Donaldson's

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. (help, get involved!)
This article has been tagged since August 2006.

Donaldson's, Minneapolis, Minnesota is a defunct department store company.

[edit] History

The Donaldson Co., Minneapolis, Minnesota, was founded in 1883 by Scottish Immigrants. It was built as "The Glass Block" in 1884 because the building extensively used glass in its design. That building even included a small dome at the intersection of Nicollet avenue and West Seventh Street, but it was dismantled for scrap metal durind the Second World War. It was renovated beyond its historical recognition after the war.

The store was acquired by Allied Stores Corp. in 1928. In 1985 it acquired its struggling rival The Powers Dry Goods Co. from Associated Dry Goods Corp., which gave it same breathing room against dominant rival Dayton's.

When the producers of The Mary Tyler Moore Show were filming Minneapolis exteriors for the opening sequence of the show in March, 1970, the famous hat-toss scene was filmed directly in front of Donaldson's. This can best be verified in the opening scenes of the shows from the first season. All other openings of the show deleted the Donaldson scene.

Years later, the flagship store left its old building for the basement of City Center when it opened in 1980. The original store complex, which occupied an entire block, burned in a fire on Thanksgiving day in 1982 due to arson. In 1987, after Campeau Corp.'s buy-out of Allied Stores Corp., Donaldson's was purchased by Carson Pirie Scott & Co. of Chicago, Illinois which renamed the stores with its own imprimatur. Carson's in its turn was acquired by P.A. Bergner & Co. of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (and formerly of Peoria, Illinois) in 1989, which in turn filed for bankruptcy in 1991.

In 1995 Carson's sold the rump of the chain to Dayton's parent Dayton Hudson Corp., which re-opened them under its moderate Mervyn's chain, mostly in a move to prevent serious competition in its Twin Cities stronghold by Kohl's. In 2004 when Dayton's successor Marshall Field's was acquired by May Department Stores, it also agreed to buy the former Donaldson locations, which Mervyn's promptly shuttered, and be responsible for disposing of the real-estate.