Titche’s Discovers the Suburbs — 1961-1968
by Paula Bosse
Titche’s has you covered… (click to see larger image)
by Paula Bosse
Edward Titche and Max Goettinger founded the Titche-Goettinger department store in Dallas in 1902, and in 1904 they moved into the new Wilson Building. In the late 1920s they built their own George Dahl-designed building at Main and St. Paul, which was greatly enlarged and expanded in 1955. The store was popular with downtown shoppers, and profits continued to rise. The next logical step was to open additional stores. It took a while (59 years), but in October, 1961 they opened three — three! — new suburban stores. How was that possible? Because Titche’s (or their then-parent company) purchased the Fort Worth department store chain The Fair of Texas, and several of its stores were re-christened as Titche’s stores (the others eventually became Monnig’s stores).
The ad above is from the 1969 Dallas city directory and shows that by 1969, there were seven Titche’s stores in the Dallas area. Titche’s bit the dust decades ago, and I have to admit that the only Titche’s store I actually remember ever being in was the one in NorthPark (and I might mostly be remembering Joske’s…). I had no idea about any of these other stores (other than the one at Main and St. Paul, which I wish I had been to!).
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The oldest store in the ad above was the one on Main at St. Paul, still standing, still looking good (but, sadly, with that fab logo gone forever).
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The second store was located in North Dallas in the Preston Forest Shopping Center, at the southeast corner of Preston Road and Forest Lane. When this opened as Titches’ first suburban store, the paint must still have been wet. It was originally built as a Fair of Texas store, with its opening scheduled for August, 1961. It was opened in October, 1961 as a Titche’s store — remodeled from the original Amos Parrish Associates of New York design (seen here, in a rendering). (The Fair version was much more interesting!)
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One week later (!), the next two stores opened on the same day: in the Wynnewood Shopping Village in Oak Cliff, and in the Lochwood Shopping Village on Garland Road in far East Dallas. These two stores had been Fair stores and had opened at the same time in August, 1960. The two drawings below look pretty much the same as the rendering of the pre-remodeled Preston Forest store (all designed by Amos Parrish Assoc.). (An interesting tidbit about the Lochwood location: when this store was built by The Fair of Texas — a department store with Fort Worth roots going back to the 1880s or 1890s — it was the first Fair store in Dallas. In honor of this hands-across-the-prairie moment of business expansion, a truckload of Fort Worth dirt was brought over and “mixed symbolically” with Dallas dirt at the 1959 Lochwood groundbreaking.)
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The Arlington store was also a former Fair store; it opened as Titche’s in July, 1963.
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The NorthPark store — which occupied a quarter of a million square feet — was one of the first five stores to open in the brand new mall, in July 1965. NorthPark Center is known for its wonderfully sleek, clean, no-nonsense modern architecture (as seen below), but an early proposed Titche’s rendering from 1962 (seen here) looks a little fussy.
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And, lastly, in this 1960s wave of expansion, a second downtown Dallas location was opened in the new One Main Place in December, 1968 in the form of “Miss Titche,” a concept-store created to appeal to “career girls” who worked downtown and enjoyed shopping during their lunch hours. It was located on the “plaza level” which sounds like it might have been part of the then-new underground tunnel system of shops. If newspaper ads are anything to go on, it looks like Miss Titche managed to hang on until at least 1975.
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Titche’s continued opening new stores into the 1970s, but in August, 1978, it was announced that Titches’ parent company, Allied Stores Corp., was changing the names of all Dallas-area Titche’s stores to “Joske’s.” The nine Titche’s stores operating until the changeover were the flagship store downtown, Preston Forest, Lochwood Village (which became The Treehouse in 1974), Wynnewood, Arlington, NorthPark, Town East, Irving, and Red Bird.
And, just like that, after 72 years, the name of one of Dallas’ oldest department stores vanished.
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Sources & Notes
Ad and details from the 1969 Polk’s Greater Dallas City Directory.
More on Titche-Goettinger can be found at the Department Store Museum, here.
Images larger when clicked.
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Copyright © 2017 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
In the photo of the Miss Titche store, One Main Place (on left) is clear, but what is the taller building at right? Was it a planned structure, never built?
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It’s a rendering — I know there was a planned “Two Main Place” and, I think, a third building, but the planned complex fizzled out fairly quickly.
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I well remember the grand opening of The Fair in Lochwood – very swanky store, great architecture inside and out. I was only six so it had to be snazzy to make an impression like that. My family lived right across Lochwood Blvd. in the Lochwood Apartments. Great place for families in the late ’50s – early ’60s.
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And a little bit of Cowtown was right across the street.
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My grandmother worked at the Titches in Wynnewood in the 1960’s and early 70’s. You couldn’t walk in their for two minutes without being asked if you needed help.
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Downtown Dallas was one of my playgrounds in the 1940s. Titche’s had a”Toyland” store on Elm straight across from the Melba Theatre. The entrance was separate from the main store but I think there was an inside entrance. It was a wonderland of outdoor swing sets, seesaws, things to ride, etc. I played on the equipment often. No one seemed to mind. Then I would head across St. Paul to Skillern’s, entering down a concrete enclosed spiral staircase for a chocolate soda at their extremely long counter.
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I shopped at the One Main Place location several times from 1977-82. By then it was a Joske’s, but as a small store, carried only young women’s clothing.
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Was it on street level or in the underground tunnels? Some descriptions in ads make it sound like it was in an open-air, recessed area below street level. Did it become “Miss Joske”?
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I remember getting to it through the tunnels from First National Bank where I worked summers during college, so it was one of the tunnel level stores, along with other restaurants and shops back then. It was Joske’s when I shopped there and it may have had some sort of name designating it for young women only. The store stock was seasonal and not a huge selection as it was a very small store…they catered to young women working downtown and had mostly dresses, suits, and dress shoes, with one casual rack, too. I loved it because the prices were better there than in the big store.
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Thanks, Teresa. That whole tunnel system still seems pretty weird to me!
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I think Brennan’s restaurant in One Main Place also had a tunnel entrance!
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I believe the One Main Place store was used as Pam Ewing’s place of employment on early seasons of Dallas. I have a dim memory of Victoria Principal and Patrick Duffy riding the escalator from “The Store” (that’s what it was called on the show) up to street level and she hops into her Mercedes convertible parked right in front (yeah, uh huh) and drives off.
Ewing Oil was supposed to be in InterFirst Two, across the street from The Store, even though you could see InterFirst Two and the rest of downtown from Bobby’s office window where the Ewing Oil interiors were being shot, at 3131 Cedar Springs.
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Thanks, Erich! I love this kind of trivia!
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Late 70’s and early 80’s worked in the Corp HR dept. Wynnewood and Lockwood was gone by then. Very aware of the Fair Acquisitions from Fort Worth, (my mother modeled clothes in their advertising dept in the 40’s)– The Fair was sorta high end similar to Striplings. Titche’s patterned themselves close in merchandising and product as the Sanger Brothers stores. Since the depression 1929 the opening of the current downtown location, Main Elm & St.Paul, Edward Titche sold out to Allied Stores of NYC very quickly and retired. Allied kept the name Titche’s until the Name Joske’s was chosen to bring all the stores in Texas under the same name in the very early 80’s. Joske’s was headquartered in San Antonio near the Alamo. Prestonwood was added in the early 80’s in Prestonwood Mall along with Richardson Square Mall. Northpark was always the flagship store for revenue, (not downtown). Arlington store, was sliding in sales with the building of Six Flags Mall (early 70’s) now demolished 2017. Titche – Goettinger stores were originally dry goods stores and moved several times in downtown Dallas in their early history. Later they became a moderate to high-end store especially in soft goods and fashion, but did not appeal to the upper price scale marketing targeted by Neiman Marcus. The downtown store had fashion shows in the auditorium on the top floor, and the restaurant, had a piano player and a indoor forest motif in the 50’s 60’s.
The downtown store, now apartments, has great historic images of the store in the 30’s and 40’s in it’s lobby They are worth visiting. 1901 Elm Street Dallas, Texas.
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Thank you, Cliff!
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I think you and I spent a few days at Titches in Northpsrk.
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I worked at Christmas time at the Downtown store in Santa Land on the top floor. I drove the train and the hand operated the Xmas express elevator to Santa Land too. I loved it so much those three years I was there. It must have been from 1973-1976. Wish I would have made at least a friend or two at that time.
Such beautiful memories!!
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Don’t have a lot to add, but my Dad worked at the Downtown Titche’s in the shoe department in the 60’s, may even have been the manager, and I vaguely remember going there, the old classic shoe department with the chairs, and the big metal shoe size measuring devices, and the salesman brought them out to try on. My Grandfather came to to town and bought a fake Sting Ray bike for me there for my birthday, don’t remember my age then though.
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Right!
I remember it very well. The Men’s Dept was right off the Main Street entrance.
And the mezzanine was right above it. I think there was a cafe sort of there too.
I bought my first pair of white shoes in the Downtown Shoe Shop. What wonderful memories of that store. She was the classic Dept Store ahead if it’s time.
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The best thing about the Titche’s (later Joske’s) at NorthPark was the huge wall to the left of the mall entrance. It was *the* spot on which the Nashers could and would display a piece from their art collection. For years, a beautiful Warhol painting occupied that space. Such a wonderful contribution to the mall-going experience.
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