When it comes to nostalgia on Connect-Bridgeport, few things generate as much traffic than talking about the old Hill’s Plaza and the other businesses that were associated with it.

 

Every single blog going back in time has drawn thousands of visitors to the Web site and our media platforms were a lot of really great discussion takes place. Heck, a blog on the tiny Chinese restaurant Ming Garden is still one of the most read blogs I’ve ever written.

 

For those wanting a little bit more, you can thank Bridgeport’s own resident historian Richard “Dick” Duez for this walk down memory lane this week in my blog. Recently, Duez submitted several photos for his own Time Travel blog and one of the submissions was one that certainly got my attention.

 

The photo was of the old Grants Department Store, or W.T. Grant Company, when it first moved to Bridgeport. Although we’re not sure when it was, we know it was prior to 1976 because that was the year the business went out of business, according to the sources I was able to dig up online. Perhaps that’s wrong, as I seemed to think it lasted longer, but that’s what I found over and over.

 

The other thing I was pretty sure about and my own mother confirmed was that Grants wasn’t always located in the Hill’s Plaza here in Bridgeport. It previously was located in downtown Clarksburg.

 

Mom wasn’t 100 percent certain, but believes it was located along a row of dime stores – although Grants was considered a 25-cent store. The lineup, which would have been closest to the current Clarksburg City Hall on Third and Main Street heading toward Fourth Street would have been G.C. Murphy’s, McCrory’s. W.T. Grants and Woolworth.

 

That was in the heyday of downtown Clarksburg – and all downtowns for that matter – playing host to retail giants both large and small. Clarksburg used to be home to Montgomery Ward, JC Penney, Stone and Thomas (Parson Souders before that) and I’m sure plenty of others.

 

I only vaguely remember Grants in the downtown (or at least I think I do), where I spent a ton of time as a child because my father worked at Parsons and later Stone and Thomas (which eventually became Elder Beerman at the mall). My mother said it was like the dime stores, but with a much wider selection. Like me, she remembered it moving to Bridgeport.

 

Mom wasn’t sure when it moved. If it did move while I was a kid, it’s time in Bridgeport would have been short. If it closed shop in 1976 and since I was born in 1968, the time window for that to take place appears limited – again if my memory serves me correctly and that’s not a definitive considering the age or even completely relevant to the blog. I digress.

 

I did manage to find an old article from The New York Times. It was a story from early January 1975 and it talked about the financial trouble Grant’s was facing at the time.

 

Grants was facing an expected net loss for the fiscal year ending on Jan. 31 of 1975 of $175 million. The result? The were closing 126 stores and cutting 12,600 employees by April 1 of the same year.

 

Let’s be clear about one thing. When this happened, it happened to a retail giant. At the time in 1975 it was the nation’s 16^th-largest retail outlet. Sales, according to The Times, were $1.7 billion with nearly 1,200 stores nationwide.

 

If it did close in 1976, it had a pretty good run. The first store opened in 1906. Perhaps it wasn’t a coincidence that the founder – William Thomas “W.T.” Grant – passed away in 1972 at the age of 96.

 

Regardless, the store provided jobs and goods for the communities it served. Nearly 115 years after it opened and nearly 45 years after it closes, it’s still providing memories.

 

Editor's Note: The top photo, courtesy of Richard "Dick" Duez, shows the W.T. Grant Company during its time in Bridgeport. The bottom photo is of one of hundreds of storefronts from the now closed retail giant from the W.T. Grant Foundation Web site.