In a department store
Pogue's was one of Cincinnati's classiest stores, founded in the 1860's and closing over a century later in 1987. The downtown store was located in at least six separate buildings; three or four of these dated from the mid-late 1800's, one (the largest) from 1916, and two from 1930 (one that is part of the Carew Tower, the other a service building connecting the 1916 area to it).
In the Spring of 1988, a liquidation sale was held to clear out the store fixtures, and in the areas due for demolition, parts of the building such as doors, light fixture, elevators, etc. I was going to school downtown at that time, so would run over there fairly often. Sale customers could go anywhere in the complex, from the sub-basements to the top floors - the highest being the 9th.
What I most remember was how different that areas not on the public selling floor were from what the store customers saw. Since the buildings had windows, there were false walls about 4' out from the exterior walls, creating a passageway that in many cases joined the stockrooms. There were cracked windows, peeling paint, missing plaster and wires hanging down in there. There were old steam radiators in there in some areas. Some of the stockrooms had old glass schoolhouse lights that hung on chains.
I went up one stairwell, and through a door into a hallway. I opened a door leading into a room that had been an office - part of the tile ceiling had sagged down so far in one area that it was being held up by a couple desks. There were typewriters on the desks; some with paper in them. One had an unfinished letter dated 1964! Pen & pencils and other office supplies in drawers. The place just abandoned that day in 1964 for some reason - like the world had come to an end.
Another day I went up to the 9th floor of the 1930 service building, and into an area that had been the electrical maintenance dept. Just like the office mentioned above, it too had been abandoned abruptly in 1962. All sorts of electrical items on shelves, some of them much older than the 60's. I bought a lot that day, including old trade magazines, and a 1939 Westinghouse catalog. For unknown reasons, that department had been relocated to the basement.
I also visited the basement, sub-basement, and in one part the sub-sub-basement. These were storage, display workrooms, and maintenance depts. A couple areas of the basements were electrical rooms, full of large circuit breaker and fuse panels. One was so old it was fenced in due to having exposed live parts - that was in the 1916 bldg., and was still in use. In the sub-sub I found some of the boilers and chillers, along with several big pumps. An area next to this had one of the diesel emergency gen-sets (they had more than one).
In one of the 1800's bldgs. I found a very old elevator. It had a very ornate plate around the call buttons on the wall. I wanted it, but didn't have my tools that day. In the Carew Tower section, I found an elevator bank that was original to the bldg., with beautiful etched Art Deco stainless steel or Monel doors. This was back in a stock area, but had obviously been a selling floor area at one time. The elevators were no longer in use.
While in the sub-basement one day, I went through a door that led to 3 or 4 steps which went down to a wide hallway. The door locked behind me, so I had to go down this hall about 150', past several sets of steps leading to doors that had various business names on them. I came to a stairwell, went up it, and came out next to the main elevators in the Carew Tower. I found out this hallway was under the lower arcade.
I had always wondered about a set of small doors in various areas of the 1916 bldg. One had the bottom at floor level, and the top about 5' high. Next to this was a smaller door, the bottom about 3' off the floor, and the top lined up with the larger. So I pushed them open, and found that each was connected to a spiral chute. The larger had been fire escapes, and the smaller were package chutes to send things down to the shipping dept. I soon found that people were trying out the fire chutes, so I went up to the top floor and went down it, and came out on the 1st. floor near one of the entrances. Needless to say, my clothes were pretty dirty when I got down.
Among many of my purchases were some blueprints of the Carew Tower section of the store. Included in these were the original drawings for the design of the elevator doors I mentioned above. I also bought 2 chrome frame chairs, which were designed by Gilbert Rohde for the Troy Sunshade Co. I paid $20 each, and found they are worth several hundred each. I think I spent a little over $100 altogether, but got well over $1000 of various items.
