Broadway Stores,Inc
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A former The Broadway department store at the Hawthorne Plaza Shopping Center in Hawthorne, California
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Formerly called
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| Traded as | : BWY |
| Industry | Retail |
| Fate | Company was sold to Federated Department Stores |
| Successor | Macy's |
| Founded | February 24, 1896 as The Broadway in Los Angeles |
| Founder | Arthur Letts, Sr. |
| Defunct | October 12, 1995 |
| Headquarters | Los Angeles, California, US |
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Area served
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United States |
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Key people
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Edward W. Carter, Prentis C. Hale, Philip M. Hawley |
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Broadway Stores, Inc., was an American retailer based in Southern California. Known through its history as Carter Hawley Hale Stores and Broadway Hale Stores over time, it acquired other retail store chains in regions outside its California home base and became in certain retail sectors a regional and national retailer in the 1970s and 1980s. The company was able to survive takeover attempts in 1984 and 1986, and also a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in 1991 by selling off most of its assets until August 1995 when its banks refusing to advance enough additional credit to pay off suppliers. At that point, the company sold itself to Federated Department Stores for $1.6 Billion with the acquisition being completed on October 12, 1995.
In 1950, as Los Angeles began to grow in population very rapidly and assumed dominance within the state, the fast-growing The Broadway Department Stores (founded in 1896) based there negotiated an all-stock merger with Hale Bros. Stores, Inc. Edward W. Carter, president of The Broadway, became the president of Broadway-Hale Stores.
The newly enlarged company began to grow aggressively with its Broadway stores expanding south to San Diego in 1961 and east to Phoenix, Arizona, in 1968. A mail order firm named the Sunset House was also acquired in 1968. In 1970, the company acquired Emporium-Capwell Co., itself the holding company for Emporium in San Francisco (and suburbs) and Capwell's (H.C. Capwell Co.) in Oakland (and suburbs) and keeping their respective names on the stores in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Also in 1969, Broadway-Hale acquired the then 3-unit Neiman Marcus specialty department store, based in Dallas, Texas, and the Walden Book Co. (known more commonly as Waldenbooks) and began to actively grow those businesses, nationwide.
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