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In 1932, the Duff Building was leased to Montgomery Wards, who purchased it in 1939. [2] To contain the Montgomery Wards store, the Duff building was combined with the Grow Block and a third building to create more space. Montgomery Wards remained in the building until the early 1980s. It was rehabilitated in 1983. [2]
The original Montgomery Ward & Co. was a mail-order business and later a department store chain that operated between 1872 and 2001. The current Montgomery Ward Inc. is an online shopping and mail-order catalog retailer that started several years after the original Montgomery Ward shut down.
Montgomery Ward was confirmed as the first anchor tenant at this point. [3] The original mall opened in 1965 as Universal City with Montgomery Ward, Woolworth , and Federal's as its anchor stores. In 1980, Federal's went out of business and was replaced that same year by Crowley's .
The $1,000,000 renovation included new store facades, floors, and ceilings, plus renovated designs for Hudson's and Montgomery Ward. Foot Locker and Kinney Shoes were relocated to new storefronts, while new tenants such as Musicland , Circus World , The Limited , Casual Corner , Sibley's Shoes , Gap , and B. Dalton were added. [ 10 ]
A mezzanine level with a food court was added in 1987. The Cunningham Drug Store was demolished for a wing featuring a Mervyns in 1993, Montgomery Ward was also added. These additions brought the mall to 1,300,000 square feet (120,000 m 2) of gross leasable area, making it the largest mall in Michigan north of Detroit. [6]
Forty feet north of the Administration Building is the 2,000,000-square-foot (190,000 m 2) Mail Order House, also known as the Catalog House, that was the heart of Montgomery Ward's operations. Completed in 1908, the eight-story building was painted white and capped with a flat roof, with an interior that contained miles of chutes, conveyors ...
Montgomery Ward and Steketee's closed in 2000 and 2003, respectively. [4] Without the draw of its anchor stores, the mall lost customer traffic and many inline tenants. Several big-box tenants were opened in the late 1990s and early 2000s to fill the increasing number of vacancies, including Office Max and Marshalls .
Aaron Montgomery Ward was born on February 17, 1843 [3] in Chatham, New Jersey. [4] to a large family with a modest income. When he was about 9 years old, his father Sylvester Ward moved the family to Niles, Michigan, where Montgomery [4] attended public schools. When Montgomery was 14, he was apprenticed to a trade to help support the family.