The Dime Store: F. W. Woolworth

When I was growing up in the American heartland, it seemed that every town had a Woolworth's store, part of the F. W. Woolworth chain. My home town of Wheaton, Illinois, had one on Front Street, right across from the railroad station, well into my adolescence. I always thought of it as the principal store downtown, at which virtually everything was available: clothes, house plants, small pets such as parakeets and hamsters, toys, food, and a variety of other items. To the right, as one entered, was one of those big photographing booths, where one would sit inside, wait for the light to flash and, after a few minutes, be presented with a strip of several black and white self-portraits. To the left was the lunch counter, where one could order from the menu a variety of conventional North American dishes. We called it simply the Dime Store. When my mother was growing up, before inflation had taken its toll, it was known as the Five and Dime. When I began receiving an allowance from my parents, I would almost naturally gravitate to the Dime Store to spend it. We even bought each other Christmas gifts there. The ladies who worked there would always eye us children suspiciously, assuming we were all potential shoplifters. I suppose that was simply part of the store's charm.


Hamilton Public Library
The Woolworth's store on King Street, Hamilton, Ontario

Probably the most famous Woolworth store was in Greensboro, North Carolina, where an historic battle was fought in the civil rights struggle in the United States. In 1960 four first-year students at the local polytechnical college sat at the store's whites-only lunch counter requesting service, which was denied. Soon they were joined by others and what started as a small incident turned into a massive sit-in involving some 400 students. The effort was successful in moving increasing numbers of southern cities towards full racial integration.

The Woolworth's in Wheaton closed in the early 1970s, when I was in high school. But there was one in Toronto in the late '70s on Queen Street adjacent to the Eaton Centre. And as late as 1989, my sister and I found one way up in Laurium, Michigan. I wish we had thought to go inside and see what it looked like. Would it have been a carbon-copy of the store in Wheaton a generation earlier? I'll never know.

In many respects, Woolworth was the Wall-Mart of its day, coming into towns and driving smaller, family-owned operations out of business. It is thus somewhat ironic that Wall-Mart helped to end Woolworth's long reign, contributing to its decision to close its remaining stores in 1997. Several years earlier Wall-Mart had purchased the company's Woolco stores in Canada, including the one on Upper James here in Hamilton.

Needless to say, there are no more "dime stores." Now there are dollar stores everywhere, further testimony to the effects of inflation.