J.L. Hudson's Canadian Cheese Soup

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kevin313

kevin313

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If you grew up in Detroit or ever visited, the name J.L.Hudson's was as much a part of this city as the auto industry. The enormous department store (26 stories, 2.2 million square feet) took up an entire city block in the heart of downtown.

We were reminiscing about how great that store was, and in particular, the restaurant that was on the 13th floor. We thought it would be fun to recreate a couple of their most popular menu items, so we started with the Canadian Cheese Soup. The recipe came from someone who used to work there. It's a delicious soup on its own, but for those with memories of Hudson's, it really takes you back to that wonderful emporium on Woodward Avenue.

 
Pleasant Ridge had their city garage sale last Saturday; I bought some paper ephemera including a Better Homes and Gardens from November 1965...it was the Detroit edition with a couple of local ads including a full page from Hudson's (Detroit's World Famous Department Store) for Drexel furniture and a second full page from Hudson's Budget Store featuring Aztec carpeting by Callaway (Cumuloft continuous filament nylon).

Hudson's used the Hudson's Budget Store concept including both mall and strip-center stores (rather than the entirely separate discount store subsidiaries more commonly used by May Department Stores/LS Ayres/Daytons/Strawbridge and Clothier/...). Hudson's is remembered here in Detroit with a huge amount of fondness...only other place with as much affection for the local department store in my experience is Chicago with Marshall Fields.

Their original branch store (Northland) was built in 1954 in what was then, cornfields between 8 and 9 mile and the Lodge Freeway. It was a gigantic store (400,000 square feet) when the thought was that the branch store had to be scaled similarly to the downtown store and as comprehensive (this pretty quickly fell away into the 60s, when branch stores shrank to about 250,000 square feet...stores in the 70s and 80s were smaller than this...they built several other big stores before moving to a smaller footprint. Anyway, the Northland store (now Macy's) just closed after 60 years (victim to gentrification and population fleeing the central city and inner-ring suburbs). We had a nostalgic trip back there a couple months ago looking at some of the fixtures etc....I found a employee list from Hudson's credit card department in 1983 which was rather humorous...I'd worked in a department store credit operation early in my career in 1989 so was nostalgic.
 
YOU FOUND THE SOUP RECIPE!!

I grew up in the Detroit suburbs as well. I remember the trips downtown then to Northland, which was closer to where we lived. I can still taste that soup, even 40 plus years later. It was always a treat to have their soup, thank you so much for posting the recipe!
I have fond memories of Hudsons, also their Rainbow store (bargain basement). I think we still have some of their muslin sheet around the house, wear like iron. I also remember our first dishwasher came from there. BOL Mobile Maid from the mid seventies. We also had a Hudsons branded bottom freezer fridge from 1963 that lasted until 1978. Never knew who made it, but it was very cool looking. Coppertone with rounded stainless handle that came to a quite pointy point.
Ahh the memories, thanks again for posting!
 
Oh that looks good. Especially with some nice crusty bread to dip into it. I can't remember ever eating in the restaurant. 

 

I remember the store quite well as a kid in the early 60's. We'd go perhaps twice a year downtown. Hit they toy dept with my older sisters, mom would be off looking at dresses and stuff, dad would disappear somewhere but I'd spend most of my time riding the escalators and elevators. I loved that in old department stores. We were  to meet up in an hour at the escalators on the main floor and it always always turned into everyone being there except for my mother who we figure had a knack for hiding in the racks when we came looking for her. They never worried letting me go off on my own back then. 
 
Kevin, you are very fortunate to have grown up in a major city like Detroit and all it had and continues to have to offer. Having worked for department stores for many years I always had an interest in them. I have several books on Hudson's and their incredible store on Woodward Avenue. I have a good friend from Detroit who still loves to reminisce about that enormous store and what a wondrous place it was , and how sad it was to drive by once it was closed and boarded up and still worse the day it was blown up and reduced to a pile of rubble.

 

Two of the books I have mention both the Canadian Cheese Soup and the famous Maurice Salad. I believe they had a basement store cafeteria which was also known for excellent food. In 1960 they hired their first Afro-American bus girl who later went on to a better paying job, Diana Ross.

 

An interesting fact concerns Hudson's once-famous "bag test." When interviewing prospective sales floor associates of color they would have them place their hand on a paper bag. If their hand was darker than the bag they could not be hired. It's hard to believe this practice lasted into the early 1950's, proof that some things change for the better...in this case much better.

 

Once the huge store...reduced to rubble.

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Ah, Hudson's...

Having grown up half an hour east of Fort Wayne, it was very exciting when Hudson's opened their store in the new wing of Glenbrook Mall in 1980. Even though it was a smaller store, it was gorgeous and had nearly everything. True, it didn't have the food hall or furniture or major appliances, but everything they did carry was wonderful. My first pair of Jordache jeans came from the boys dept. and I still have and wear a pair of Pierre Cardin winter gloves that my mom bought me the first Christmas the store was open. IIRC, I even bought my first boom box there! Dad drove us up to Detroit to get a look at the downtown store shortly before it closed, unfortunately, most of the glamour was long gone by then, but the food hall in the Marketplace was still going strong and I just marveled at it. Years later I was in a Hudson's in Grand Rapids with a small version of the food hall, which was a bit surprising out in the 'burbs.

On the topic of Budget Stores...Lazarus had one of those in the Lima Mall (half an hour the other direction from us). It connected to the main store, but had a separate entrance, signed as the Lazarus Budget Store, at an 'L' to main mall entrance to Lazarus. But, Lazarus/Federated also had a discount chain division called Gold Circle. Lima didn't have a Gold Circle, but they were all over Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati until the late 80s or so when all the corporate takeover shenanigans set in motion the terminal effing-up of retail forever. (Not that I have strong feelings on the subject). At some point mid-80s or so, the Budget Store in Lima disappeared. I think it the regular store just expanded into the space, or maybe it got walled off and is just another mall store now. For a while in the mid/late 80s, Lazarus had their own outlet clearance centers (The Final Countdown) in the downtown Dayton and Cincinnati stores (probably Columbus and Indy, too). Then it moved out to the warehouse in Sharonville, but I'm not certain if it was just the Cincinnati Final Countdown that moved, or if they consolidated them.
 
Thanks to all and I hope some of you make the soup. I should have the Hudson's Maurice Salad video done in a week or so.

Yes, I feel fortunate to have lived in Detroit at a time when a place like Hudson's existed. While we had a number of other local department stores - some higher end - some lower end (and we considered Kresge/K-Mart a "local" store because Detroit was it's home!)none of them rivaled Hudson's. Hudson's sponsored the Thanksgiving Day Parade up Woodward Ave., they had the best Toyland and Santa sighting at Christmas time, and the greatest variety of merchandise and services.

At it's zenith following WWII, you could buy anything from a spool of thread to an entire bedroom set and Hudson's would gladly deliver it to your door. They stood behind everything they sold, and they were service-oriented. But so many things were different then, and Hudson's was a product of being the retailer to the city that essentially established the American "middle class" and where people with little education could afford to own a home, a car (of course, it is Detroit) and send their kids to college. If you worked enough overtime, you may have even built a cottage "up north" like so many Detroiters did during those years. But many people had disposable income for the first time and they spent it at Hudson's!

It's hard to believe that the downtown store closed over 30 years ago, but I have so many wonderful memories of that store that I hope I will always carry with me. One of my fondest is the time that I was there with my mom and sister, who was a year younger than me. I was four, maybe five years old. Sister had to go to the bathroom, and rather than taking me into the ladies room, my mom handed me off to another shopper she saw nearby! "Would mind watching my boy for a minute while I take her into the bathroom?" "Sure thing - happy to watch him," was the stranger's reply. I still remember my hand being held by this woman, as she asked me my name, how old I was, and if I liked shopping. The next thing I knew, my mom and sister had retuned, mom thanked the lady and we went on with our shopping. An important detail is that this would have been the late 1960's, and the woman my mom handed me off to was African-American. Not that it mattered to me, but from that time I knew that there were two kinds of people in the world - good and bad. Nothing else mattered. When I recalled this story with my mom decades later, she didn't have much recollection about it, only to say that the stranger must have seemed like a good person to her, and that she had been asked to watch other people's children in the same way before, because people just helped each other out. Again, we were in a different time, but I 'm so glad I was there.

Funny how a bowl of cheese soup can bring back memories like this...
 
I was only in a Hudson's a couple of times, and it was in the store in a mall somewhere not too far from Dearborn - think it might have been called Westland.
I'm sorry I never got to visit the downtown location; how many selling floors did it have?

Brian, when the Cincinnati Lazarus was still Shillito's, they had the Budget Basement in the downtown location. I worked there as a "floater" back around '79-'80, and sometimes ended up in the basement (which is not the lowest floor in most of the buildings). From time to time they would have special sales at the Winton Rd. Warehouse; usually furniture & appliances.

I still have a lot of old ads from Gold Circle, Shillito's and other stores from the late 70's to mid 80's. I had the hots big time for one of the models, which by the way I saw in person while working at the store.
 
Department store budget departments were essentially done by about 1990. I worked at LS Ayres in Cincinnati (Tri-County--store 33) in 1986-7 while I was in grad school and there was a budget section there...I worked upstairs in Domestics...we also could cover Lamps and Draperies (although they had pretty good coverage from Libby and Laverne (?) ). Stix Baer and Fuller in St. Louis--was called the Parkway Shops...

Hudson's in Detroit was somewhat special because it remained independent until merging with Dayton's in Minneapolis in the late 60s. Most of the other big downtown stores had merged into ownership groups by then (May Department Stores/Allied Stores/Federated Department Stores/Carter Hawley Hale/Associated Dry Goods). Dayton's had done the hard work of setting up Target (similarly, May set up Venture, Federated set up Gold Circle) as upscale discount stores. I interviewed at Gold Circle in 1987 (corporate training program); didn't get the job, but just as well (they were gone by 1990-1991 or so).
 
L.S. Ayre's Chicken Velvet Soup

I know that we had a thread several years ago with department store tearoom/cafe/restaurant recipes. I cannot remember if I posted this, however when Jamiel mentioned L.S.Ayres I could not resist. This soup is truly "velvet":

Chicken Velvet Soup

3/4 cup butter
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup warm milk
1 pint hot chicken stock
1 cup warm cream
1 quart chicken stock
1-1/2 cups chopped, cooked chicken
1/4 tablespoon salt
Dash pepper

Over medium heat, combine butter and flour, whisking constantly. Add warm milk, pint of hot stock and warm cream. Cook over low heat, stirring with whisk. When smooth and well combined, add remaining ingredients. Yields 2 quarts.
 
You're right, Mike--Ayres' soup was delicious...only think better (IMHO) was the chicken pot pie! The Tea Room at LS Ayres in Glenbrook (Fort Wayne) was the first place I had a Monte Cristo sandwich. Those are starting to reappear on menus around here, but they are not the same. Ayres battered and fried the entire sandwich. Everyone here just makes a cold (or tepid) ham sandwich on two pieces of uninspired French toast. meh.

I can't remember the store number, but it might have been 003. Pretty sure DT Indy was 001 and Glendale was 002. I spent a year there in 87-88 in the bath shop and lamps-and-drapes. Still have the Ralph Lauren towels I bought with my discount! I don't remember a budget store at Glenbrook, at least not by the 80s. Although they still sold major appliances, books and such into the early 80s. That store also had a very high-end section in the men's department with brands like Aquascutum and Alexander Julian--not "Colours by Alexander Julian". By the time I worked there that section was gone. Probably just as well--I got into enough trouble with my employee discount as it was.
 
Monte Cristo sandwiches

Brian,

I have not heard of those in years...there is a place in Atlanta and they do a variation of a Monte Cristo (Note for the Atlanta guys, this is at Einstein's). Anyway, all of the department stores had signature dishes that were really good. Maybe not the "healthiest" but they were perfection taste wise. Man I love a Monte Cristo.... I also like Chicken Pot Pie. Never had that at Hudson's. I did have it at Marshall Field in Chicago...their recipe I have somewhere...will post when I find it.
 
That's right...DT Indianapolis was store 001, Glendale was 002...believe the Cincinnati (fka Pogue's) stores were 030 downtown, 031 ?, 032 Kenwood, 033 Tri-County, 034 Northgate, 035 Florence Mall (KY). There were 3 classes of stores (volume-based)...Downtown Indy, Downtown Cincinnati, Glendale, Kenwood, Oxmoor (Louisville) and the bigger Fort Wayne store (these stores got the designer goods), we were a class 2 store (not quite the volume; not quite the designer stuff) and the smaller city stores (Lafayette, Kokomo, the small Fort Wayne store) were class 3 stores. Our store was comprehensive (had furniture, restaurant, a leased electronics department, gourmet) but wasn't quite as high-end as the others.

Pogue's was quite a high-end store in Cincinnati (Shillito's (Federated) was slightly lower end, and McAlpin's (Mercantile Stores) was quite promotional. Associated Dry Goods merged Pogue's into LS Ayres in about 1983. Interestingly, Pogue's was the lead store for gourmet for ADG--they had a really great buying team for kitchenware/gourmet/wine which actually stayed in Cincinnati after all other buying had been consolidated in Indianapolis.

They had an interesting concept in the downtown Cincinnati store called "Fifth Street Market" which had all the kitchen stuff, gourmet and wine and a cooking school on the street level of half the downtown store. Our store had a demo kitchen (rarely used)...
 
I made this soup last night and it is awesome! I've tried other cheese soup recipes but until now none have been very good. I made some artisan bread last week so I brushed a few slices with olive oil, toasted them under the broiler, and used them to dip into the soup - Yum! Thanks again for posting this Kevin.
 
I do remember the Fifth Street Market (which was actually at the 4th and Race corner of the store). My first Henkel knife came from there. The old Pogue's locations (especially downtown) stayed higher end than Shillito's/Shillito's-Rike's/Lazarus and for sure McAlpin's for a few years-probably while still ADG. Once May Co came in things got cookie-cuttered and cheapened, and it wasn't long after that downtown Cincinnati closed, Florence got sold off to Snyder's(which itself became Hess's a few months later) and the Ohio suburban stores got sold to Penney's. that's around the time I was back in Ft Wayne, working at Ayres. With all the downgrades that were being forced on us by St Louis, some of us started referring to the store as L Sears.

I just thought of the Pogue's/Ayres garage...every floor was a different flavor-color. Grape (purple), peppermint (pink stripes), lemon (yellow), etc. the roof level wasn't flavored-it was "Sky Blue".
 

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