passages
Compliments of the Bartlesville Area History Museum and Charlotte Egerton
The Kress Building Foundation of a five-and-dime
Since the opening of the very first S.H. Kress five and dime store in 1896, founder Samuel Kress became known for selling low-price variety goods in architecturally significant stores. The Kress Company challenged the cheap stigma first associated with variety stores, elevating five-and-dimes to institutions of American achievement through their opulent design and civic appeal. The first stores were housed in preexisting structures, until 1909 when the first purposebuilt Kress five and dime was built on Frank Phillips Boulevard, here in Bartlesville, OK. The physical environment of Kress stores were responses to the era’s popularity of modern merchandising and feminine consumption. With his company’s new in-house architectural division, Kress’ stores were distinct from their competitors as their sometimes elaborate facades were visually appealing additions to Main Street America. Historian Bernice Thomas begins her book on the architecture of the S. H. Kress five-and-dime stores with an anecdote. Driving in downtown Albany, Georgia, Thomas was so captivated by the palegolden, intricately ornamented Kress building, she felt compelled to stop her car and admire it fully. The first store opened under the chain name, S. H. Kress & Co. five-and-dime, was in
Memphis, Tennessee in 1896. Memphis was then a thriving cotton port and would offer the maximum potential and minimum risk for the introduction of the Kress idea; to develop a chain of stores throughout the United States. Other five-and-dime giants, namely Woolworths and McCrory’s, also laid the foundation of their legacies around the same time. For the next decade, Kress only opened stores in former Confederate states with the exception of Oklahoma, which was a territory during the Civil War and predominately sided with the Confederacy. This allowed Kress to establish his brand in a new market, since most competitors were established in the northeast. In 1905, the company employed its first architect. Julius H. Zeitner, the first recorded architect, initially made renovations on existing buildings. Kress went on to create a formal architectural division in the 1910s. By this time, Kress was an established business and household name especially in the South. The company used their success to spend additional money on new, elaborate buildings that outshined other variety chains. Kress attempted to capture the country store feel. An ad campaign, “Meet your friends at Kress” beckoned customers to the store to experience the same social environment of a community store. As the architectural division began constructing builtto-suit stores in the twentieth century, achieving this JANUARY 2017 | b Monthly
31