Groceteria.com

HINSHAWS was a department store chain.

The site in Whittier (The Quad) is still standing...it was divided up. I think upstairs is STAPLES. I believe the Arcadia site was demolished for NORDSTROM (next to Santa Anita).

Where were the other sites? Any standing? What's in them?

Ahh Hinshaws. My family had a pretty deep connection to that former retailer... My Grandfather was the on site manager for the company that owned the Quad in Whittier and the Hub in Arcadia.

Here's a link to a 1991 story:
http://www.allbusiness.com/sales/274035-1.html

Deadmalls.com does a nice quick job of describing the Quad:
http://deadmalls.com/malls/quad_mall.html

Note that the commentary refers to stores located in replacement buildings for the mall itself - it was indeed demolished.

J-Mac
-edit: it was called the Hub in Arcadia, might still be.

J-Mac wrote:Ahh Hinshaws. My family had a pretty deep connection to that former retailer... My Grandfather was the on site manager for the company that owned the Quad and the Arcade.

Here's a link to a 1991 story:
http://www.allbusiness.com/sales/274035-1.html

Deadmalls.com does a nice quick job of describing the Quad:
http://deadmalls.com/malls/quad_mall.html

Note that the commentary refers to stores located in replacement buildings for the mall itself - it was indeed demolished.

Hey thanks so much for the info! VERY INFORMATIVE!
Did I ever wake up during that quake! I remember the TV crews @ The Quad...with the collapsed parking structure. I believe NO ONE perished in the structure...as it was so early in the morning. The market had been VONS...and after reconstruction, became RALPHS, correct? Across the street from The Quad is BIG LOTS (formerly Pic-N-Save). It is housed in a former Market Basket...which had become RALPHS. After reconstruction, didn't RALPHS move into the VONS...and then Pic-N-Save into RALPHS?

The Arcadia store was on the southwest corner of Baldwin and Duarte in the Pavilions shopping center. It was where everyone in the SGV (myself included) had to buy our Boy Scout uniforms. I believe it's now a Burlington Coat Factory.

Nordstrom is where Buffums used to be at Santa Anita.

I actually wrote the Deadmalls article.

And the Hinshaws Whittier was subdivided:
Staples - first level
Burlington Coat Factory - basement and first level
Golds Gym (closed) - 2nd level.

Its a plain looking store inside now.

I remember the annual trip to Hinshaw's at the Quad to pick up boy scout and girl scout uniforms. They were the only store that carried them.

I think Burlington Coat Factory is only on the lower levels of Hinshaws-- there's a fabric store on the top level (at least last time I was in that area.)

J-Man wrote:I think Burlington Coat Factory is only on the lower levels of Hinshaws-- there's a fabric store on the top level (at least last time I was in that area.)

Nope, I went there during the holidays. BCF is two levels, including a basement and upper level. The Golds Gym closed.

Oh wait, J-man. I think you are talking about the Hinshaws Arcadia. There is a JoAnn Fabrcs there, and you know whats funny, looking at in in a Live Local shot, the front of the store (by Baldwin) looks like it could have been a supermarket at one point. You can see the tower that is still there today as well. I wonder if they built the store next to the market then took it over, or what. Its really odd.

Look:
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2& ... ne=6868883

OCRedCub wrote:I remember the annual trip to Hinshaw's at the Quad to pick up boy scout and girl scout uniforms. They were the only store that carried them.

Exactly! I did the same. When the chain closed...I shopped both of the going-out-of-business sales. Sure, I bought merchandise...yet, I also bought some of the fixtures/furniture. I still have a few display tables that I use to store stuff on/under in my garage. As I type, I am looking @ a huge tape dispenser that I use in my office. It had been used @ the register!

When you look at the satellite image of the Arcadia store, my recollection is that Hinshaws took up the lower part of the L shaped structure. The pylon is original to Hinshaw's. There's a picture in the Times archive. The store opened in 1952 with 36,000 sq ft on the ground floor and a 20,000 sq ft basement. That appears to be the barrel-roofed structure on the corner of the satellite image. 3 months after opening it was announced that the store was to be expanded by 3500 sq ft. In 1955 another 17,400 sq ft was added. In 1964 the size of the store was doubled to a total of 116,000 sq ft. The parking structure was added at that time.

I only went there to buy my Boy Scout uniforms (we couldn't afford anything else there, being on a Sears and JC Penney budget for clothes) but I remember walking through the store thinking that the layout was weird, and that can be explained by the many add-ons throughout the years.

I only went into Hinshaws once (Whittier Quad) and that was sometime after the 1987 earthquake. The first thing that came to mind was how much the store reminded me of Buffums. Were they related at all?

as far as I know, Hinshaw's only had the two stores and were family owned.