business partner. Emil (who would eventually be a casualty of the Titanic sinking) and Hugo were made partners by 1886 when the family businesses were known as J.L. Brandeis and Sons.

The 16th and Douglas store was opened in 1906. It closed in 1980. The Brandeis mall locations were bought in 1987 by Des Moines-based Younkers.

Kilpatrick’s — which, too, became Younkers property — traced its origin to a tiny general store at 10th and Farnam established by Milton Tootle and James Jackson in 1854, the year Omaha was founded. Thomas Kilpatrick of Cleveland, Allen Koch, James Risk and Robert Cowell came to Omaha in 1887 and purchased the Tootle & Maul wholesale dry goods firm, renaming it Kilpatrick-Koch Dry Goods. Later folded into the business in 1895 was N.B. Falconer’s, regarded as Omaha’s first department store since its founding as Ross & Cruikshank at 14th and Farnam Streets in 1868.

Scottish-born Kilpatrick (1840-1916) bought out Allen and Koch within months and renamed the firm for himself. In the mid-1920s, the store became six stories at 15th and Farnam Streets and expanded more in 1946 when it purchased the old World-Herald building.

Younkers acquired Kilpatrick’s in 1961 and closed the downtown store in September 1969, one of the first merchants to accede to mall competition. The Younkers brand was sold off several times before Bon Ton Stores closed all its holdings in 2018.

Sometime and somewhere, the Younkers brand soon may resurface. Last month, Women’s Wear Daily reported in May that the company that owns the intellectual properties for 12 defunct department stores, including Younkers, Herberger’s and Gordmans, intends to relaunch all of their banners. A Carson’s is to open in 2023 in Joliet, Illinois, followed by Younkers in an undisclosed location.

While not locally owned, Montgomery Ward and Penney’s had long presences in downtown. Montgomery Ward’s first store opened at 22nd and Farnam Streets in 1928. It moved to 16th and Howard in 1938, leasing the space J.C. Penney vacated. When it opened in 1933, the Omaha Penney’s was the 54th in the state. It moved to 16th and Dodge for larger quarters and closed in 1975.

What about Sears, you ask? Its first Omaha store opened in 1928 west of downtown at Farnam and Turner Boulevard. It closed in 1960 when Sears relocated to the new Crossroads Shopping Center at 72nd and Dodge Streets. The building was repurposed as the Twin Towers apartments.

Herzberg’s started in 1909 as Wolff & Herzberg, a women’s apparel store at 1517 Douglas St., by Rose Wolff and Abraham Herzberg. It grew to a seven-story store next door at 1519. The downtown location was downsized and relocated in 1969-70 and closed in 1974, with the final Herzberg store sold in 1978.

Natelson’s was a later occupant at 1517 Douglas. Louis Somberg and Reuben Natelson opened their doors in December 1928. Theirs was the first fully air-conditioned store in 1941. Expansion took Natelson’s to 10 stores. The Somberg family moved the downtown store, in the way of the Central Park Plaza office buildings, in 1980. All Natelson’s locations were closed in 1991.

Nebraska Clothing was started by Morris Levy, Mathias Strasburger and Herman Cohn in 1886 at 14th and Douglas Streets. It built a store at 15th and Farnam Streets in 1898 on the site of the first Boyd Opera House. William L. Holzman and John A. Swanson purchased the store in 1912 and enlarged it in 1923.

William (Wilhelm) Otto Knuteson (Liljenstople) Swanson, John Swanson’s son-in-law (Otto took his wife’s last name “for commercial reasons”), became sole owner in 1940. The downtown store closed at the end of 1974, the building replaced by the W. Dale Clark library — recently razed for Mutual of Omaha’s forthcoming skyscraper.

The Ashford family — their great-grandfather was John Swanson — revived Nebraska Clothing as an Old Market store in 1993. They sold it in 2007.

Goldstein-Chapman at 16th and Farnam began in 1923 by Abe Goldstein and his brother-in-law Max Chapman, who had other retail stores in Iowa and Nebraska. A 1948 building remodeling resulted in Omaha’s first rounded corner featuring display windows. The downtown store closed in 1979. The company sold to Lincoln-based Miller & Paine in 1988. Dillard’s then bought Miller & Paine and sold two of the four remaining Goldman-Chapman stores to Seiferts.

Of all the locally owned stores in 1952’s primary downtown shopping district, only two have made it another 70 years and neither stayed downtown. Both are jewelers, Malashock’s near Village Pointe and Borsheim’s in Regency.

Reminders that once, downtown Omaha was the city’s first “open-air” shopping destination.