Famous Department Store


The Famous Department Store was a department store in Los Angeles.
Famous had its origins with the Cal Hirsch & Sons Mercantile Co., founded in 1860 or 1871 depending on the source, which ran Army and Navy surplus stores in St. Louis.
After opening stores in Los Angeles starting in 1913 and later moved its headquarters there.
In 1939, it took over the vacated Blackstone's Department Store building at 901 S. Broadway and renovated and expanded it to of selling space, shifting the existing 530 S. Main St. store to use mostly as a warehouse. The new Broadway store sold men's, women's and children's clothing, furnishings and accessories; shoes, drapes, furniture, drapes, household utensils and accessories and an entire floor was devoted to toys. It also has a beauty shop and lunch counter.
Morgan, Walls & Clements designed an art deco building for Famous on Pine Street in downtown Long Beach, which opened in 1929.
In 1950 the stores were sold to the J. J. Sugarman Co., a Los Angeles business investment firm, a value estimated at $3.5 million, reported by the Los Angeles Times as "one of the larges mercantile sales of its kind in recent years in California". The chain at that time consisted of eight stores: Advertising for the Famous Department Store ceases in 1952.

Stores