Well, it's done. The Chapter 11 filing this month by Boscov's Department Store LLC is heralded as a sign of lagging retail earnings since our "non-recession" began. However, all of us loyal Hecht's shoppers know the real truth.
Boscov's was the five-and-dime of department stores. I went to the White Marsh store a total of three times in two years - me, the queen of shopping. The first visit I walked - no, ran - quickly out of the less-than-charming store, and over to Macy's. On the second visit, I bought a few items for my son and husband because I had 30 percent off coupons. On the third trip, I vowed never to return.
Department store gods, hear my plea: Bring back my Hecht's.
FOR THE RECORD
An article on Friday's Commentary page, "Still longing for Hecht's as Boscov's bows out," wrongly attributed a quote from a 2006 Baltimore Style magazine piece. The person quoted should have been identified as Mary K. Zajac. Also, quotation marks were missing from part of the quote. The Sun regrets the errors.
Why is it that the Hecht Co., formerly the May Co. and the Hecht-May Co., survived for decades in Baltimore? What made that store a favorite of us working gals? How many of you traded bargain stories of the great $220 Jones New York jacket you just purchased for $50 and wore the next Monday to work?
Hecht had auspicious beginnings. David May founded the May Co. in 1877 during the Colorado silver rush. It featured clothes that would weather the dirty business of mining for those seeking their fortune. It incorporated as the May Department Stores Co. in 1910 and opened its first Baltimore store when it bought the Baltimore Hecht Co. (founded by Samuel Hecht in the late 19th century and opened as a department store in 1926) in 1959.
Baltimore Style magazine, in its May/June 2006 issue, reports a recollection from Melissa Martens:
"My father clearly remembers his mother buying his eighth-grade graduation suit - a brown pinstripe - at Hecht's Reliable on Broadway, one of the company's earliest stores. His sister, Mary Benskie, remembers shopping there as a child in the '30s. 'The ladies and children's clothes were on the second floor,' she recalls. 'My mother would take us shopping at Easter time to get an outfit. You would get a coat and a dress and a hat - you weren't dressed up unless you wore a hat.'"
My aunt also remembers browsing at The Hub during lunch breaks from her bookkeeping job for a steamship company at Baltimore and Calvert, and buying a living room set on credit from the Hecht's on Howard Street. "They never charged interest like they do now," she explains. The store would give you a booklet similar to a bank passbook, and you would pay $1 or $2 a month, which would be marked in your book. There might have even been a little discount if you paid within 90 days.
