An Interview With Sears Historian Jerry Hancock

Jerry, a Sears scholar and history teacher, joins Holly in the studio to talk about the historical significance of the building where HowStuffWorks is headquartered, as well as the company that built it.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today's episode of Stuff You Missed In History Class is
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(00:20):
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history for your free Tracker Bravo with any order. Again,
that's the Tracker dot Com promo code History. Welcome to
Stuff You Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly

(00:47):
Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. We recently were invited
to appear on a broadcast of Georgia Public Broadcastings All
Things Considered, and while we were on the roof of
our building, which is pot City Market, doing that appear,
we met through the radio staff a historian who knows
a whole lot about the history of this building and
the Sears company. His name is Jerry. He was gracious

(01:10):
enough to come visit Holly in the studio and share
some really fun stories about the building where our podcast
is headquartered, which started out as a Sears Roebuck building.
There's a lot of discussion of Sears as a company
through the years, and a little bit of wish book
nostalgia for some appropriate holiday nows. Yes, so we'll jump
right into my discussion with Jerry Hancock about Sears and

(01:33):
the Pont City Market building. Today. We are lucky enough
to have in studio historian and history teacher Jerry Hancock.
How Terry, just grand I'm so glad you're here. I'm
looking forward to it. So first off, so we could

(01:54):
kind of talk about who you are. You are a
high school history teacher. Pretty cool job. So first off,
thank you for being an educator. All the teachers need
all of the love in my opinion. But what is
that like on a day to day basis. It's um,
It's one of those things, you know, so you feel

(02:14):
like a cog in the machine. Unfortunately, that's the part
of the job that I don't like. I as long
as my door is closed and it's just me and
my students, I'm happiest. It's the politicians and businessmen and
bureaucracy that's out in the hall. That's the part that
I don't really have a lot of patients for. Luckily,
I'm at a school that performs academically fairly well, and

(02:35):
so I have a lot more sort of freedom. I
don't have people breathing down my back. You know, I
was a Teacher of the Year a couple of years ago,
and it's thank you. It's been Uh it's very rewarding job.
Obviously not monetarily, but nobody goes into it for that purpose.
But yeah, it's rewarding. You know. Everybody always says, well,

(02:57):
why do you do it? And it's I say, it's
the light bulb. Yeah, that's it. When when the kid
gets it, when it snaps and you see that light
bulb come on, There's no trophy or metal or anything
that could get to you know how rewarding that is.
You know, you did something, you brought something to life
for this kid and they they appreciate it at that

(03:18):
point so well, and you're shaping the future. I mean,
that's like a weighty I don't think people always recognize
that that's really what teachers are doing. And I and
I'm very blunt with my students. I'm very honest with him.
I think that's a big part of the rapport that
I have with my kids is I shoot him straight.
And on that note, I say, you know, you guys
will be changing my diapers at some point. That's the

(03:43):
kind of dedication we're gonna need here and that reality.
You know, yeah, maybe not literally, but figuratively speaking, you
are going to be taking care of my generation when
we get too old and feeble. At least I hope
if I do my job right, you will be there correct.
And so yeah, you know, it's the old adage think
globally but act locally. I just try and follow that

(04:04):
every day when I get out of bed and say, okay,
I might not fix the world's problems, but I can
this little microcosm that I'm a part of. Is you know,
I'm going to have some positive influence on that. And
so you know, it's easy to get to work, and
I have to get up at five every day. That's part.
Thank you. Five am at work by six thirty. Hats
off to you from that. So I have to wonder,

(04:27):
since we talk about history all the time, what is
the biggest challenge for you sort of in the education system,
but also just on a one in one basis in
terms of getting kids to engage with history, because it
does not have a good rap with kids, No, not
at all. And you know, luckily these days we don't
teach names and dates anymore. It's more it's it's more
conceptual learning. And so I've always sort of, you know,

(04:51):
been a storyteller, and I always find some sort of
creative way. I think the real keys relevance. You've got
to make it relevant to their young mind. And do
they really are about these crusty old white guys and
yellow pieces of paper from the seventeen hundreds. Probably not.
But if you can explain that in a way that
they understand it's still very impactful in their lives today,

(05:11):
then you got something, you know. I mean, I'm teaching
the eleventh grade kids. I'm still using Schoolhouse Rock. It's timeless.
You can't go wrong with Bob Doro. I mean, the
guy who started it was one of Miles Days, Miles
Davis's session musicians. He you know, co wrote with Miles Davis,
and he was brought in at ABC some executives. Kid

(05:33):
was having problems with his multiplication tables, and so Bob
Doro coming in. He wrote three is a Magic Numbers,
the first one he brought it to also immortalized by
De La Soul. I can't go wrong. It's timeless. Kids
still like it. I make that joke about De La Soul,
but it speaks to the level of engagement that Schoolhouse
Rocks had. And I mean I still can singue the

(05:57):
verb songs. I love all of those, and they were
very soulful. Like the music writing was excellent. I mean
ed A James doing you know, suffering until suffrage. For me,
it doesn't, which is just wonderful. Not do kids today
love it or they like this animation looks weird. They

(06:20):
wouldn't admit that they love it, but they love it.
I had two students who were chorus students. They were
out for some sort of trip and missed a test
last week and they came in. And my son comes
to work with me every morning, catches the bus at
my school to go to his school, and he was
in there, and every morning we have cartoons on. And
he loves Schoolhouse Rock, you know, as a seven year old,
and knows most of the songs. So I had Schoolhouse

(06:42):
Rock on while I'm stored of getting my day started
and these two students come in to make up their tests.
So I had a seven year old and two teenagers
all singing Schoolhouse Rock together in unison, and you realize
you've had an impact at that point. This is so
easy for people to engage. But again, I think making

(07:03):
it relevant for kids, and you know, before the economic
collapse two thousand and eight, two thousand nine, kids didn't
really care about the Great Depression. But let me tell you,
now that they've seen their family lose their jobs and
their homes, they have a new appreciation for it and
so much easier to teach now because it's so real,
it's relevant, they get it, they understand why it's important,

(07:24):
and so you know, those types of things are easy.
This being an election year has been Wow. It's amazing
to see it. Kids in eleventh grade be so dedicated
to certain ideals. It's it does the heart good. So
I'm also just going to run in my head for
the next probably two weeks, a mental image of a
band of a seven year old and two sixteen year

(07:46):
olds doing a cover of InterPlaNet Janet. That's it for me.
That's just where we're at. We're gonna switch gears a
little and talk about something you're an expert about, which
is Sear's history. That's sort of my thing, which is
a fascinating thing to be focused on as a historian.
How did you first become interested in that subject? UM?

(08:08):
When I first went back to college and undergraduate, my
first couple of years, I was an English major, and
UM had a professor down at Georgia State, Dr John
Burris and who's still there, UM, who taught a class
on Georgia folk life. It was actually part of the
English department, and UM, the historical element of that class

(08:30):
just had such an impact on me, and I always
joked with him that he was the reason that I
switched to history. But Um, in studying English, and then
excuse me, going into history, I noticed that there were
so many mentions of Seers as this integral part of
Southern culture. And the company was based out of Chicago,

(08:53):
and it amazed me how Southern culture sort of absorbed sears.
It became one of them. And I could not find
any sort of regional studies on sears, so I started
just sort of dabbling in that. After undergraduate, I went
straight into the graduate program in Georgia State, and um,
I was trying to come up with an idea for

(09:14):
a master's thesis and one of my colleagues said, uh, well,
you better make it something you love or you're gonna
hate it. And I said, okay, well, and there was
I have been a've been collecting Star Wars action figure
since ninety eight and after my heart, one of my

(09:35):
favorite action figures was the blue Snaggle Tooth that was
only available in the Sears Wish book. That was the thing.
And I said, well, that's it. You know, it's Sears.
It's it's sort of what I like. Maybe I can
just do this Sears thing because I had, you know,
like I said, had been collecting nuggets through you know,
the different English classes and history classes that I've been

(09:58):
taken at Georgia State. So I just I had to
go that direction, and you know it, Uh, it really blossomed.
I came into this building the first time in two
thousand five. Um. The interesting about interesting thing about it
was is that when the City of Atlanta bought this
property in the maintenance team that had worked as property
years under Sears came with the building. Oh I did

(10:21):
not know. So they had this group of guys gentleman
by the name of Jim Ricketts and his crew sort
of changed hands with the property and they knew every
square inch of this building. And uh, one of his
crew members who will remain remain remain nameless. Uh, I
promised that I'd never mentioned his name because they were
so concerned that, oh my god, it was Sears might

(10:43):
take my retirement because they've got such an amazing retirement
or or did back in those days through the profit
sharing program. And so he took me around the building
and up into the tower and all back when the
city still owned it. And uh, that sort of became
a big part of my intent as this package of
regional study. And I ended up going to Hoffmanna, States,

(11:05):
to Sears corporate offices up there on two different occasions,
just to do research, uh, with an incredible archivist by
the name of Arlene May, who is no longer with
the company because in their constant downsizing and trimming, I
think she she was laid off in two thousand nine.
But I went. I did a trip in two thousand
five and in oh seven, and basically just sort of

(11:26):
took that as a barometer anything to do with Southern
culture agriculture and found a wealth of information about the
old farmers market here on the back lot, and um,
you know some of the different programs that they had
in place to help farmers, particularly in the South, because
the South was, you know, still struggling in this sort
of post reconstruction period where they're trying to economically and

(11:51):
industrially catch up with the rest of the nation. And
Sears came in at just that right moment um what
was known as the Forward Atlantic Campaign the mid twenties,
and uh, they had already researched the area, and UH,
the third president of the company, General Robert E. Wood,
he came in and understood that the automobile was central

(12:12):
to this new face that Sears, the old mail order
Sears is now turning into this new retail Sears, and
he was a big part of that transition. And so
I decided to focus on this building and everything that
it sort of represented it and it was like peeling
an onion. It just got deeper and deeper. Fun and
you know, these different industrial investments that Sears made in

(12:32):
hundreds of factories in the Southeast so that they could
eliminate the transportation cost they were buying from local manufacturers
and selling to local customers. They operated in what was
called the territorial system. The country was divided into five territories,
and each one sort of operated autonomously, so they were
much more engaged with the people of the region. They

(12:54):
served their wants, their needs, and I think giving them
that autonomy really helped Sears sort of reach out to
their market in the region, and I think was sort
of the reason it became so beloved in the culture.
I love it. And you spoke about this building and
for our listeners that may not know, the building we
are sitting in, which is called Pont City Market now

(13:16):
uh is a historical building. It was at one point
the the Seer's Robuck Building, and we're going to talk
about that and a whole lot more about Sears history
and this property's history. But first we are gonna pause
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(14:43):
gotten from a podcast. First, I have to ask you,
because we always always always get asked about how we
research and what our research tips are. So I'm wondering
what or tips might be for people who are interested
in corporate history in terms of how they can start

(15:06):
digging into a company's past and finding all of the
little yummy gym's um. I can't say that it was
an easy experience, and I think a large part of
that was, you know, not only the corporate aspects of
of researching, but the fact that Sears is downsizing rapidly,

(15:26):
uh some would say imploding, and so that has made
it very difficult, not only in the research aspects, because
as I mentioned before, they had an archivists out there
at Hoffman Estates and she was the one that maintained
the Sears history website. If you've ever been on there,
she maintained that kept up with literally hundreds of emails

(15:47):
a day from all over the world coming in asking
questions about this corporate juggernaut. And she was such a
steward of the history of the company. And I don't
even know that she came from a history background, but
she certainly appreciated that. And then shortly after they hired
her was the acquisition between Sears and Kmart. So not

(16:10):
only do you have one archivist for this century old company,
but now she's the archivist for s R for Kmart
as well, and so she's got these two corporate entities
that she's trying to curate. I can't even imagine the
stress of that job. But she said it's so cool.
I mean, you know, she um my first trip up.

(16:33):
She really wowed me because I sort of gave her
an idea and she ran with it. And I walked
into the archives and she's got you know, three roller
carts full of boxes, and on top of one of
them as a leather bound ledger that Richard Sears and
Alva Roebuck used to keep the books in. And as
the rumor has it, Richard Sears was a very fly

(16:54):
by the seat of your pants kind of guy, and
it was certainly apparent in this ledger with you know,
mark works and scratches and x is on pages. It
was a very chaotic way of business. H Richard Sears
was He's been called barnem Esque and his salesmanship sort
of the you know, the P. T. Barnum of the

(17:15):
retail and mail order world, and he really did it
was all about the wow factor. He would, you know,
place an add in one of the catalogs for a
pair of men's suit pants for a dollar fifty and
would take in thousands of orders without even having the

(17:36):
product on hand. And then he scrambles around Chicago looking
for manufacturers to get this product made as rapidly as
possible because he's got thousands of orders on standby waiting
for it. That was the kind of business practices that
he engaged in. One of the men that he UH

(17:57):
started working with was the second president of the company,
Julius Rosenwald, who UH was a Jewish merchant in Chicago
and was dealing with one of these frantic orders that
Richard Sears needed filled. And UM he actually first met
with Rosenwald's cousin who invented the pneumatic tube system in

(18:19):
factories and plants around the country, and he was trying
to get Sears to use this as a way to
sort of streamline UH taking in and filling their orders.
And Um Rosenwald sort of came in as part investor
in this thing as Alva Roebuck was sort of exiting
the building, and we'll come back to him. He's got
an interesting story as well. But Rosenwald came in and

(18:42):
he was sort of the the human element of the company.
He took Richard Sears sort of grandiose style and sort
of tried to make it um a little more fluid
and taking filling orders, but also sort of reaching out
to people. This was in early twenties centas the progressive
eras first starting to move and UH. Rosenwald was getting

(19:04):
on up in years and philanthropy. Like many millionaires at
the time, philanthropy became a hobby and it was through
his philanthropy that I think Sears really sort of cemented
its relationship, particularly with the South. Rosenwald was responsible for
starting the Series Agricultural Foundation, which really did a lot

(19:24):
of things through Atlanta specifically like the farmers Market that
I mentioned earlier. But he also worked directly with book
Or T Washington and Tuskegee Institute UH with not only
cash donations but merchandise donations for the students at Tuskegee UH,
and started working through book Or T Washington UH and
establishing funding to start schools for African American children in

(19:49):
the Southeast. And it started off as UH an initial
investment on the part of Rosenwald and started four schools
and within fifteen years bloomed. Almost five thousand schools in
the Southeast became known as the Rosenwald schools. And you know,
even though it's very hard to track that information, it

(20:10):
was very aware of the people they were serving that
this man was with Sears. And from some of the
stuff that I've read, a lot of people thought it
was Mr Sears because he was He's like Santa Claus
at this point, Mr Sears, And so I think that
Rosenwald was very conscious of this image. And when Sears,
Richard Sears leaves the company UH in the nineteen teens,

(20:34):
Rosenwald was very careful to keep that quiet. He wanted
that persona. He kept his transition of power very quiet.
But nonetheless he's coming to the Southeast and starting these schools,
and people realize, Okay, this guy is with Sears Roebuck.
I'm certain because of the nature of Jim Crow South
at the time. This gives African Americans in the Southeast

(20:57):
some degree of UH autonomy, UH, some degree of of secrecy.
Now they can buy the same thing that anybody else
can buy, and all they have to do is order
it through this catalog. They don't have to deal with
racist merchants in town and those types of things. And

(21:17):
I genuinely believe that, Uh, Like I said, even though
it's very hard to track, I'm sure African Americans in
the Southeast were dedicated Sears customers through most of the
twentieth century because of the contributions A part of Julius
Rosenwalts I had never thought about how mail order allowed
people to sidestep prejudice. That's amazing. So you've got these people,

(21:41):
and that was the thing. You know. You hear stories
of African Americans dealing with merchants in town and they're
only shown the cheapest items, uh, and not no customer
service to speak of. Sears has a hundred percent money
by guarantee. We'll send it to you. If it doesn't work,
send it back and we'll send you something else. You know. Again,
it gave them some degree of privacy and what items

(22:04):
they were buying for their families. I'm just so connected
because it's a really it's an amazing connection I never
once would have thought of, which almost maybe supplants the
question I was going to ask next, which is what
is sort of the most surprising little jim you've encountered
in your Sears scholarship really just how much interest Sears

(22:27):
had in the South. Again. The third president of the
company who came in after Rosenwald, actually Rosenwald hired Robert E. Wood.
Robert E. Wood was an acquisitions manager in the Panama
Canal project. He was in the military, which is why
they called him general And basically that was his job,
was seeking out huge quantities of raw materials UH for

(22:51):
the purposes of these large construction projects. And so it
sort of made him perfect for Sears in acquiring raw
materials and manufactured goods at a very budget price so
that they could turn a profit. And he came in.
He actually worked for Montgomery Ward originally, and the turn
of the twentieth century. I think he saw the promise

(23:13):
of the automobile and the change in the retail environment
and was trying to push Ward to do more retail
and Wards said, no, where a mail order company. We're
going to dance with the one that brought us, and
finally fired Robert Would because he would not back off
of this retail thing. And as soon as Rosenwald got

(23:36):
word of this, he immediately hired him at Sears and
UH right out of the bat set up the territory
system in North America with the five territories in this
sort of autonomous way of doing business in each of
the territories um and started this whole retail craze. Uh.
He was a big proponent of what he called ample

(23:57):
free parking. And so when Sears would open a store
like the one that was started here on constantly on,
they would look for an area on the edge of
town that was accessible but land was still cheap, and
they could have access to this ample free parking because
he knew that the automobile was the way of the
future and look what happened, so so so far ahead

(24:19):
of his time, I think, and sort of understanding the
direction of retail and what it was doing at that moment. Well,
especially when you think about the regional model, which has
been i mean perpetuated throughout all kinds of retail and
sales across the country for decades since. And I'm pretty
certain he was at least one of the originators of

(24:41):
that practice it. Uh. You know, like I said earlier,
I think it just gives the management within the company
in those regions a little more I mean, they were
very engaged in the Chamber of Commerce and Community service
and these types of things in Atlanta was certainly no exception. UM.
Once they came to Atlanta, obviously, you know they opened
this plan. UM. The original structure was seven fifty square

(25:04):
feet and the first thing they did for the opening
ceremonies was UH Sears had just a couple of years prior,
UH acquired a radio station based out of Chicago, WLS,
which called Understood for World's Largest Store, and they were
sort of on the brink, on the edge cutting edge
of of radio technology and started going to smaller UH

(25:27):
stations in different regions. In WSB. UH, they WLS actually
leased airtime from WSB. WSB brought a transmitter to the
tower in this building, and UH not only broadcast live
from the tower for the opening ceremonies and the flag
raising on the tower and all those things, but continued
to maintain a relationship for the next few years UM

(25:49):
in radio programming and what ultimately gave birth to country
music as we know it today. It's all I mean,
it's it's like gym after Jim UH. And you are
also in the midst of working on a book about
this property, Yes, about the building that we are literally
sitting in right now, which again I mentioned the name earlier.

(26:11):
It's Pont City Market. Will you talk a little bit
about that project, because you and I talked about it
a little bit, but it sounds amazing. Well once you know,
I did my master's thesis through Georgia State and they
still host that. Actually it's available online. UM, we will
put it in the show notes. Sure, sure. UM it's uh,
it's sort of academic, and it's got some places that

(26:32):
are a little stuffy, but the second and third chapters
in particular have been very popular with folks who's been
thousands of downloads of it. Uh. The second chapters primarily
looking at the regional business through this plant, and then
the third chapter is more of an oral history element. UM.
As I mentioned before, my mentor Georgia State was Cliff Keun,

(26:53):
who was responsible for relocating the American um Oral History
Association of America. UH there UH archives are at Georgia State. Now.
He brought that there and it's one of the great
oral historians. UH used to host a number of episodes
of This Day and History on Georgia Public Broadcasting and

(27:14):
was aware of a lot of these things, just little
pieces so he was he was central in helping me
sort of get these things together, making connections. UM. And
so obviously the oral history part is there not only uh,
interviews with with former employees, regional employees and oral histories
that I collected in Chicago, but also, uh, one of

(27:37):
the big things that I found in Chicago on my
first visit was a box full of correspondence from different
customers in the Southeast. And it is some of the
funniest Literally sitting in the archives cackling, tears running down
my face. Uh, some of the things that these people

(27:59):
they really did. They all Richard Sears of Santa Claus.
They wrote in looking for a wife. Uh. They then
he wrote in one man wrote in about his child.
He had ordered uh something from the patent medicine section
that was apparently marketed as birth control, and ordered two
tubes of it. And now he has a seven pound

(28:19):
baby girl and he calls it his Sears Sears baby
and thanks that Sears owes her at least a blanket
or something. Uh, you know, just some of the funniest things. Um.
And so that's in the third chapter of the thesis.
But that certainly was sort of the nucleus of how
this thing started to unravel. Um, the people of Jamestown

(28:41):
when they bought the property, had found my research and
just dug into it. And coincidentally, um another sort of
local neighborhood cheerleader ahead of the old Fourth Ward Association,
Kits Sutherland, she lives right across the street. Uh. Kit
basically reached out to me and helped get me in
contact with Jamestown. And this was in two thousand eleven

(29:04):
when they bought the property and they brought me in. Uh.
They had the party at Potts which was in the
back parking lot with the Induego girls and Shaan Mullins.
They brought me in to lead some of the tours,
and I just got such a response. People are so
interested in the history of this building because it's become
such an institution here in Atlanta. You know, all the
years that I've driven by this building, we've come to

(29:26):
pay our speeding tickets or get our cars out of
him pound or whatever the case may be. And so
there was such an interest and it just really started
to take off. And I continue working with Jamestown sort
of as a historical consultant and provided a lot of photography.
I was on an elevator coming up here earlier, and
there's a picture on the elevator that I found in
my research in Chicago. So it's been sort of surreal

(29:48):
to watch this whole thing open up. Well, I sort
of found uh a partner in crime. Uh local photographer
by the name of Blake Burton. Uh. Blake is a
graduate from Georgia Tech and architecture and he graduated in
two thousand nine, just as the market began to tank,
and was to have an architecture degree, and he was

(30:10):
somehow he had just moved up the street to an
apartment so he could get to classes at Georgia Tech
and got hired as an asset manager for the City
of Atlanta, and this was the building he worked in,
and so he came in in the fall two thousand nine. Uh,
just casually on his brakes, taking his camera around the
building and taking pictures of what this looked like. So

(30:31):
just for um context for listeners that don't know, this
building went through a period where it was owned by
the city and was like a government building where as
you said, you would come and pay your tickets. Uh,
it's had a lot of wacky things in it at
various points of time, but just for a heads up.
That is why he was hired by the government was

(30:54):
working here in this building. The interesting thing was is
when City Hall East was in this building, they only
occupied about the total structure. The other sat like, uh,
like a time capsule almost. I remember walking into the
maintenance offices down in the basement where the old electrical
room used to be, and uh, just find blueprints of

(31:15):
the property from the nineteen forties, just randomly laying out
on tables. Um. I remember at one point when I
was doing the tours for Jamestown in two thousand eleven,
walked over into what looked like sort of a storage
area behind uh, one of the circuit breakers and found
a receipt and a wiring diagram for the old popcorn

(31:37):
machine that used to be at the candy counter, just
laying on the floor randomly. I mean, it literally was
like a time capsule. And it was so awesome to
be able to walk through this building in those dark
corners that people probably hadn't gone in in years. Um.
But Blake starts taking photographs of this and documenting it.
And then when Jamestown bought the property, uh, he spoke

(31:58):
with the folks at James Down and got permission to
come back into the building every two to three months
and continue what turned into a sort of a visual
documentary of the transition from this sort of you know,
junk storage and you know, cheesy nineteen sixties wood paneling
from certain places to this mixed use nexus on the

(32:22):
east side of Atlanta and documented. In fact, the last
photograph that he took was from the top of the
bar looking down on the amusement park on the roof.
That's the final page of it, and it it's just
been amazing. And so he reached out to me. He
actually had had um Uh an art exhibit back here

(32:42):
where the Auto Center used to be, in one of
those spaces next to Dancing Goats Uh and had his
stuff on an exhibit there for about a month. And Uh.
One day I get this email and he's like, so,
I hear you're the history guy. And I was like, well,
it's sort of certainly seems that way lately. He said, well,
I'm in this book and I would really like to

(33:03):
document the history of this property. And so what I
did was sort of took you know, the basis of
my research for my master's thesis and sort of took
out the stuffy academic aspects of it and made it
a little more user friendly. Uh, and certainly you know,
supplemented areas where I had a lot of people ask
questions before and sort of tried to get this, you know, essay.

(33:28):
That sort of captured the evolution of this property from
before you know, the Sears plant was even here, back
when the old positively out amusement park was here, and
from that time basically through the Sears transition, through the
City Hall East transition, to the time that Jamestown took
control of the property and sort of you know, initiates

(33:49):
this renaissance of the building. And it's been it's been
a great ride. It's really been fun. I can imagine
we are going to talk some more about the building
and Sears, but first we're gonna pause once again for
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(35:13):
So we are back to our discussion and Uh. One
of the things that comes up a lot on our
show is pronunciation. So here in Atlanta we say Ponsta Leon.
That's not really the way you would have pronounced it
if you were him. Uh, And to Atlanta residents though,
that is a very common name. A busy road that

(35:33):
serves as one of the city's major arteries is called
Posta Leon. And UH, what they may not know, although
it's it's become more common knowledge because of like your
work in part establishing the history of this property, is
that this property is a big reason why Post Leon
is a big part of Atlanta. It is. UH. In

(35:55):
the eighteen sixties, as they were laying what is now
the belt line, the rail corridor, UH, that was between
this building and the neighboring building across the way, the
Ford Factory. UM. When they were building and laying that bed,
they found UH, just at the northeast corner of this

(36:17):
building there's actually a service drive if you're looking at
the front of Pont City Market, all the way to
the left, in between the edge of the building and
the neighboring rail bed where the belt line is located. UH,
they found two freshwater springs that came out of the
side of that hill. The spouts, best of my knowledge,
were about three ft apart. And they knew for a

(36:40):
fact that they came from two separate sources because one side,
UH was colder and one side had more of a
sulfur smell. A local Atlanta doctor found that the rail
workers had been drinking this spring water UH for its
health benefits UH and eventually started bottling the water and

(37:03):
selling it here in Atlanta. Eventually the property was sold
to a local businessman by the name of John Armistead
the Atlanta Street Railway Company, and that was a six
he sold the property. UH. They were interested in the
property because it was at the far eastern end of
the eastbound trolley line and they wanted something at the

(37:24):
end of the line to encourage writers to go all
the way to the end, and this property sat there. UH.
So it's the intersection of the airline railway which is
now the belt Line and the old trolley line that
used to run parallel to Constant Leon all the way
out almost to Decatur. And UM they at the time

(37:46):
was just pastoral gardens and people would come out, you know,
back in the old days of courting. You would take
the trolley line out and would court your your lovely
lady around the gardens at uh constantly on uh part
and eventually, UH in the late eighteen nineties they opened
an amusement park UH called Constantly an amusement park. This

(38:08):
is around the time UH that, so we should mention
that the name was chosen because we thought it. Yeah,
they thought it was the Fountain of Youth. Uh. And
so the supposedly these these springs had restorative properties to them,
and so people would come out on Sundays and walk
around the park and would get a sip of this

(38:29):
rank sulfur water because supposedly it was good for him
and had these healing properties. Well. Uh, in time, they
open the amusement park, and more and more people began
to come to the area. And this is just prior
to you know, obviously the the automobile becoming common. Um.
By the early twentieth centuries, the automobile starts to come

(38:51):
into play. Certainly by the nineteen twenties, the park is
going into disrepair. There was a group of gypsies that
lived on the property. Uh, it was sort of becoming
an ice or. Although business was still popping up. They
opened the old ballpark, uh spiller Field across the street. Uh.
The obviously the Ford plant was already here. Um. And

(39:14):
at the time Sears was looking for property that, as
I mentioned earlier, sort of the edge of town where
they could buy property for fairly inexpensive but they wanted
that transportation artery, and it really was the perfect fit
for Sears because not only do you have the rail
line airline railway outside UH to bring in and ship
these items, but you also have the trolley line, which

(39:36):
was the main means of transportation as the automobile sort
of coming about. So Sears starts looking at the property
the best of my knowledge in the night about and
in December of nine announced officially that they were going
to open a Sears Roebuck warehouse and retail store on
the property. And so UH January four they broke ground

(40:04):
and six months later they opened a three quarter million
square foot facility. They were working three shifts a day,
twenty four hours a day, seven days a week for
six months. They had done constructed another Sears plant in
Kansas City that had been completed just a few months prior,
and so they really had worked out how to make

(40:25):
this thing put it together quickly. It was almost the
exact same floor plans, and so they built this. They
paved over the springs, diverted it actually under the property
UH and used to actually run off underneath North Avenue
and was diverted back to what was the parking lot
at Masquerade once upon a time. Now its old fourth
Ward Park and so that water runs off through there's

(40:47):
this underground aquifer. Um. I do know that in two
thousand five there was another developer looking at the properties
names Emery Morrisburger. Mr. Morrisburger is the one who redeveloped
downtown Lawrenceville, and he was looking to buy the property
basically turned it into condos. Um. He had a daughter
who was disabled, and he wanted to make this the

(41:08):
most wheelchair friendly facility in the city. And uh put
a healthy sum as a down payment somewhere next as
of a million dollars on the property. And as they
begin looking, um, right across Glen Iris, Uh, there's some
condos there now that used to be a dry cleaners.
And in all the years of operation the dry cleaners,
some of the chemicals that they used leached down into

(41:30):
the soil under the property and polluted the aquifer. And
so then it's this environmental issue. And just about that
time the market starts to collapse, and of course condos
go down the toilet and Morrisburger it was like the
hot potato. He couldn't get it out of it yet. Well,
because it's really expensive to address those kind of issues.
I mean, I I know it happened a lot in Atlanta.

(41:52):
That is not the only story I know of someone
that was interested in the property and then found out
that it had some chemical issue it was going to
have to have a lot of expensive cleanup, and then
right at that time everything kind of went dry for
a bit where there was just no development. So that's
not that unusual. We're going to come back to the
Seares Buildings and its debut, but before that, I wanted

(42:12):
to ask you, and you kind of accidentally got onto
it a little bit talking about how the catalog business
sort of opened up some avenues for black people to
be able to make purchases without having to deal with racism.
But there are some moments in this building's past that

(42:35):
are problematic, and they are a big part of America's
racist history. And I know we have always kind of
run into like that. Please don't look when we talk
to people that worked on the development about like, can
we talk about the fact that that amusement park wouldn't
let anyone of color in? Uh, do you run into
that problem? I've seen a lot of questions about it.

(42:57):
There's one, uh postcard image that is very clear that
the swings on the property had a sign that said
whites only. Uh. The only others that could use it
were black servants. That was obviously a big part of it.
I mean, this is the Jim Crow era of the South,
and is you know, as liberal as Atlanta can be
at times, it's still very much in the heart of

(43:20):
the South. Um. And there were a lot of challenging
issues over the years. I think with Sears obviously, you know,
segregated facilities, restrooms, cafeterias, and things of that nature. All
the way up to nineteen seventy one, Jose Williams is
protesting you know, racist hiring practices at Sears Roebucks. So yeah,
there's a lot of of of a sort of sort

(43:42):
of undertone and things that I get a lot of
questions about. Uh. There is one particular sort of urban
myth that that uh Alva Roebuck was at least part
African American, and that's the best of my understanding and
my research is not true. Uh. And I think a
big part of that is probably because of the role

(44:04):
that Rosenwald played with Booker T. Washington. It was very
high profile and from some of the interviews that I've
read with corporate executives with Sears at the time they
opened this plant that um, there was some concern on
the part of the white population in the South. Uh,
they thought that Sears was a black company. And again
I think a lot of that probably came out of

(44:26):
this sort of high profile philanthropy that what rosen Walld
was doing through black communities throughout the region. And UH,
to some degree, Sears was very conscious about bringing and
establishing public relations offices in the Atlanta plant to sort
of get helped get past that. And so they were

(44:46):
always the questions well as one of the men black. Um.
And in fact, uh, if you know the story of
Alva Roebuck, he left the company in side a bad
case of nerves in dealing with Richard Sears sort of
fly by to the seat her pants business style. Roebuck
had been hired when Richard Sears was just a watch

(45:08):
catalog h Richard Sears, you know, had was a railroad
agent and had worked in Minnesota and accidentally got a
shipment of pocket watches because you know, in the nineteenth century,
railroad helped standardized time, and so pocket watches became a necessity,
and so it was the shipment of mail order pocket
watches that came through the station. No one claimed it,

(45:28):
and so Richard Sears says, I'll buy it, and he
sells these watches and turns about an eight thousand dollar
profit selling these watches up and down the railroads to
his buddies who worked in the stations. And so it
started as this watch catalog, and Alva Roebuck was a
watch repairman, so he brought him in and had, of course,
in legendary Richard Sears style, the sort of grandiose guarantee,

(45:51):
lifetime guarantee on these watches. The best of my knowledge,
they weren't the best watches in the world. But if
it broke and you had the patients to send it
off for probably months and months to to Chicago, Albert
Roebuck would fix your watch and send it back to you.
And so he stayed with the company till he leaves
because he's just a nervous wreck trying to work with
Richard Sears, and eventually takes his portion of the company

(46:15):
and uh invested in the typewriter industry. He ends up
working for Emerson Typewriters and had basically gone into an
early retirement in Florida when the Great Depression kicked in
and lost everything, and eventually in the nineteen thirties went
to Chicago, had to go back to work and went
and stood in an unemployment line at the Sears factory

(46:37):
in Chicago, and he goes in for the interview and
they asked his name. He says, well, it's on the
front of the building. I'm Alva Roebuck. And so they
hired him just sort of write letters to customers, sort
of a public relations capacity, and eventually started touring him
around the Country's sort of a glad hander for special events,
and they sent him to the South to multiple locations

(46:59):
to show the reach. And he's not black, so that
was the capacity that Robut served. Um, you know, I
talked to a number of African American employees who worked
at Sears during those years of transition during the Civil
Rights movement, where the segregated signs were slowly removed and

(47:19):
things were integrated without very very much fanfare. They really
tried to stay below the radar with that kind of thing,
but uh, still a lot of dedication, even the black employees.
They genuinely loved Sears. They loved with Sears provided. Uh.
There's an old sort of legend that there was an
elevator operator, a black elevator operator at the Memphis facility,

(47:40):
which is obviously right on the Mississippi River. Uh, and
he operated an elevator in that building for thirty plus years.
And it is said he retired a millionaire because for
every dollar he would invest in his sh Sears profit sharing,
they would match that dollar. And UH, they were your
story decade. Yeah, stories of employees. This is when you
know you could establish yourself in a career with this

(48:03):
company and it could really do great things for you.
And I know for a fact in speaking with some
of these uh former employees who are still very active.
In fact, Atlanta has the largest active retiree chapter in
the country. They're called the Seers Atlanta Family. I still
worked with them occasionally, have interviewed a number of employees
that worked in this plant and the stories they tell

(48:25):
it's just fascinating and sort of seeing that firsthand account
of what it used to be like to work in
this giant building and how close people were, you know,
stories of snow storms where they would be trapped in
the building overnight and the next morning they would open
the cafeteria and do like mess hall style breakfast for
all the employees. They were really just a tight knit family,
and they still are very close today. You've got these

(48:47):
people in their eighties and their nineties, and they just
just the salt of the earth. You know. They loved
the company that they worked for. They're not real happy
about the direction it's gone in recent years, but they
they're very deadic hated people. Uh And I've seen that
in all you know, socio economic classes and races of
people who worked here. They they genuinely loved what they did.

(49:10):
Uh and what Sears sort of stood for in the region. Uh. So,
now we'll backtrack a little bit and talk about the
building on the day it opened, because I had read
a little factoid that there were thirty thousand people on hand.
Is that true? That seems enormous. It was not in
line that morning. There are some pictures from that day

(49:31):
of the front of the building and the lines and
the throngs of people standing outside the front. That was
the total number of bodies that came in the building
in that first opening day. It's not like there were
thirty thousand people, you know, lined up constantly on to
get in. But you know they had somewhere in the
neighborhood of thirty five thousand items on display in that

(49:52):
retail facility down on the first floor. And uh, you know,
for folks who've lived in Atlanta very long, the old
service merchandise, you would go in, say I want that one.
They would give you a ticket, you would go to
a counter, and somebody else behind, you know, the curtain
would bundle that order and bring it to the counter
for you. And that was the way it worked here

(50:13):
at Sears. They folks could go in through the retail section,
and Sears was known for having three different levels of quality.
They had the economic, then they had sort of the middle,
and then they had the really nice one. And so
they would keep three of most all of these items,
particularly things like appliances and tools and things that Sears
sort of became known for. People would come in and

(50:34):
they would say, Okay, I want this and this. They
would take the tickets to a counter and they would
literally um. The way this building is set up, there
are these huge corkscrew turnstiles. There used to be a
couple on the outside of the building, and then they
were two within the building itself and they connected all
of the floors and it basically was a giant shoot
that went down to the shipping room what is today

(50:55):
the front facade of Pont City Market with the living roof.
That was the shipping room. And they would all of
these conveyor belts and shoots and they all the things
from the different floors would spiral down and somebody at
the bottom and these stalls would collect the items. They
would come through the shoot, they would bundle the order
and it would either go to the front of the
store for the retail or it would go to the

(51:15):
loading dock in the back and be put on the
train to be shipped out all over the region. And
that was sort of the way they filled them. You know.
They had operators over in the tower and you could
call directly to the tower and say, okay, in your
new catalog on this page, you've got this item. I'd
like three of these, you know, and then they would
send that order to the different floors. They would fill

(51:37):
that order and collect it and bundle it in the
in the shipping room. So what was the building itself
like at the time. Yeah, the bottom floor was a cafeteria.
Basement floor is a giant cafeteria, and then the first
floor would have been the retail space. The second third,
actually the second through ninth floors of the main structure

(51:59):
was pretty much just all merchandise. Uh. You had things
like kids toys. On the ninth floor, you would have
things like appliances and hardware, and heavier items would be
obviously a little closer to the bottom floor. And uh,
you know, during the first few years of operation the building, uh,
the terrace across what is today the front of Pond

(52:19):
City Market. Uh, that was the old original rail bed.
It's connected via bridge out to the belt line. Now. Uh,
they would pull as many as sixteen rail cars across
the back of the building and they would literally bundle
it and loaded onto the train. Uh. That was the
case until the mid sixties. They started a huge wave
of development. They knocked down the old original smoke stack,

(52:41):
and they constructed the wing that sits right across the
street from the Masquerade there on North Avenue. That was
the sixty seven wing. And then they were three floors
on the far end that weren't there originally. In nineteen seventy,
they built those additional three floors to finish that wing out.
When they did that, they scrapped the rail line buried

(53:01):
in concrete and built a cafeteria new cafeteria that was
open to the public, and built that across the back
of the building and rerouted all of the trains up
the side of the building. And what is the shed
on the side of the property today that Pots City
Market has developed. That was the second loading dock, and
they could pull more train cars up to that and
and load those items. But uh, yeah, it was an

(53:23):
amazing operation. It was almost like two different companies in one.
You would have the mail order aspect of the company
and then you would have the retail portion of the company.
And and talking to the employees, they've always been very
particular about oh well I was retail or, I was
mail order, I worked with catalog, is what they'll say. Um,

(53:43):
the terminology is interesting. They refer to this building as
the plant, the Pots plant. Uh. And it really was
just amazing to see it. There's actually a collection of
employee It was more of than newslet. It was almost
like a magazine, uh, for ploys of this year's plant. Uh.
It started nineteen fifty one on the twenty fifth anniversary

(54:05):
of the opening of the plant. It was called mail
order graph and it was like, you know, pictures of
kids in their cub Scouts again, that whole family thing
was there. It was pictures of the cafeteria staff, the
ladies that ran the cafeteria at the time, or the laundry. Uh.
They would do these different write ups, Uh so and
So's moving away, and they would have going away parties

(54:26):
and just a lot of very personal pictures. I found
an entire collection that went from nineteen fifty one through
about nineteen seventy eight, I believe it was. They have
it on uh hand at University of Georgia and their
Special Collections facility out there, and I've gone out there
multiple times collecting information, images and stuff for Jamestown, uh

(54:47):
to use in various capacities. And it's just so fun
to look through those because you really see what this
building was in its prior life. You know, I didn't
move to the city till n and obviously that would
the year Sears sort of shuttered everything and sold it
to the city. But it, uh, it really gives sort
of a pulse to the previous life of the building

(55:09):
and the people that worked in and how close they
were what Atlanta meant to or you know, what Sears
mit meant to the Atlanta market. I will ask you
a question. I'm going off track a little bit because
I remember finding in uh when I was doing a
little bit of prep a note from the nine internal

(55:33):
little mailer paper, a note about Sears being aware that
their catalogs would one day be looked at by historians
as the you know, sort of the record of American
life at the time. It is absolutely I have never
heard of a company that was quite that self aware
from historical perspective. I don't know that Richard Sears himself

(55:56):
was quite that aware. Again, he was a huckster, you know,
he was a Eke oil salesman. But I do think
that Julius Rosenwald and certainly Robert Wood were conscious of
sort of nurturing this is before image corporate image was
a thing they sort of I think helped to create
and nurture that in this this image of the catalog

(56:18):
and how it reached out to to rural farmers in particular.
But you know, even here in in the urban areas
where they're reaching out to a more urban market. But Uh,
but yeah, I think I think from at least by
the mid twentieth century, they were certainly aware that this
was sort of a historical you know, repository of things

(56:40):
of stuff, and and that's one thing about our culture,
you know, is we love stuff in this country. We
define ourselves by stuff. And they were I think really
aware of how people define themselves with the things that
they bought. And uh, you know, even in utilitarian things
like cream separators and sewing machines and these you know
things that again, you know, I had mentioned to you

(57:03):
at the Georgia Public Broadcasting broadcasts that we uh we're
talking about how the catalog and the items in it, uh,
what it represented to people having those items. Um, you know,
I I teach that in my classes. Now we actually
do It's pretty fun activity I do with my students
where I give them a list of drugs because there's

(57:27):
one thing teenagers are interested in, its drugs and what
they potential side effects are, what they might be used for.
And we would take I give the kids old copies. Uh.
This is before the pure food and drug adveras looking
at patent medicines because that was the thing about patent medicines.
It could have secret ingredients and it was usually illicit drugs,

(57:47):
and you had farmers getting addicted to cocaine in the
nineteen teens. And so my kids go through and scour
these ads and read the claims and then they have
to sort of guess what illicit drug might be the
key ingredients and those items. So it's amazing, you know,
it really is sort of a history of us from
from that that period, that sort of huckster selling it

(58:09):
out of the back of the wagon too. You know
what we talked about. You would ask about the the
Wish book. You know. Um, one of my favorite writers
that I became familiar with both and when I was
at Georgia State, actually Cliff Kean really turned him onto him,
was Harry Cruz Love Harry Crews. Uh. You know, he's
somewhere between uh Faulkner and Hunter S. Thompson. He is

(58:32):
just amazing. But he grew up in Bacon County, Georgia,
dirt poor, uh sharecropper's son, and uh he tells the
stories his family never hoped to be able to buy
the items in those books, but you could wish about it.
And the thing he did he had a black neighbor
named will It Lee book at and they would basically

(58:54):
sit on the porch with the catalog and would make
up stories about these so called perfect people. Oh my good,
because he grew up in an area where you know,
folks said were missing an eye or missing a two,
threw finger and have yeah. And then he looks at
this catalog of all these perfect people, and he and
this other kid would make up stories. And he said,

(59:15):
that's how he learned to tell story, was just making
up stories about people in the Sears catalog. So, you know,
even beyond you know, consumer goods, this thing became so
much larger for people, particularly in the South, that didn't
have a whole lot wish for, you know, they wish
was all they could do, and I think it became
symbolic of that. So it was called wish book for

(59:36):
years and years. Um. The Christmas Catalog I think really
took off in the nineteen thirties. Uh. And it was
a fairly small catalog, but it had the toys. I
think most of us that are in our age group
have such distinct memories of that. Eventually, grimy and dog

(59:56):
eared wish book every year. Santa Claus shopped at Sears clearly,
I mean I vaguely recall asking a question along those
lines of like, if I circle it in the catalog,
how does Santa find out? And my parents did say
something like, oh, he has a deal with Series, you know,
the way that parents will just make something up exactly. Yes,

(01:00:17):
so they they I mean Santa. You know, I could
see him having some retail reach out. Some of those
elves have connections there on the switchboard. I did a
presentation for the Retirees Group a couple of years ago,
and before I even started, I looked out and smiled
at the audience of these, you know, seventy nine year
old people, and I said, I've just met Santa Claus.

(01:00:41):
You were Santa Claus because I lived in a rural area,
a little tiny town South Georgia. Moultrie, Georgia was where
I grew up and lived out in a very rural area.
The nearest kids were a couple of miles away, and
being an only child, that's Sears wish book, I spent
a lot of hours with it. Facts absolutely and school
close every fall, school clothes came from Sears, and then

(01:01:02):
of course you would get the wish book and about
October and start dog ear in the pages and circling things.
I want this two of these. And yes, somehow Santa
always found out, thank goodness. I mean, I think I
told you when we first first met to talk about
this about the year that Santa did me wrong and
he did not honor my request for the Strawberry shortcake

(01:01:25):
snail cart, and I may have had a very unattractive fit.
And then I scraped my money together and told my
dad we have to go to Sears. Like I was
scared there were there was gonna be a run on
snail carts. We absolutely had to go immediately, if not sooner,
and get my snail carts. It was it was everything,

(01:01:46):
I mean a lot of my you know, I talked
about my Star Wars toys. That was it. It was
the you know, getting that package, just oh my god. Oh.
There was one year that my brother tore out the
Star Wars pages for him to just take for himself.
I'll be honest, I'm sorry, sir. No. I um. When

(01:02:08):
I did my research the first time, I was in
the catalog room of the archives and they had basically
every catalog they had ever published. They had a pristine
copy on this wall, and I pulled out the seventy
seventy smelled the pages still smell the same flip to

(01:02:29):
those that I had perused a hundred times as a kid.
And remember not just the toys, but that advertisement, you
know that display, because I always had the coolest displays
of toys. It's it's sort of interesting. Um. I mentioned
earlier about the farmers market that was established here on
the back lot of the property, that operated from nineteen

(01:02:50):
thirty till about ninety seven. Uh In forty seven, when
they shut down the Farmer's market, they turned that building
which is no longer there. It's right where Dancing Goats
is located today. There was the Farmer's market on that
corner of Glenn Iris and North Avenue. And um, they
shut down the Farmer's market turning into a farm store.

(01:03:10):
But every year for Christmas they would take a portion
of the farm store and would have this huge Christmas display.
And there's some great photos of the Georgia State Special
Collections Archives of this creepy clown on a on a
slide out in front of that store and these kids
playing on like the playground. I'm sure it was probably
something they sold in the catalog of swing set or something.

(01:03:32):
But yeah, they were always very conscious of that. You know,
that Christmas thing. It always reminds me of the scene
from a Christmas story where they're sort of glued to
the window looking at all the wares for that year's
Christmas season. So yeah, I mean it's I still think
about those wish books a lot, especially this time a year.
It's just exactly it's like, it's good, we have good
timing to do, and now I am going to think

(01:03:58):
about the elliott ness level rate that I staged to
get those pages out of my brother's room. He was
a lot older than me. It was not okay, it
was a very very brave act on my place. You
can't take those I need to look at size noodles.
There's something it's pretty sagrinned about the whole situation. Cherry,

(01:04:20):
Thank you so much, very welcome. Oh my gosh, you're
just amazing app. Where can people find you? Well, I,
like I said, I'm at Duluth High School. You can
reach me there. Yeah, just send me, send me an email.
You can find me on Facebook. Jerry Hancock. Uh, if
you need to email me. Jerry Underscore Hancock at yahoo

(01:04:40):
dot com. I'm pretty accessible. Uh, shoot me a line, um,
and hopefully this book thing will materialize where right now
it's being reviewed by Princeton Press, Princeton Architectural Press, and uh,
I do know that the executives of Jamestown are pretty
excited about it as well, So I'm certain that it's
gonna come along at some point with pretty a yeah

(01:05:01):
and it's yeah, this is the whole business aspect of it,
and this is the part I'm not real fond of.
But you know, we've we've done a few edits here
and there and trying to get copyrights on pages. You've
mentioned earlier about how hard it is to do corporate
research and it it's very difficult to find anybody as
serious to give you a concrete answer on anything, if
you can even get them to answer a phone, because

(01:05:22):
there's so many of those officers are empty now and
so we're really struggling with trying to reach out to
sears and get permission to use certain images and things.
But we've got a great collection of historical images in
this essay, and then of course Blake's photography is just astounding,
so beautiful to to watch the transition of the building
and the pages it will be. I believe it's going
to be more of an architectural book, sort of coffee

(01:05:43):
table style book. But yeah, we've uh, we've got a
lot of a lot of optimism for it. So I'm
excited to keep us posted. We can share that info, uh,
and then we will uh will reach back out to
you and get the whole scoop when it all comes
to sounds good. Thank you so much. You're very welcome.
Thanks for having Okay, So, I am still sort of

(01:06:07):
reeling from the revelation that catalog shopping was so impactful
to people who were often discriminated against. And I actually
feel a little bit foolish for never having thought of
that before. Yeah, you and I try really hard to
broaden our perspectives, uh, and to to listen to people
whose experiences are different from ours. Um, But at the

(01:06:29):
same time, like we're always going to be limited by
our own experiences, and so I, like you, I had
not thought of that before. No, it's so blew my
mind and and really kind of opened my eyes to
a whole reason that catalogs had a benefit to people
that I just had never considered, which I really do
feel foolish for not considering because I'm like that person

(01:06:51):
that likes to shop online because I don't like going
into stores. So you would think I could have put
two and two together, but I didn't. Uh. So we
wanted to say many many thanks to Jerry Hancock for
spending time with us and sharing his impressive breadth of knowledge.
Little did I know you could be a Sears scholar,
but also that Sears had like its own archive and

(01:07:12):
their own sort of sense of scholarship around their history.
And we will, as promised in the episode, keep listeners
posted on his book project as it progresses. So I
have his contact info. Hopefully we'll see more of him
and we will keep you in the loop. Do you
also have some listener mail for us? I do. It's
a follow up to a previous listener mail, so as
our listeners may recall, I had a delighted freak out

(01:07:36):
not so long ago when we got this amazing parcel
from a listener who I could not make out their name,
but it was original copies of Lemo del from France,
uh from the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds,
and I was just wowed and we got an email
shortly after that episode aired where the gifter revealed themselves

(01:07:57):
her name is Emmanuel, and then she said she had
to follow up parcel coming. Oh my goodness. So, uh
it's basically our early Christmas gift and care package and
it was really amazing. So she said that the first
one had been a spur of the moment thing, so
then she, uh, she was so delighted with our enthusiastic

(01:08:18):
reception that she did a much more organized approach to
the next one, and it was amazing. She found in
a second hand bookshop a bunch of mod illustrates to
sort through, and so what we ended up with, uh
is one issue from every year ranging from nineteen o nine.
They're a couple of years missing that just she couldn't

(01:08:39):
find um. But they're in amazing shape. And one of
the really really beautiful things that we got is that
some of them are printed using the push war method,
like their special editions, that have actual gold that highlights
some of the illustrations in them. They're incredible. Uh yeah, yeah, yes,

(01:09:00):
so so uh here's the other cool thing. There are
four issues that she sent that has what she says
is a surprise for me, which is great. They have
original sewing patterns um and she wrote, She's very cute
because she gets me clearly. She's like, you read that right, breathe,
please don't cry. So yeah, they're basically like pieces that
you have to put together. Luckily, I have done this

(01:09:21):
many many times, and I have the skills. I have
to figure out a way to copy them because I
don't want to take them apart. And then there is
a really interesting one, the nineteen fifteen issue that she
sent really evidences that the war is happening and that
dresses are getting simpler and shorter, and they're really really amazing.
So it was just it's the most amazing parcel from

(01:09:43):
an incredible I mean, what a generous and lovely and
thoughtful person. Emmanuel. We like you heaps. They absolutely did
put a huge smile on my face. I actually haven't
gotten to go through them carefully. It's been kind of
a busy time of travel and holidays and and work
being a little bit busy, and us trying to get
ready for more holidays and having more episodes ready than

(01:10:05):
we usually would on a given week, so it's been
a little bit maddening. It may be the beginning of
the year before I really get to like go through
them and and enjoy them fully. But thank you what
an amazing, delightful, kind, thoughtful I can't use enough adjectives
to describe how much I just really appreciate the care
and love that went into such a gorgeous parcel. So

(01:10:26):
thank you a million times over. Uh. If you would
like to write to us and talk about how much
you are over me blathering about exciting fashion illustrations, that's fine.
You can do that at History podcast, to house, to
works dot com. You can find us across the spectrum
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(01:10:47):
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(01:11:07):
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(01:11:33):
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com