goodbye Thalhimers

From HamptonRoads.com

Old-time Virginians and retail historians might want to dab an eye or lift a glass.

The wrecking ball kept a rendezvous October 23 with one of Richmond’s venerable old ladies, the Thalhimers department store building on Broad Street in Richmond.

Empty for more than a decade, the once fashionable storefront now fades into memory, making way for what city fathers hope will be a grand, regional performing arts center.

For Virginians of a certain age, however, the spot will forever be the place where they trekked on Saturdays to purchase special-occasion outfits, gawk at scrumptious six-layer chocolate cakes and, at holiday time, whisper their heart’s desire into the ear of the Snow Bear.

For many years between its 1842 founding and its early-1990s demise, the store distinguished between white and black customers. Black children growing up as late as the early 1960s were not allowed to try on clothes or sit down at department store eateries.

Civil-rights archives include photographs of blacks demonstrating for equal service outside Thalhimers and its next-door, sister establishment, Miller & Rhoads. With time, segregation faded, and Richmonders of all hues mourned when the store transferred to The May Department Stores Company in 1990, ending the local management that existed while Thalhimers was owned by Carter Hawley Hale Stores from 1978 until 1990.

It was only a matter of time until the doors shut for good. May folded 17 of Thalhimers 26 stores into its Hecht's division by February 1992 and closed the rest, including the downtown flagship.

Dormant for far too long, the property now joins in a renaissance expected to stretch from Capitol Square to the lavish new Greater Richmond Convention Center. The Miller & Rhoads building is slated to provide the shell for a high-end hotel. A new federal building will soon be going up in the block just east of the old Thalhimers building.

And when, not “if,” organizers say, funds are available for the performing arts center, a new structure will rise from the Thalhimers ashes.

A city wedded to its past will enter a new era.

But so long as memory serves, Thalhimers will remain etched on the hearts of old time Virginia shoppers everywhere.