Knapp's special section: Up and down the escalator

"I sure wish it was a great department store again," Kopytek said. In the early and mid-20th century, downtowns were hubs of urban life and department stores were the hubs of the hubs, the place to be.

"Combine them with the hotels and the theaters and everything else and you really have a city," Kopytek said.

Knapp´s employees were not only encouraged to help shoppers, but were admonished in the company newsletter to say something less irritating than "How may I help you?" (Anyone who used that stock phrase had to put a penny into a plastic bucket.)

"The way they treated their employees, their customers, and the community was really worthwhile," Kopytek said. "That whole attitude is missing these days."

The rise and fall of Knapp´s is a classic American arc of optimism, expansion, over-expansion, a bad buyout and, ultimately, bust.

In 1896 J.W. Knapp, a former carpet salesman living in Albion, and two partners (H. F. Reynolds of Charlotte and F.W. Jewett of Albion) opened the Jewett and Knapp dry goods store at 123 N. Washington Ave.

Before Knapp and his partners bought the store, it was already one of the biggest in Lansing, under the name of N.F. Jenison Dry Goods, but a newspaper account said Jenison needed a "well-deserved rest."

Years later, Knapp was described in a company newsletter as an "individualist" who "relished being different and stirring up controversy."

In 1930, Flint entrepreneur, philanthropist and founding partner of General Motors Corp. Charles S. Mott bought Knapp´s as an asset for his C.S. Mott Foundation. Knapp´s became one of several gems in Mott´s portfolio of department stores, along with the L.W. Robinson Co. of Battle Creek, Smith- Bridgman’s of Flint, and the nearby D.M. Christian department store in Owosso.

In spite of the Great Depression, Knapp´s sales grew at an astonishing pace. In 1936, Knapp´s bought the lease for the site of Lansing´s Downey Hotel (previously the Lansing House), once the city´s finest hotel. By then, the Downey was going downhill, owing to series of fires and competition from the more modern Hotel Olds.

Michigan´s premier architectural team, Edwin Bowd and Orlie Munson, were hired to design and build a modern, S t r e a m l i n e Moderne-style five-story flagship store billed in advertisements as the "store of stores."

Tuesday, Dec. 7, 1937, opening day, the store glittered with Christmas merchandise and decorations, even though the fourth floor and part of the third was still under construction.

Thousands visited the store by early afternoon. A Christmas ad thanked the city for its "sincere good wishes."

Not everyone found the building exciting.

"There was a divided opinion in town at the time as to whether people liked it or not," longtime customer Helen Grimes recalled in the WKAR documentary, "Things Not Here Anymore." "People thought it was a little too modern and they thought it took away from the other old architecture in Lansing."

With the privations of the Great Depression and World War II behind them, a generation of Americans were ready to consume like mad. The 12-year-old store had an adolescent growth spurt in 1949 with a major expansion that added 48,000 square feet to the building, increasing floor space 40 percent. Knapp´s President Dorr Shotwell, who took over running the company when Knapp died in 1934, told the Lansing State Journal that business volume was 60 percent greater than planned for the existing building. Knapp´s couldn´t keep enough furniture, appliances and ready-made clothing to satisfy demand.

In 1961 Knapp´s opened a "Thrift Center" on Capitol Avenue and a "Campus Center" in East Lansing at corner of M.A.C. and Albert Ave. A Meridian Mall store opened in 1969.

The store´s arc of success peaked by 1970, when the Mott Foundation sold Knapp´s to L.S. Good Co. of Wheeling, W. Va. (est. 1888), along with Smith Bridgman in Flint, Robinson´s in Battle Creek and the D.M. Christian Co. in Owosso. The chain was too much for the small West Virginia company to manage. The rise of shopping malls, the slump in downtown commercial activity and Good´s mismanagement took a fatal toll on Knapp´s in the mid-1970s. Good filed for bankruptcy in May 1979. The downtown Knapp´s store closed without notice Oct. 11, and two other Lansing-area stores closed five days later. The downtown store had one last sad Christmas rush, when thousands of people jammed a liquidation sale, beginning Nov. 28, 1980.