The Seattle based Bon Marche expanded into Tacoma around 1950 by purchasing Fisher's Department Store. This store was located on the southwest corner of South 11th Street and Broadway. The Bon Marche closed the downtown store when the Tacoma Mall store opened in 1964.
Before 1964, there were five department stores in Downtown Tacoma. In addition to The Bon, Rhodes had a store on the NW corner of 11th and Broadway, Sears was on the NW corner of 13th and Broadway, Peoples was on the SE corner of 11th and Pacific, and Penneys was somewhere on Broadway. Penneys left downtown for the mall in 1965. The Tacoma Rhodes store was part of Rhodes Western, not Rhodes of Seattle, later Lamont's. Rhodes, purchased by Liberty House in the early 1970s, closed after the Tacoma Mall Liberty House store opened in 1973. Sears moved to the mall in 1981. Peoples was purchased by Mervyn's in 1983 and the downtown store closed at the end of that year.
This photograph was taken in November 2004 facing southwest.
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