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Monnig's Department Store


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#51 bailey

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Posted 19 September 2008 - 10:08 PM

QUOTE (Dismuke @ Sep 19 2008, 09:20 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
QUOTE (Akuhead @ Sep 19 2008, 07:29 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
This has been a very informative thread. I have an old postcard from 1958 of the Fair Ridglea. I couldn't quite place where it must have been but now I realize it was where the Frost Bank is on Camp Bowie Blvd. at Westridge. The postcard is looking east from Ridglea Presbyterian Church across Westridge at The Fair. It actually looks very much like that today down to the postbox at the left.




Thanks for posting that!

Note the part about the store maintaining "evening shopping hours twice weekly for the convenience of shoppers." I'll bet that those "evening shopping hours" were no later than 9:00 PM and might well have been earlier. Longer store hours is definitely something that has been an improvement over the years. Seven-Eleven got its name from the fact that its stores stayed open "late" - 11:00 PM, which really isn't late at all anymore for a lot of people. Banking was the same way too - there were no branch banks, no ATMs and the main banks closed at something like 3:00 PM. I am not old enough to remember stores all closing at 5:00 PM and such. But I am old enough to remember the insane "blue laws" which existed when I was a kid which forbid the purchase of a long list of commonplace items on a back-to-back Saturday/Sunday. The effect was that virtually all stores were closed on Sunday. The only aspect of them that remains is for auto dealers - which is why some are open Saturday but not Sunday and vice versa.


The banks actually closed at 2:00 on Monday thru Thursday and 4:00 on Friday. Of course, all were closed on Saturdays. The department stores downtown stayed open until 9:00 on Thursday and Friday but closed at 5:30 on Saturday and all other days. They too were closed on Sunday. I worked at Penney's at Seminary South until 1975 and the blue law was repealed sometime after that. While I was there, the center was closed on Sunday except for the grocery store, cafeteria, and drug store.


#52 Giraffe

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Posted 19 September 2008 - 11:22 PM

QUOTE (bailey @ Sep 19 2008, 06:29 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
QUOTE (austlar @ Sep 19 2008, 04:21 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Anybody remember charge-a-plates? They worked at most of the department stores sort of like a credit card. I think they were supposed to be paid in full at the end of the month, and possibly each participating store did their own billing. I was too young to be paying bills back then, but I sure did like going into a store with my mom's charge a plate and buying stuff!


Those were the first charge cards and each store had their own. They were made of metal and carried in a little red plastic pouch. They would be placed on a roller machine with a handle that when compressed by force would roll over the charge a plate and the account number would be inked onto the receipt. After running the receipt through the cash register, you would sign. They would charge your account printed on the receipt for the purchase and you would get a bill at the end of the month. The plate was just a piece of metal with your account number raised on it which could be transferred to a receipt with pressure and some ink. It was actually smaller than today's plastic cards.


So THAT'S what "charge-a-plates" were! I remember seeing them referred to once in a "Peanuts" cartoon and I didn't know what they were. (Somebody had put a charge-a-plate in a church offering plate.) A product of the times, I guess.

What I remember more was an earlier form of the Fort Worth Public Library cards. They were plastic, not metal, but your name and address were embossed on them. I think they were the same size as credit cards so that they could be used with those same types of hand-operated roller machines. Each book you wanted to borrow had a stiff plastic card with the book's title, author, etc. embossed on it. When you wanted to check out, the librarian would take your library card, the book's plastic card, and slide them both into the roller machine with a little package of papers and carbons. After sliding the roller back and forth across this whole mess, a paper record was made of your checking out that particular book. (The due date showed up, too, IIRC, being changed every day with a little thumb wheel.) Then the librarian would tear out the carbon sheets (a characteristic sound you'd hear hundreds of times each day in the library), throw them into the trash under the counter, then slide the book's original plastic card and the new paper record back into the book's sleeve on the back page. And you got your card back, too. With a little practice a new librarian could quickly get into the rhythm of doing this and really rip through a whole stack of books in practically no time at all. smile.gif

I think librarians were supposed to keep track of how many books, LPs, or other items were checked out by category. They had a little mechanical pushbutton counter that they would push, with about five buttons on it, each one of which had its own mechanical numerical counter. They'd push each button several times, according to what you'd just checked out, and how many of each type.

These days the cards are not embossed; they just have a bar code read by a laser scanner, and each book/video/CD has its own bar code number, too, so those hand-roller machines are now probably rusting in a warehouse somehwere. My guess is the librarians don't miss them at all. It's much easier to just pass the book under a laser than to ram that roller machine back and forth hundreds of times a day.

The Arlington Public Library has a system that's even better. Your library card still has a bar code that's read by a laser scanner, but each book/video/CD now has its own RFID chip embedded inside it. This system is so simple to use that now even the library patrons can check stuff out all by themselves by simply placing each book on a little table and the machine reads it automatically. No librarian required.

#53 Birdland in Handley

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Posted 20 September 2008 - 12:09 AM

Thanks Giraffe, I was going to add info about the Library cards that were modeled after charge-a-plates but you
really covered it. But the idea that fewer librarians is a good thing!? One of my fave nieces is a librarian. And Fightin' Librarians are working for our anti-censorship and privacy freedoms (with the occasional horrible lapse, like the recent, urban legend about Banned in Alaska lists on the web muddling up the mix). Librarians rule!

#54 Giraffe

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Posted 20 September 2008 - 03:09 PM

QUOTE (Birdland in Handley @ Sep 20 2008, 12:09 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Thanks Giraffe, I was going to add info about the Library cards that were modeled after charge-a-plates but you
really covered it. But the idea that fewer librarians is a good thing!? One of my fave nieces is a librarian. And Fightin' Librarians are working for our anti-censorship and privacy freedoms (with the occasional horrible lapse, like the recent, urban legend about Banned in Alaska lists on the web muddling up the mix). Librarians rule!


Hey, don't get me wrong! I never said that "fewer librarians was good"! I've worked in libraries, my brother works in a library, and he married a librarian! "This IS the check-out counter, right? Well, I'm checking you out!" All I said was that the new system that the Arlington library uses lets patrons do most of the check-out process themselves. That frees up the library staff for other tasks, such as helping patrons find stuff and answering questions and whatnot.

Fort Worth will likely be cutting back the hours of most of their libraries because of the current budget crunch. Let's hope that doesn't include cutting back on their staff, too. We have wonderful libraries in the Metroplex. (Thanks to the TexShare program, if you have a library card for one city, you can use the libraries in other nearby cities too, for no charge. I live in Arlington but I can use the FW, Hurst, and Euless libraries as well.)

#55 Birdland in Handley

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Posted 21 September 2008 - 01:18 AM

SO sorry, Giraffe. The sentence "No librarians required." struck me as wrong-headed but now I know what you meant and I agree. Your pro-library cred is impeccable. Wow, I'm miles away from old local department stores topic. ;blush;

#56 Giraffe

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Posted 21 September 2008 - 10:51 AM

QUOTE (Birdland in Handley @ Sep 21 2008, 01:18 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
SO sorry, Giraffe. The sentence "No librarians required." struck me as wrong-headed but now I know what you meant and I agree. Your pro-library cred is impeccable. Wow, I'm miles away from old local department stores topic. ;blush;


No harm! In fact, go into any library these days and you'll find all of the patron computers overflowing with users, with more people waiting in line to use them. That's probably where a lot of librarian attention has to be these days.

Going back to department stores, I just barely remember when Monnig's was at the Westcliff Shopping Center. My mother dragged me over there with her once when I was a little kid because she wanted to go clothes shopping. Nothing for kids to do in there; almost as boring as Cloth World. smile.gif

Oscar Monnig not only had a chain of stores, he also collected meteorites. He amassed a huge collection of them and today we can see these rocks from space on display for free at TCU. It's a pretty big museum, too. They did it right! Do a web search under "Monnig Meteorite Gallery." (Mr. Monnig got many of his meteorites from farmers and ranchers, telling them that if they ever dug up an interesting rock that didn't seem to belong, he would buy it from them. One huge meteorite spent several decades as a doorstop in a county jail before they realized what it was.)

#57 JOCOguy

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Posted 22 September 2008 - 08:00 PM

Oscar Monnig's brother, Otto, also had a store in Waco. It used to be on Austin Ave., Downtown Waco. The brothers of R.E. Cox also ran two branches of Cox's. There was one in DT Waco, Westview Center on Valley Mills, and I think there were two Cox's in Marlin, TX and Stephenville, TX.

#58 cowtownnative

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Posted 29 October 2008 - 07:29 AM

I worked at Monnigs Department Store in the print shop and Display Dept. back in the late sixties while I was in high school through my first year of college. It was an interesting old building that, as mentioned, was made up of three different buildings. I remember hanging over the building roof to hang Xmas decorations and going into the stockrooms on the second floor to watch the Stockshow parade out the windows.
It had a tea room on the first floor, an excellent candy department. I always enjoyed the "Rummage Sales" when customers were ten deep at the doors and women customers would almost get into fights over some item in the rummage sale.
There was a bargain basement and they actually carried upscale items in the rest of the store.. Monnigs actually had suburban stores in the TCU area of Westcliff, one in River Oaks and Ridglea. My department had to go to each of these stores monthly to change out displays.
Brings back a lot of fond memories.


#59 BillyG

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Posted 02 November 2008 - 10:10 AM

QUOTE (cowtownnative @ Oct 29 2008, 07:29 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
I worked at Monnigs Department Store in the print shop and Display Dept. back in the late sixties while I was in high school through my first year of college. It was an interesting old building that, as mentioned, was made up of three different buildings. I remember hanging over the building roof to hang Xmas decorations and going into the stockrooms on the second floor to watch the Stockshow parade out the windows.
It had a tea room on the first floor, an excellent candy department. I always enjoyed the "Rummage Sales" when customers were ten deep at the doors and women customers would almost get into fights over some item in the rummage sale.
There was a bargain basement and they actually carried upscale items in the rest of the store.. Monnigs actually had suburban stores in the TCU area of Westcliff, one in River Oaks and Ridglea. My department had to go to each of these stores monthly to change out displays.
Brings back a lot of fond memories.


My grandmother worked at Monnigs as an (Ahem) "Floor Walker" My mom would take us to visit her sometimes after we got groceries at Leonards.

#60 GenE

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Posted 02 November 2008 - 06:51 PM

QUOTE
We have wonderful libraries in the Metroplex. (Thanks to the TexShare program, if you have a library card for one city, you can use the libraries in other nearby cities too, for no charge. I live in Arlington but I can use the FW, Hurst, and Euless libraries as well.)


One of the things I miss most about living in Fort Worth, was the ability to own multiple library cards even before TexShare. I remember friends teasing me about reading so much, and I would respond, "Yes, I have library cards for : Fort Worth, White Settlement, North Richland Hills, Watauga, Haltom City, Hurst, and I even had an active one left over from when I lived in Dallas.

GenE

#61 sonny 2

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Posted 03 November 2008 - 10:33 AM

Not everyone knows this, but Oscar Monning was also an artist. His frequent theme? .....astral and planetary projections, of course.

#62 Sailor

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Posted 17 November 2008 - 02:10 PM

QUOTE (Dismuke @ Jun 12 2004, 06:59 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Speaking of old department stores, does anyone know whether The Fair Department store in Fort Worth was in any way part of the same company as The Fair Department Store in Chicago? Here is a post card I found on the web showing the Chicago store. http://patsabin.com/...ois/TheFair.htm


Yes, a few people came down from Chicago when it opened. It offered an interior decorating service for the Ridglea area about the time the club opened in the 50s. It was a cool store got my first bike there.......

#63 cowtownnative

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Posted 27 March 2012 - 04:05 PM

I worked in the Monnig's downtown store during high school and first year of college back in the late sixties. We traveled to each of the Monnig's suburb store and changed mannequins and trim the stores for the season.
I remember hanging out of the third story windows to apply giant wreaths to the outside of the downtown building and climbing a forty foot ladder in the store in Ridglea to change hanging decor.
Was a fun place to work because there was so much traffic in the downtown store at the time.
I have a lot of fond memories working there. Even remember Mr. Monnig standing at the bottom of the escalator next to the candy department almost everyday to count people going upstairs.

Only bad experience was overextending and falling through a glass display case in the women's lingerie department. Unharmed but mortified.

#64 Nitixope

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Posted 03 January 2024 - 01:02 PM

There's some interesting history of the William Monnig House and business in this historical marker application denial:

 

https://www.tarrantc...OMBINED-RED.pdf

 

(Also interesting on page 82/85 is a probate filing through Tarrant County outlining an additional inheritance tax for the estate.)

 

Location: 312 W. Lueda St.






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