Growing up in the middle of Michigan at the time that I did, I was too late for the era of big downtown local department stores;
Knapp's in Lansing had been converted to office space by the time I cared and the legendary
Hudson's in downtown Detroit was a pile of rubble. So,
when I moved to Philadelphia in 2004, I was excited to see Strawbridge's, a nice old-fashioned-been-here-forever-in-the-same-building department store.
Of course, it was sold off and shut down not long after I got here. Unfortunately, I didn't find out about the Corinthian Room until a couple of weeks before its closing
day, but I was able to grab a couple of last lunches there (good tuna melt, by the way) and just be amazed that the place was able to keep going for so long.
On one of the trips, I took a camera along, because who knows when anyone's ever going to be able to see this stuff again and it's kind of sad to think of this huge,
beautiful space up there on the sixth floor, just collecting dust. I hope someone at least remembered to return that awesome "Philadelphia's Future" painting to
the Atwater Kent Museum. |
