Rhodes Brothers

Rhodes Brothers was a department store located in Tacoma, Washington, established in 1892 as a coffee shop in downtown Tacoma by Albert, William, Henry and Charles Rhodes. The store greatly expanded through the years, including having a tea room, a branch library and a separate budget store. At one time there were signs on highways in Washington that said, "All roads lead to Rhodes," giving the number of miles to the Rhodes store in Tacoma.^[1]

There was also a Rhodes Brothers store at the Villa Plaza Shopping Center in Lakewood, Washington, that opened in 1957.^[2] At some point, Rhodes was acquired by Western Department Stores Inc., which also owned Kahn's of Oakland, CA, and Olds & King of Portland, OR.

In 1960 the name of the company was changed to Rhodes Western and all the stores became Rhodes. In 1969 Rhodes Western was acquired by Amfac which owned the Liberty House chain of department stores and took on that name. Liberty House opened a location in Tacoma Mall in 1973 where Rhodes Western had been considering opening a location before they were bought out. The Lakewood & Tacoma Mall locations were sold to Frederick & Nelson in 1979. The downtown Tacoma Rhodes store was closed in December 1974. The downtown Tacoma location was bought by the University of Puget Sound in 1980.

Albert Rhodes left Rhodes Brothers in 1907 and moved to Seattle, where he established the Rhodes Department Store. By 1926 it anchored the corner of Second Avenue and Union Streets in the downtown retail core. The store, which by then had suburban branches, was bought by Lamonts. It closed the downtown store in 1968. (See the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods web site, Seattle.gov, and its information on the Albert J. Rhodes mansion, designed by Ambrose J. Russell and Frederick Heath (architect).)

References

External links

• PDXhistory.com: Olds Wortman & King