AKA: Woolworth's Five-and-Dime Store, Downtown, Los Angeles, CA; Foot Locker, Downtown, Los Angeles, CA

Structure Type: built works - commercial buildings - department stores

Designers: McDonald and Kahn, Building Contractors (firm); Weeks and Day, Architects (firm); William Peyton Day (structural engineer); Charles Peter Weeks (architect)

Dates: constructed 1921

3 stories

617 South Broadway
Los Angeles, CA 90014-1803

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The F. W. Woolworth Company's fortunes ebbed in the early 1980s, when its Woolco discount department store chain folded. Competition from Dayton-Hudson Corporation's Target, S.S. Krege's K-Mart, and Sam Walton's Wal-Mart chain, along with a host of regional discount chains had driven Woolworth to its knees by 07/17/1997, when all Woolworth stores closed; the remaining subsidiaries regrouped under the corporate name, "Venator" at that time. This name was short-lived; Venator changed its name to its most successful division, Foot Locker shoe stores, becoming "Foot Locker, Incorporated."

The Engineering News Record on 01/27/1921 reported that a building contract had been let for a 3-story F.W. Woolworth Company store at 719 South Broadway, to be 60 x 170 feet in size with a reinforced concrete frame and terra cotta exterior. McDonald and Kahn was the building contractor; cost for this store was set at about $100,000. (See "Prices and Contracts Awarded," Engineering News Record, v. 86 no. 4, 01/27/1921, p. 51.)

PCAD id: 4427