Good evening everyone:

Several years ago, Carol Coletta was giving me a walking tour of downtown Memphis. As we worked our way along Main Street, I noticed a dignified, ornate brick building with the sign “Kress” prominently displayed.

I asked Carol whether the sign had been vandalized or otherwise altered to eliminate one of the “s”’s and the “ge.” She laughed and explained that S.H. Kress and Co. was not the same as S.S. Kresge Corporation, but instead an independent five-and-dime chain founded in 1896 in Memphis by Samuel Henry Kress.

I was stupefied. We didn’t have Kress stores in Minnesota, and certainly would not have allowed them in Michigan – heaven forbid. Carol replied that they were more common in the South and West, where they – like the Kresge stores found in other parts of the country – were prominent fixtures on main streets. She also explained that the Kress stores became renown in the 1930’s and 40’s for their distinctively luxurious Art Deco architecture (“Dime Store Deco,” as one observer put it).  I later tracked down a couple, and she was absolutely right:

The Kress buildings in El Paso and Lubbock

And in Anniston, AL and Durham, NC

I tucked all of this away and out-of-mind until Cynthia Kresge (not Cynthia Kress) wrote me a fascinating note yesterday.

Cynthia had also been surprised when she stumbled across an S.H. Kress building, this one in downtown Asheville, N.C.:

Every bit as confused by the existence of Kress as I was, she began to snoop. She discovered that Ashville contained only a Kress store – no Kresge. Curious as to why, Cynthia did some further digging, unearthing from an article in the Greensboro News and Record the existence of an informal non-compete between the founders of Kress and Kresge:

From 1896 until the early 1920s, Kress architecture was fairly ordinary, mostly yellow brick facades with the Kress name across the front in red and gold letters. Those colors seemed standard to five and dime stores, including the similar-sounding S.S. Kresge chain. Research uncovered a gentlemen's agreement between Sam Kress and Sebastian Kresge. To avoid confusion, they agreed not to open stores in the same town.

As the son of an architect, I desperately want to know whether that “gentleman’s non-compete agreement” extended to architectural styles as well. Probably not, I realize. But with every deference to the Kresge family – who would know better – that might be one way to explain why Kresge Five and Dimes chose not to go the Art Deco route, preferring instead a more muscular Louis-Sullivan-like architectural style:

Indianapolis and South Bend, IN:

Bay City and Pontiac, MI

And, of course, Detroit:

But – again, with all due respect to the family – no non-compete could probably ever explain the design choices attending Kmart stores. That’s another story:

Thanks Cynthia!

Rip

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