For over a century, the J.L. Hudson's Department Store was more than just a store - it was a Detroit icon and a world-class cultural treasure.
At 25 stories, Hudson's was the world's tallest department store, and was at one time home to the most exceptional offerings in shopping, dining, services, and entertainment. The store prided itself on stocking everything from grand pianos to spools of thread. In addition to regular department store fare, the original Hudson's store featured an auditorium, a circulating library, dining rooms, barber shops, a photo studio, holiday exhibits, a magnificent place called Toytown, and the world's largest American flag. As a legendary symbol of urban and entrepreneurial American history, the J.L. Hudson's Department Store earned a permanent place in Detroit's collective memory. Although the big store no longer graces Woodward Avenue, its legacy lives on in the hearts and minds of generations, and in the remarkable photographs that preserve its reign.
Relive the history of Hudson's department store, a fixture in downtown Detroit, when retailing was an event and the department store ruled the shopping scene and was a Detroit icon.
The J. L. Hudson Company redefined the way Detroiters shopped and enjoyed leisure time. Many Detroiters share memories of times spent shopping and enjoying spectacular events sponsored by Hudson's. A solid and lofty icon built by businesspeople who believed in their passion, Hudson's defined Detroit's downtown, creating trends and traditions in consumer culture that still resonate with us today. Now and in the future, as Hudson's boxes, shopping bags, and artifacts are discovered in closets, attics, basements, and flea markets, many will remember that it was once as solid a civic fixture as the City-County Building or the Detroit Public Library.
Emerging from the twin shadows of neoliberalism and postmodernism, Michael Hauser paints our current historical moment as an interregnum, born of but departing from those two towering modes of late 20th-century culture. Seen in this light, the preoccupation of populism, identity politics, hybrid wars and other contemporary phenomena can be seen as the result of the disintegration of neoliberal agendas and postmodernist sensibilities.
Drawing together a vast range of thinkers and theoretical models, from Gramsci to Jameson, Hauser traces the reasons for the decline and demise of the grand narratives of the twentieth century and the ideologies that replaced them. His explanation of the foundational 'epicycloid' and disintegrative 'elliptical' stages of political movements then lays the ground for a deep engagement with Alain Badiou, understanding his 'transitory ontology' as a philosophical response to our interregnum. By expanding and unpicking Badiou's thoughts on mathematics, politics, art, love, and the conditions of doing philosophy, we can imagine a point beyond the present moment in history.Utilizing remarkable images from the Manning Brothers Historical Collection, the Michigan Opera Theatre Archives, and several additional collections, Michael Hauser and Marianne Weldon have captured the excitement of the shared entertainment experience in Detroit Opera House.
The theater known today as the Detroit Opera House has been an integral part of the city's culture and history as well as the live entertainment industry. Its existence has been threatened in the past, but it has survived wars, the Great Depression, civil unrest, economic meltdowns, the abandonment of downtown, and, most recently, a pandemic. Generations of patrons have fond, vivid memories of attending films, stage presentations, or events with family and friends as it transitioned from the Broadway Capitol to the Paramount to the Grand Circus to the Detroit Opera House. The reason for building these temples of amusement was to literally transport a guest into another world, and the Detroit Opera House has valiantly fulfilled that task. What began as an idea by David DiChiera, founder of Michigan Opera Theatre, the owner and operator of today's Detroit Opera House, blossomed into a magnificent performing arts center with its formal opening in 1996.
Hauser is marketing manager for the Detroit Opera House, and Weldon is the collections manager for art and artifacts at Bryn Mawr College.
Grand Rapids, Michigan was the center for shopping in western Michigan with department stores, five-and-dimes and more, until the advent of the shopping mall.
For decades, downtown Grand Rapids enjoyed a long run in the limelight as the epicenter of shopping in western Michigan. The vibrant Monroe Avenue corridor included three homegrown department stores, several chain department stores, five-and-dime stores, and scores of clothing and specialty retailers. It weathered mother nature, wars, the Great Depression, the advent of neighborhood shopping centers, and civil disturbances--but the one change it could not overcome was the regional shopping mall.