Sears Building on Lamar - Dallas, TX

Sears Building

Address: 1409 Lamar Street
Architect: Lang & Witchell
Year Built: 1914

Southside on Lamar

The full name of this building was the Sears Roebuck & Co. Catalogue Merchandise Center, built to serve as a warehouse and distribution center. This was the first Sears warehouse outside Chicago, the company's headquarters. Additions to the building in 1915 and 1916, also designed by Lang & Witchell, brought the size of the warehouse to 1.5 million square feet on 18 acres.

The City of Dallas considered purchasing the buildings in the 1980s. In 1993, Sears closed its regional office, due to consolidation, and vacated the complex. Matthews Southwest Corp. bought the buildings and redeveloped the complex as "Southside on Lamar." The building now houses retail and 457 loft apartments. In 2002, it won a Historic Rehabilitation Award from Preservation Texas.

In 1906, Sears opened an office in Dallas, Texas, which six years later blossomed into a mail-order plant. This plant offered the Southwest such advantages as lower freight rates, faster delivery and reduced damage to merchandise.

Richard Sears wrote:

"If with this trial we can get any success, the next place will get the kind of preparation that will insure success, and encourage us to cover the United States rapidly with 10 or more branches..."

Garland Satellite Sears, Garland, TX

The Garland Sears Satellite store was located in the Ridgewood Shopping Center at First St., and Kingsley in southeast Garland. The Garland store opened in 1963. Garland carried what was known as big tickets. This includes hardware, paint, housewares, sporting goods, electrical appliances, plumbing, toys, garden tools and automotive supplies. Garland was a satellite of the Dallas Ross Ave and in 1969 did more business than any other satellite in the Dallas-Ft. Worth Retail Group.

Lou Dunigan, the Garland Store Manager, opened the Garland satellite. Dunigan started with Sears in 1951. He served as the Electronic's Manager at Ross Ave prior to his tenure at Garland.

Duncanville Satellite Sears - Duncanville, TX

The Sears satellite store at Duncanville opened on May 15th, 1969. Opening ceremonies were at 9:30 that Thursday morning were conducted by Joe Summers, mayor pro-tem of Duncanville. Charles Willmann, Manager of Sears Oak Cliff, Ed Purcell, Chairman of the Merchants' Committee at Duncanville, and Jimmy Paul, Manager of the new store.

Duncanville was the third satellite to open in 1969, the sixth opened since April of 1968.
Located at 403 East Camp Wisdom Road in the Fair Meadows Village Shopping Center, the new satellite carried full lines of washers, dryers, freezers, refrigerators, ranges, televisions, stereo's, dishwashers, hardware, paint and water heaters. It also had utility divisions for insecticides and electrical needs. It had a complete catalog ordering and pick-up service.

Jimmy Paul, the Duncanville manager, was a Texan. He started with Sears in Mail Order where a sister and two brothers were already working in 1950. He became a manager trainee and then transferred to Retail as Catalog Sales Manager at Arlington and Oak Cliff from 1965 until 1969 when Duncanville opened. Paul was married and had two children. The family lived in Grand Prairie. Experienced personal were transferred from Westcliff and other units as well as Oak Cliff.

Richardson Satellite Sears, Richardson, TX

The Richardson satellite store was for a time the northernmost Sears in the Dallas group. It shared its market with its parent store, Valley View, and the Plano store. The Richardson satellite opened in 1962.

Pantego Sears, Pantego, TX

Opening on April 18, 1968, Pantego, along with White Rock North, was the vanguard of Sears new thrust into the suburbs. Trim, streamlined, geared for space-age efficiency, Pantego served the mobile population in a high-quality residential area between Ft. Worth and Arlington.

Ross Ave Sears - Dallas, TX

Ross Ave. Led Dallas' Big Growth to the North, East

Before the end of World War II, Sears was eyeing the East Point and Morningside additions along both sides of Greenville Ave. in Dallas. Sears had in mind establishing in this well-populated area a big store that would serve Dallas as it spread east and north.

Sears had come into Dallas in 1906 with one of the first Order Taking Branch offices outside Chicago. By 1912 it had grown into the Dallas Mail Order Plant serving the whole Southwest.

In 1925 the Lamar St. store opened. As time passed, Sears reached into Dallas with small stores on Greenville Ave., Oak Lawn Ave., and Jefferson Blvd., but the big store on Lamar St. was the only complete department store when post-World War II planning began.

The triangle at Henderson, Ross and Greenville was in 31 tracts. Except for one or two vacant lots, it was built up with homes, apartments houses, a clinic, a grocery, a barber shop and a tailoring establishment. The abstract on one lot shows that it was sold in 1890. The neighborhood had some of the finest homes in Dallas pre-dating the Munger Place addition.

Three Realtors were charged with securing options on the land for Sears. "I gave them a corner of the triangle." said Y. A. Langdon, at that time in Sears Zone Property department, "and told them that the first man who could get 10 pieces of property together on his corner... that was where we'd build the store."

When the land acquisition was complete, Sears had bought 7 1/2 acres... at that time the largest single land purchase in the history of Sears outside the Chicago plant. In contrast, the purchase made in 1966 for Fort Worth's NorthStar came to 420 acres.

It was extremely difficult to get building materials in 1946 and Sears bought Indiana limestone for the new store because it was available. The first rain turned the building a blotchy grey, to the great disappointment of its builders. But as time passed the stone weathered to a uniform color and recovered its attractive appearance.

It opened on September 4, 1947, with approximately 185,000 sq. ft. of space. "It was one of the hottest days of the year," recalled R. L. Tayloe, retired, former Sears Southwestern Territory vice-president said in 1969. Tayloe a former manager of the Lamar St. store, became the first manager of the new Dallas Group created when Ross Ave. opened.

"General Robert E. Wood came down from Chicago for the opening and the air was so turbulent his plane bounced 40 feet in the air when it touched the runway, "Tayloe continued.
"General Wood had a young man with him, his assistant on foreign operations. His name was Charlie Meyer and the trip to Dallas was one of his first, " Tayloe went on. Charles Meyer later served in Dallas as Sears vice-president for Southwester Territory, transferred to the same position for Eastern Territory in Philadelphia in 1966 and was later an adviser in Washington on Latin-American affairs.

Ross Ave. had the first modern escalators in a Dallas department store. Some years before a downtown store had experimented with wooden escalators but had removed them. The first month after Ross Ave. opened, people came to the new Sears and spent all day riding up and down.

Parking needs forced the acquisition of a big area across Ross between Henderson and Greenville, in 1950. In 1962, the store was remodeled and its floor space increased by almost 10,000 ft., increasing the total to 250,000 sq. ft.