You went in for a pair of shoes. Before heading home, you could have lunch, pick out fabric, arrange a delivery, and leave a gift to be wrapped.
These forgotten department store services helped make shopping an outing. The biggest stores brought counters, dining rooms, repair services, and helpful staff together under one roof. For a child, a trip downtown could mean hours of following a parent through what seemed like a small indoor city.
Not every store offered everything on this list. Services varied by city, chain, and decade, and some survive in different forms. But together, they show why people remember particular department stores long after the signs came down.
1. An information desk with someone who knew the answers
Finding the right department began with asking a person.
At Marshall Field’s in Chicago, the information desk did more than direct customers to another floor. The Encyclopedia of Chicago describes multilingual staff who answered questions about both the store and the city.
For someone visiting downtown, that desk could be a useful first stop. You did not have to figure out the whole building before beginning your shopping. There was somebody whose job was to help you find your way.
2. A coat and parcel check
A winter coat was welcome on the sidewalk. Inside a crowded store, with shopping bags in both hands, it could quickly become something else to carry.
A coat and parcel check offered a simple solution: leave your belongings at the counter, keep your claim ticket, and collect them when you were ready to go.
It was a small convenience with a practical purpose. Browsing another floor was easier when your arms were free. For families making several stops during a downtown shopping trip, it also gave the day a familiar starting and finishing point.
3. A post office inside the store
Some department stores let customers take care of errands that had nothing to do with trying on clothes.
Macy’s Herald Square had a U.S. Post Office on its ninth floor. This was not just a distant memory from the early days of retail. A Postal Service announcement set January 10, 2014, as the final day of retail service at the location, after Macy’s requested the space back during renovations.
For shoppers, the appeal was straightforward: buy something and handle the mailing without leaving the building.
4. The notions counter
Buttons, thread, needles, snaps, pins, and elastic belonged to a department with a name many children learned while shopping with a parent: notions.
These were the small supplies behind everyday sewing and mending. A missing button or an unfinished hem could send a shopper to the counter even when there was no intention of buying a new outfit.
The department served a different kind of shopping list. Instead of choosing a finished garment, you were gathering the pieces needed to make, alter, or repair one.
5. Fabric by the yard and drawers of patterns
Near the sewing supplies, shoppers could browse fabrics and choose a pattern for the finished garment.
The pattern books were part of the experience. You turned through the designs, considered the sizes and styles, and then found the matching paper pattern. At the fabric counter, a clerk measured and cut the length you needed.
For a child waiting beside the table, the decision could seem endless. For the person doing the sewing, those choices mattered: the fabric and pattern were the beginning of something that did not exist yet.
6. Repair counters and even a doll hospital
A department store could help with something you already owned.
Marshall Field’s offered repair services and even had a doll hospital. WTTW’s history of the store describes that service among the many conveniences that encouraged customers to return.
The name was especially memorable. A damaged toy could be taken somewhere to be mended rather than simply replaced. For a child attached to a particular doll, the value had little to do with what a new one would cost.
7. Gift wrapping that finished the job
Choosing the present was only part of the shopping trip. A gift-wrapping counter could take care of the rest.
The paper, ribbon, tissue, and store box turned a purchase into something ready to hand over. Around birthdays and Christmas, that was a service worth remembering.
The box itself could carry meaning. Before the recipient lifted the lid, the store name already said something about where the giver had gone to choose it. Gift wrapping still exists, but the dedicated counter belongs firmly in many memories of department-store shopping.
8. Layaway for a purchase you could not take home yet
Layaway worked differently from a credit purchase. The store held the item while the customer paid toward it. Once the agreed payments were complete, the purchase could go home.
For a family planning ahead, that might mean setting aside a coat, a bicycle, or a Christmas present before the full amount was available.
There was another advantage to leaving a holiday gift at the store: the children could not discover it in a closet. Layaway made the purchase part of a plan, with the final collection becoming an event of its own.
9. Lunch counters and store restaurants
Eventually, the shopping bags got heavier and somebody got hungry.
Lunch counters, luncheonettes, and restaurants gave customers a reason to stay. Some offered a quick meal at a stool; others made lunch feel like an occasion, with table service and a dining room above the sales floors.
For many families, the meal became as memorable as anything they bought. The same dish, the same seat, or the same stop with a grandparent could turn an ordinary shopping trip into a tradition.
That is why department-store food deserves its own place in the story. People remember the store, but they also remember what they ordered there.
10. A children’s playroom
Some large stores provided a place for children while adults shopped. Marshall Field’s was among them; the Encyclopedia of Chicago includes children’s playrooms in its account of the store’s services.
It is easy to understand the appeal after imagining a long afternoon of fittings, fabric choices, and household purchases. A playroom offered a different experience from following an adult between counters.
This was not a standard feature in every department store. Where it existed, though, it showed how much of the shopping day a large store could accommodate.
11. Having your purchases delivered home
Home delivery did not begin with online shopping.
Department stores arranged deliveries long before customers could order through a screen. A shopper could select goods in person and have the store handle the trip to the house.
That was especially useful on a downtown outing when carrying every purchase was inconvenient. It also made delivery part of the relationship with a particular store. You chose the merchandise at a familiar counter, and the service continued after you walked out.
The method of ordering has changed enormously. The appeal of having somebody else bring the packages home has not.
12. The shoe-fitting X-ray machine
One remembered service belongs in a very different category.
Shoe-fitting fluoroscopes used X-rays to show feet inside shoes. A child could look through a viewing port while an adult or salesperson looked through another. What seemed like a fascinating demonstration was marketed as a way to help assess shoe fit.
ORAU’s Museum of Radiation and Radioactivity documents these machines and their history. Concerns about radiation exposure helped bring their use to an end.
Unlike gift wrapping or a helpful information desk, this is not something to bring back. It is a reminder that a familiar childhood shopping experience could also involve technology whose risks were not properly appreciated at the time.
Why these department-store memories stayed with us
Many of these services involved a person doing something for you: measuring fabric, checking a parcel, answering a question, preparing lunch, or wrapping a present.
That gave a shopping trip a sequence of small encounters. You might forget the shirt you bought, but remember the counter where you waited or the restaurant where your family always stopped.
Some services disappeared. Others moved into specialist businesses or took new forms. What stands out is how many of them once fitted into the same building.
Which service do you remember most, and which store offered it? Share the store name and city in the comments.
Watch more Storefront Memories
If the restaurant was your favorite stop, watch our video, 25 Forgotten Department Store Restaurant Dishes America Stopped Serving, for another trip back to shopping-day traditions.
Sources and further reading
- Encyclopedia of Chicago: Department Stores — information desks and the broader department-store experience.
- Encyclopedia of Chicago: Retail Geography — delivery and ancillary services, including playrooms.
- USPS: Post Office Inside Macy’s Set to Close January 10, 2014 — ninth-floor post office and closure announcement.
- WTTW: How Marshall Field’s Transformed Shopping from Errand to Experience — store services, including the doll hospital.
- ORAU: Shoe-Fitting Fluoroscope — the machines and radiation concerns.