Do you ever completely irrationally miss things? Not miss as in “I tried to shoot my cat but she ducked,” but miss as in “I shot my cat and I wish I had not done so as I had not foreseen how much her peeing on me while I slept was part of my life.” I was chit-chatting with some coworkers about Accenture, a company with whom we frequently do business, and how they took over the old Wanamaker Building on Augustine Cutoff (the only image I could find is this one, which was taken recently and seems to feature crap).
I miss Wanamaker’s. They moved out of that building 1991 in favor of a massive new location in Christiana Mall, which subsequently sold out to the May’s corporation which turned it into a Hecht’s, which in turn became Lord & Taylor, which closed last year. I’m not sure why I miss it (this is the irrational part); it was no different than any other crappy clothing store, except by the time I knew it this particular store was stained. Literally and figuratively; the cheap panel carpeting looked like it had been lived on by an incontinent elephant, and the whole place had an aura, from as far back as I can remember, of “we’re probably going to close in a few months. Don’t put anything on layaway.”
Externally, though, the building is MAGNIFICENT, even if the inside had lost all luster decades ago. It has different levels, and a huge glass curving window with pillars on the outside, and it’s simply a mid-century architectural masterpiece. Not having a picture to show you is KILLING me. (I keep having to inject myself with small doses epinephrine to keep my heart going.)
I don’t have a lot of memories of the place. Just a few of going with my mom and sister and playing hide-and-seek among the racks of clothes and getting into trouble, which happened a lot, and one vivid memory of me making My First Purchase Of Any Kind. (I’m pretty sure this happened there, although it also could have happened at the Sears in Governor Square, another sad loss to the Wilmington economy.) I had scrimped and saved, and I had my $2.50, and I wanted a set of the Hot Wheels cars that had little swivelling parts that would simulate crash damage when you banged them into one another. (Ah, the simple tastes of youth.)
I remember a major point of discussion with my mother at the time was whether I should tell the cashier to “keep the change,” which would have been a penny. I apparently was quite the generous tipper at 8.
I used to work for Accenture in that very building. I never knew the building as a Wanamakers since I didn’t live here at that time. But someone told me that my department was formerly known as Housewares. Woot!
The inside of the building is really beautifully done. I call the decor “Frank Lloyd Wright meets The Cat in the Hat.” Stripey black and white oddly-shaped chairs, long hallways which should normally be straight are instead all wiggly (very trippy), everything is painted bright red, blue, purple, yellow… the ceiling tiles are a certain color over walkways, and a different color over work areas… and there is not a single drab, grey/putty cube. It is pretty inspiring.
Even the bathrooms are way cool.
They have this one bathroom, dubbed The Pooper, which has an exhaust fan equivelant of a jet engine. You could eat all the Taco Bell in the world and nobody would ever fall victim to your environmental damage.
Good times. Good times.