The Pecan Park Eagle

Foley’s Downtown at 1110 Main in Houston opened on October 20, 1947.

The closing of Macy’s Department Store downtown is the final nail in the door of an era that got hammered shut a long time ago. The place wasn’t even Macy’s back in the day. It was Foley’s, a department store started on Main Street in 1900 by James and Pat Foley, and one that grew under corporate ownership in the 1940s to build and add the current site of the store at 1110 Main Street in 1947. It was Foley’s until 2006, when it was re-branded under new major ownership as Macy’s.

When the new Foley’s opened on October 20, 1947, Sears on South Main, smaller and away from downtown, was the only other store in Houston that offered its range of products and services.

Downtown was centrally important to Houston shoppers in the immediate post-World War II era. There were no shopping malls in 1947 and most people lived within ten miles of downtown. The first of its kind, Gulfgate Mall, would not open until 1956 – and it only got there because of the new Gulf Freeway (today’s I-45 S from downtown) that opened in 1948, the year following the start of the big Foley’s store downtown.

So, there was a premium period for downtown Houston shopping at Foley’s that ran roughly from its big store opening in 1947 to the fuller expansion of suburban freeways and malls by 1962. By 1962, Sharpstown Mall was up and running as Houston’s population was growing west and southwest and moving away from the old town center. By 1965, the Katy Freeway was up and running and Memorial City Mall and others were handling much of the western consumer shopping attraction.

By 1970, for sure, Foley’s downtown and downtown in general were hurting, but this isn’t an article on the failed effort to revitalize the area by resurrecting Market Square as an entertainment area in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Those who ventured downtown for the fun were soon enough put off by the dangers of criminal assault in the area as well as the inconvenience and risk of driving back to the suburbs under the influence.

Market Square failed. The movie theaters moved out. The musical art and dramatic theater programs improved, but there still wasn’t a significant consumer population living in the area to support downtown as a shopping area. The 21st century movement of baseball, basketball, and soccer to downtown in the form of new venues seems to have helped some, but competitive efforts in places like Sugar Land, Town and Country, and The Woodlands make it doubtful that downtown will ever again be the shopping mecca it once was.

Goodbye, Foley’s, We know you’re really the guy behind the Macy’s mask.