Hagley’s Digital Archives continues to grow with the addition of Strawbridge & Clothier’s employee magazine, Store Chat. Strawbridge & Clothier was a department store founded in 1868 by Justus C. Strawbridge and Isaac H. Clothier in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Over the decades, the enterprise grew into a regional retail giant, with branch stores in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware.
In 1906, the company begin publishing and distributing Store Chat to its employees in order to disseminate communications from management, share news about workers' lives, report on company-sponsored activities, issue instructions to employees about fashion trends and consumer preferences, and offer light commentary on matters of local and national import. As the operation grew into a major regional retail chain, the magazine added dispatches from its growing number of suburban branch stores.
The magazine was released at irregular intervals until 1909. After 1909, it maintained a more regular publication schedule, though it did not operate continuously, and ceased publication entirely in the early 1930s during the Great Depression. After it resumed publication in 1943, it ran continuously and on a monthly to bimonthly basis until 1996, when Strawbridge & Clothier's was purchased by May Department Stores Company.
The library's 475 issues of Store Chat make up an incomplete collection of the publication, but do cover the a broad swath of its run, including both the first and last issue. We expect that they will provide a valuable resource not only to researchers interested in the history of the American retail landscape and consumerism, but also to genealogists searching for more information about the many local residents employed by the company during its decades of operation.
Explore a selection of digitized Store Chats in our digital archives here.
For more information, email askhagley@hagley.org.
Skylar Harris is the Digitization and Metadata Coordinator at Hagley Museum and Library.