Adieu Carson Pirie Scott

In yet another piece of sad news for the City of Chicago, Carson Pirie Scott, aka "Carson's", is closing its downtown State Street store. I have mixed feelings about this - I'm more irritated with the sale and branding transition of Marshall Field's to Macy's.

While I have a lot of memories of Carson's as a child, in fact more so than I do of Marshall Field's (it was too expensive for us I think). The primary reason for this was that my mother was a contractor for KLM Airlines who had a small travel centre/booking office (back in ye olde days of paper handwritten ticketing!) in the lower level of the huge multi-story department store. My mother would take my sister and I downtown about once a week, dressed up in our painful Thai silk dresses and stiff white tights. We'd head to lower level of Carsons and sit quietly next to the huge wooden Dutch shoe sitting next to the model KLM Royal Dutch Airline 747, freakishly out of scale compared to the shoe.

My mother's friend at the agency, Lucia, always had an 8 x 11 manila envelope loaded with candy. She'd pull it out of the metal drawer of her desk and hold the envelope open so we can pick whatever we wanted. It was usually hard candy but if we were lucky, some Starbursts. My mother would let us have one piece and it made my day. I even remember the day she had bubble gum and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Then there was the time I took a root beer candy thinking it was grape and I was chastised for being an ingrateful child because I spit it out.

Anyway, I always loved going and getting lunch there too (they had this great macaroni and cheese gratin). Then we'd walk back to the train and ride back home - it was always a very special day when we did that and I never am on the lower level of Carsons where I don't see the rise in steps to that mark where the walkway to the KLM office was.

As I got older - in my late teens and early twenties - I shopped quite often (and ran into enormous debt) in their juniors department. I bought my first Coach purse there, my first over $100 watch and more perfume, make up, stockings (they had a GREAT stocking department), scarves, hats and gloves than any other store. I also bought most of my Chicago Bulls championship gear there as well (7 times!). But as the years endured, Carsons got dumpy and the store was always dimly lit and depressing. I stopped going since the experience of shopping at Field's was so much more pleasant that I didn't mind paying a few percent more. I don't think I've bought anything at Carson's except for a pair of socks in some 5 or 6 years. I'm hardly a contributor to its success.

Even at the holidays, Carsons never gave Field's a run for the money on drawing customers in. The store could never moderate it's heat inside (always stifling hot in the winter), decorations were bare bones and they recycled their Christmas windows four years running. Carsons simply lost its panache and even the new Sears store across the street has been more pleasant to shop at.

While Carson's is a Chicago institution, it's failed State Street and its customers over the year. Carsons never really got in the game. When Harrods was threatening to go in across from Field's, they didn't wait to be out-panached, they up'ed the ante by bringing in some amazing inventory and completely re-invested in the architecture and layout of the store so that it became the ultimate shopping pleasure.

I'll miss Carsons and the inevitable gutting and renovation of the building into new mixed retail and office space. Undoubtedly the markers in the lower level pointing the way to the most pleasant memories of my childhood will be leveled and reconstructed so I will never know where I spit that root beer candy out. But, I think it's time for it to move on.