By Jane Feehan
Frank Stranahan’s New River trading post, opened in Fort
Lauderdale in 1895, served as antecedent to the Pioneer Department Store. Reporters established this lineage through Pioneer’s
purchase of stock (or goods) of Oliver Brothers Company, a store started by Stranahan.
Pioneer, “not merely a name but a description” was organized in 1922 or 1923 with $50,000 in capital (some reports indicate $100,000). It first operated on Brickell Avenue not far from the original trading post.
In 1925, another pioneer, Tom W. Bryan, sold a corner lot at
Las Olas Boulevard and Osceola Avenue (later 1st Avenue) to Pioneer
for a reported $70,000. In August that year, Pioneer announced plans for a
three-story structure on the lot with a construction price tag estimated to run
nearly $112,000 (later claimed to cost $150,000). The architect listed was A. Ten Eyck of Atlanta and Miami; the builder was
the Florida Building Company. Executives mentioned were Dr. J.A. Stanford,
president; J.S. Hinton, vice president, and Lamar Thistlewaite, secretary/treasurer
and store manager.
It was reported that thousands showed up for the opening May
13, 1926 “at the magnificent three-story, modern building.” Reporters and store
executives claimed “a new epoch begins in the commercial history of Fort Lauderdale…”
The new and expanded Pioneer Department Store featured two Otis elevators, glass counter tops, mahogany fittings, five large display windows and a “Lampson Cash Tube to reach all floors.”
About 50 employees
served customers who shopped a variety of sections including men’s and boy’s
wear, women’s dresses and underwear, a beauty salon (the Permanent Wave Shop),
luggage, kitchenware and more.
Indeed, a new paradigm in shopping began in Fort Lauderdale—a
mere 30 years after trading post days. Boom times in land sales and population
growth of the 1920s drove innovation and demand right through the Great Hurricane
of September 1926, months after the department store opened.
“Pioneer Department Store still stands,” their newspaper advertisements claimed
less than two weeks after the storm. It was “a monument to faith built on
public confidence.” By November 1926 the store was ready for Christmas sales of
toys and gifts.
Pioneer weathered the hurricane but not the ensuing decline in
the economy.
The store closed in 1939. By this decade there were new owners, Field and Company, with evolving plans.
There was also new competition. Sears opened blocks away on Andrews Avenue in 1937.
The Great Depression yet
lingered. Pioneer’s claim of being “exclusive but not expensive” was not enough
to keep the sales engines running.
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan
Sources:
Fort Lauderdale Evening Sentinel, April 17, 1925
Fort Lauderdale Evening Sentinel, May 7, 1925
Fort Lauderdale News, Nov. 8, 1925
Fort Lauderdale Daily News, Aug. 6, 1925
Fort Lauderdale News, Feb. 4,
1926
Fort Lauderdale News, Feb. 22, 1926
Fort Lauderdale News, May 12, 1926
Fort Lauderdale News, May 13, 1926
Fort Lauderdale Daily News, Sept. 26, 1926
Fort Lauderdale News, Nov. 24, 1926
Fort Lauderdale News, Sept. 25, 1939
Fort Lauderdale News, Sept. 26, 1939
Fort Lauderdale News, July 15, 1939
Tags: Fort Lauderdale retail history, Pioneer Department Store, Fort Lauderdale in the 1920s, Fort Lauderdale in the 1930s, Frank Stranahan