Woodward & Lothrop
| Industry | Retail |
|---|---|
| Fate | Bankruptcy; merged to Hecht's |
| Founded | 1887 |
| Defunct | November 1995 |
| Headquarters | Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Products | General Merchandise |
Woodward & Lothrop was a department store chain headquartered in Washington, D.C. Woodward & Lothrop was Washington, D.C.'s first department store, opening in 1887. Woodies, as it was often nicknamed, maintained stores in the Mid-Atlantic United States. Its flagship store was a fixture of the shopping district in downtown Washington, with Garfinckel's, and in the late 1990s the center of controversy over competing visions for DC's urban renewal.
Samuel Walter Woodward (1848-August 2, 1917) and Alvin Mason Lothrop (1847–1912) opened a dry goods store in Chelsea, Massachusetts, in 1873, and maintained several stores in the Boston area. In partnership with Charles E. Cochrane, on February 8, 1880 they moved to Washington. For many years, their department store would sponsor a "Founders Day Sale" in early February to commemorate the move.
Woodward, Lothrop & Cochrane opened at 705 Market Space at the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and 7th Street Northwest (now the United States Navy Memorial). The first store was so successful that within a year, they moved to a larger location at 921 Pennsylvania Avenue. After flooding in 1886, they moved again to the corner of 11th and F Streets NW. Woodward and Lothrop purchased Cochrane's share of the partnership, and the new store was renamed Woodward & Lothrop.
Woodies expanded into suburban shopping malls after World War II, but the owning families resisted expansion by amalgamation, and the chain grew slowly. It became a target of takeover attempts in the 1980s, resisting a leveraged buyout by Ronald Baron in February 1984 but accepting a $277 million bid later that year from Detroit shopping center mogul A. Alfred Taubman.
...
Wikipedia