Suburban communities were supported by a cluster of retail stores – drug store (pharmacy), butcher shop (with sawdust on the floor), department stores, grocery store, barber shop, beauty shop, soda shop (ice cream parlor), diners and deli – located on “Main Street” in a “down town” shopping area. Most likely these shops were owned and operated by sole proprietors- the father, who was assisted by members of the family. These downtown shops also employed young people in part time, after school jobs. As noted, mom was at home taking care of the house and raising the kids. However, the mom did not have to jump in the family car and go “downtown” in order to obtain needed supplies for the family. Rather, she could rely on the ubiquitous delivery men who drove their trucks on regular routes in the neighborhood to bring milk, bakery goods, ice, and other necessary household supplies. Another staple of the Fifties was the door-to-door salesmen, such as The Fuller Brush Man, who sold all kinds of special goods, such as encyclopedia, knives, and vacuum cleaners. (Goodwin, Wait Until Next Year, pp—-.)
Tom Johnson, a newspaper writer, described his hometown, Hammond, Indiana. Downtown Hammond was a vibrant, happy place with a wide variety of stores. Customers and store clerks engaged in friendly conversations as items were purchased. People were not in a hurry, because they were enjoying the shopping experience. There was a spirit of optimism among the people who worked and shopped downtown. Going downtown was an uplifting experience. Downtown was big enough, and downtown was small enough. It was big enough to have a fine array of stores and many things to do, but it was small enough that one could feel comfortable there. Downtown was clean, and downtown was safe. It was a place that all residents were proud of. Downtown was much more than just a place to shop: it was a place where friends met to have lunch, or to take in a movie, or to just “hang out.” Typically, there was one or two theatres downtown, probably called the Paramount and the Parthenon. Walgreen’s and Woolworth’s had lunch counters that served burgers, fries and fountain drinks for the high school kids. Downtown was a place where the teenagers cruised slowly in their cars with their windows rolled down on summer nights. The girls walking along the sidewalks would pretend to be offended when the boys in the passing cars whistled and whooped at them. “Downtown Hammond in the 1950s,” Tom Johnson (http://hhs59.com/johnson.htm)
The Phoenix, Arizona of the Fifties, before it ever dreamed about becoming one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country, merited this description: “Downtown was busy, prosperous and interesting. You could shop, get a haircut, watch movies at six or seven theaters, see your banker, lawyer, doctor or dentist, check out life in the Deuce and, from Union Station, take a streamlined passenger train to almost any city or town of size in America. The Westward Ho wasn’t merely the fanciest hotel and tallest building in town, it also added an annex for car travelers and a swimming pool. At night, neon ruled downtown.” (Phoenix 101: The Fifties, The Rogue Columnist, 12/3/13, https://www.roguecolumnist.com/rogue_columnist/2013/12/phoenix-101-the-fifties.html
“Downtown,” Petulia Clark (1964) https://youtu.be/z_m4Qb0iW-o (In 1964, British pop singer Petulia Clark released “Downtown,” a number one hit in the U.S., celebrating the excitement and magnetism of city cores, “where everything’s waiting for you.” However, by 1964, “Downtowns, unfortunately, were already heading into a multigenerational death spiral, and nowhere was this reality more apparent than retail sales, which decanted to malls and big box stores in the suburbs. In a few short decades, downtowns lost up to 90 percent of their retail market share.”) (Why Downtown Retail is Coming Back, Robert Steuteville, Public Square SEP. 10, 2019, https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2019/09/10/new-day-downtown-retail)
When you’re alone and life is making you lonely
You can always go downtown
When you’ve got worries, all the noise and the hurry
Seems to help, I know, downtownJust listen to the music of the traffic in the city
Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty
How can you lose?
The lights are much brighter there
You can forget all your troubles, forget all your caresSo go downtown
Things will be great when you’re downtown
No finer place for sure, downtown
Everything’s waiting for youDon’t hang around and let your problems surround you
There are movie shows downtown
Maybe you know some little places to go to
Where they never close downtownJust listen to the rhythm of a gentle bossa nova
You’ll be dancing with ’em too before the night is over
Happy again
The lights are much brighter there
You can forget all your troubles, forget all your caresSo go downtown
Where all the lights are bright, downtown
Waiting for you tonight, downtown
You’re gonna be alright now, downtownDowntown
DowntownAnd you may find somebody kind to help and understand you
Someone who is just like you and needs a gentle hand to
Guide them along
So maybe I’ll see you there
We can forget all our troubles, forget all our caresSo go downtown
Things will be great when you’re downtown
Don’t wait a minute more, downtown
Everything is waiting for you, downtownDowntown [(downtown)]
Downtown [(downtown)]
Downtown [(downtown)]
Downtown [(downtown)]
The first outdoor suburban shopping plaza opened in 1954 near Detroit, with the first enclosed shopping mall debuting in Minnesota two years later. By the end of 1957 Paramus, New Jersey, a postwar suburb seven miles from the George Washington Bridge, that sprouted virtually overnight in the vegetable fields of Bergen County, became the home of the largest shopping complex in the country. Within six months, R. H. Macy’s Garden State Plaza and Allied Stores Corporation’s Bergen Mall opened three quarters of a mile from each other. By 1960, each shopping center had two to three department stores as anchors (distinguishing it from many pre-war projects built around a single anchor), surrounded by fifty to seventy smaller stores. Attracting half a million patrons a week, these shopping centers dominated retail trade in the region. (Cohen) Strategically located at highway intersections or along the busiest thoroughfares, the regional shopping center attracted patrons living within half an hour’s drive, who could come by car, park in the abundant lots provided, and then proceed on foot (although there was usually some bus service as well). (Cohen)
This was the beginning of the decline of downtown commercial shopping districts. At the time, malls were seen as a shiny, new symbols of wealth. They were anchored by large department stores providing a diverse range of items to shoppers. They were the suburban, auto-oriented counterpart to walkable neighborhoods. They became cultural symbols of capitalism, teen angst, and American affluence. “It’s amazing really how fast the shift from downtown shopping districts to suburban malls happened. Though people had been moving out to the suburbs since the 1950s and earlier, high-end shopping was something that required a trip back into the city until the early 1970s. I vividly remember the shopping expeditions our family made to Newark’s department stores – Bambergers, Hahne’s and Kresge’s – as a young boy in the 1960s. Then, as abruptly as if someone had pulled a switch, shoppers were driving out to places like Paramus and Menlo Park, where the malls were, and the downtown stores were all being shuttered.” (Cohen) One result of this exodus from downtown commercial shopping districts was an accumulation of abandoned retail space with boarded up store fronts. “Blight” was the term used to describe this condition, and it would take decades to re-energize the local downtown economies through “urban renewal” campaigns.
“Pleasant Valley Sunday,” The Monkees (1967) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUzs5dlLrm0 (This song depicts the suburban malaise.)
The local rock group down the street
Is trying hard to learn their song
They serenade the weekend squire
Who just came out to mow his lawn
Another Pleasant Valley Sunday
Charcoal burning everywhere
Rows of houses that are all the same
And no one seems to careGreen, he’s so serene
He’s got a TV in every room
Another Pleasant Valley Sunday
Here in status symbol Land
Mothers complain about how hard life is
And the kids just don’t understandAnother Pleasant Valley Sunday
Charcoal burning everywhere
Another Pleasant Valley Sunday
Here in status symbol Land
Another Pleasant Valley Sunday
(A Pleasant Valley Sunday)
Another Pleasant Valley SundayAnother Pleasant Valley Sunday
(A Pleasant Valley Sunday)
Another Pleasant Valley Sunday
(A Pleasant Valley Sunday)
“Subdivisions,” Rush, (1982) https://youtu.be/Vf8jvSPA3XQ (The band examined the alienation symptomatic to modern life in “Subdivisions.” “The ominous ‘Subdivisions’ railed against the conformist suburbs that ‘have no charms to soothe the restless dreams of youth.” The song’s argument that suburbs demand punishing conformity, echoes the conflict between the doomed artistic loner and the oppressive authority of “2112” (another of Rush’s songs on the album that contained “Subdivisions”). But “Subdivisions” doesn’t have a villain or a hero. It only has real-world problems like loneliness and lack of community.)
Sprawling on the fringes of the city
In geometric order
An insulated bordero
In-between the bright lights
And the far, unlit unknownGrowing up, it all seems so one-sided
Opinions all provided
The future pre-decided
Detached and subdivided
In the mass-production zoneNowhere is the dreamer
Or the misfit so aloneSubdivisions
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out
Subdivisions
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast outAny escape might help to smooth
The unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
The restless dreams of youthDrawn like moths, we drift into the city
The timeless old attraction
Cruising for the action
Lit up like a firefly
Just to feel the living nightSome will sell their dreams for small desires
Or lose the race to rats
Get caught in ticking traps
And start to dream of somewhere
To relax their restless flightSomewhere out of a memory
Of lighted streets on quiet nightsSubdivisions
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out
Subdivisions
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast outAny escape might help to smooth
The unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
The restless dreams of youth
“Down in Suburbia,” The Turtles (1966) (The song is critical of the stifling conformity that afflicted everyone who lives in suburbia.) https://youtu.be/WHJGe_295ZU all they ever smoke is tobacco in Suburbia
Nobody ever dresses sloppy in Suburbia, ha!
Nobody ever dresses sloppy in Suburbia
Mr. Brown wears herringbone
When stepping out with Mrs. Jones
To keep the local gossip hounds from staring
And Mr. Wilson combs his hair
To carry on his big affair
With Mrs. Smith, who by the way, never dresses daringNo one stabs his neighbor’s back (Suburbia)
Or welches on his income tax (Suburbia)
Without sincere concern that he is wearing (Suburbia, Suburbia)
Proper styling (Ahh)
And nobody ever dresses sloppy in SuburbiaNobody is ever un-American in Suburbia, ha!
Nobody is ever un-American in Suburbia
Everybody has a list
Of Negroes, Jews and communists
And checks it off before their daughter marries
Ginsberg is a socialist
He can’t write poems like Edgar Guest
And Henry Miller’s not in their library (too bad)You disagree, they gonna knock you flat (Suburbia)
‘Cause Reader’s Digest tells them that (Suburbia)
Their life is a bowl of maraschino cherries (Suburbia, Suburbia)
Though bills are piling (Ahh)Nobody is ever un-American in Suburbia
And nobody every dresses sloppy in Suburbia
And all they ever smoke is tobacco in SuburbiaSuh uh uh uh uh uh
Uh uh uh uh uh
Bur-bee-ah