Montgomery Ward/Lechemere/Electric Avenue/Electric Avenue

[XISMZERO]

Originally posted by MontgomeryWardFan
[Censored] my ass:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

I admire the passion there but let's try and keep our forums and posts clean with productive and informative posts, eh?

[MontgomeryWardFan]

-----------------------------------NEW SITE------------------------------------------------
Come and Visit The Montgomery Ward Fan Club Including Store Pictures Catalog Covers and More Also I Put a link to the ames fan club(This Site Rocks!:yup:)Please Post on The Wards Message Board and Support The Site I am Also Working on getting the site listed on Google,Yahoo,AOL and Other Major Search Engines. Please Leave Your Feedback and Heres The Link- http://www.freewebs.com/montgomerywardfanclub
THANKS!!:dizzy:

[XISMZERO]

Originally posted by MontgomeryWardFan
-----------------------------------NEW SITE------------------------------------------------
Come and Visit The Montgomery Ward Fan Club Including Store Pictures Catalog Covers and More Also I Put a link to the ames fan club(This Site Rocks!:yup:)Please Post on The Wards Message Board and Support The Site I am Also Working on getting the site listed on Google,Yahoo,AOL and Other Major Search Engines. Please Leave Your Feedback and Heres The Link- http://www.freewebs.com/montgomerywardfanclub
THANKS!!:dizzy:

Congrats on the opening of the site but I suggest you write your own stuff and submit your own pictures (and/or credit those who've submitted them) - not WikiPedia's.

[Caldor1999]

found a montgomery ward commrical from 1989 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn7ixzAwqzA
seems they sell the same stuff as sears only that they have the better name and from the looks of it there stores were nicer too idk why they went out sears shoudl ahve gone out insted but oh well

[Caldor1999]

hearsa  pic of a MW taken in april 2001 shotley after they clsoed

[Caldor1999]

anoutehr pic

[Caldor1999]

insdie wards

[dmx10101]

Nice shots, that Wards looks a lot different than the ones that were by me.

[beachgal26]

Montgomery Wards was my first employer after I graduated school in 1971 and it was a great place to work and shop.  (I even still have my employee ID and discount card!)   :D

I shopped in alot of Wards stores in the MD/DC area my whole life and they were all clean and well-stocked.  However, sometime after the early 80's, they all seemed to get junkier and carried low-end K-Mart type of merchandise.  The stores always looked like the day after the Thanksgiving sale with stuff on the floors and it was impossible to find any sales help.  It was almost as if the chain already knew that they had lean years ahead.

By the time we moved to FL, there were only a few left in some of the shopping centers and those only had bargain basement stuff that no one seemed to want.  (It was really sad to see how far the company had fallen in all that time.)

:(    :(    :(

[MontgomeryWardFan]

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[MontgomeryWardFan]

click on the smaller ones for larger views

[HoJofan206]

This is a really old Montgomery Wards department store.

[Rayco7030]

Originally posted by Caldor1999
hearsa  pic of a MW taken in april 2001 shotley after they clsoed

nice sign and place it looks

looks too good for us folks dont it?

[beachgal26]

That store looks really "old school" and I would say that it had been around at least in the early 70's??

:)

[C. Fontaine]

Passing through North Carolina on my way down to Myrtle Beach the other day, we passes by this OLD Montgomery Ward label scar on an aged vacant building.  I wish I have grabbed a picture.

[Marc82]

What was the connection between Montgomery Wards and the ValueVision TV Shopping Network (now known as ShopNBC)? I remember it used to say on the air that customers could use their Montgomery Ward Charge Cards to make purchases. (The ValueVision Shopping Network was built from what was left of the old Cable Value Network Shopping Channel - CVN after CVN was bought out by QVC).

[GiantApe67]

I worked at the Lechmere Woburn location in 1987 and it was a disaster from day 1.  They took over a K-mart, which was one of the original anchor stores when the Woburn mall opened in 1979 and I clearly remember the store manager saying they "conquered a dead-in-the-water K-mart" during some big meeting one day.   At least K-mart is still open!  The one thing I noticed about the place was that everyone was in charge.  There were managers, assistant managers, floor managers, area managers, district managers, area district floor managers, department managers, etc.  Too many chiefs and no Indians.  Training consisted of sticking you in a room upstairs with a manual and a cash register.  The machine itself use to have a display that said "Please Slow Down!".  I was in the Audio One area with some old racist guy and that was the year that the Nintendo Entertainment Systems (NES) came out.  Of course, we had none, but he used to give people false hope when they called by saying "Yes, we sell them....but no we don't have any".  We'd get questions on that all day long, non stop.  The other big seller that year was keyboards, so every mother would let their kids play with them all day long while they shopped.  Audio Two still sold Laserdisc players and they ran Pee Wee's Big Adventure nonstop as the display movie.  I know that one by heart.  I only stayed there all of 2 months, but it was really an awful place to work.

[Crawford]

Lechmere was one of the first store credit cards I ever owned. Put more money on that for Nintendo and Sega stuff. They also had the box sets of cds that were a lot less expensive than Circuit City or the chain record stores. I doubt though if they would have survived the influx of Best Buy which took the Lechmere idea and made it better.

[Kmart4life]

Montgomery Wards website is www.wards.com

[Lastdaysofrain]

When did the Lechmere in the Woburn Mall close? It's TJ Maxx now I believe

[store215]

wards bags for sale on Ebay..

[dmx10101]

Originally posted by MBZ321
wards bags for sale on Ebay..

I have two whole cases of wards bags that I bought when they were closing, One case is small size bags and the other is medium size bags. They both say- you can't shop smarter than Wards.

[Toys4Joy]

Whenever I went into Montgomery Wards electronic section, I always wished I could walk in with a huge boombox on my shoulder jamming to Eddy Grants "Electric Avenue" song.  They probably would have kicked me out though..

[ameskmart1]

Former Montgomery Ward in Spokane, Washington. Burlington Coat Factory opened in the mid-1990s and doesn't use this side for an entrance.

[ameskmart1]

I found a labelscar on the side of the auto center, which is still sitting vacant.

[C3Nostalgia]

The Former Charleroi, PA location.  This is now South Pennsylvania Human Services and a sign maker is in the auto center.  These were taken in back in December.

The Auto Center Front


The Auto Center Rear


I don't remember what this door was.


The Main Entrance

[gu4ever]

Here is the pole, long since missing it's big box Montgomery Ward sign on the street.

[gu4ever]

Interestingly this exit sign has survived since the early 70's

[gu4ever]

Store front with the new Chunky's theater, this was the original section that Ames #746 once occupied on 150 Coliseum Ave. Zayre88 previous posted the Ames store front after they had closed. Back on page 6.
Interestingly this area on the far left was originally the Montogomery Ward sit down restaurant. It had full length windows that ran the length of the dining room.

[gu4ever]

This is the side entrance near automotive that we frequently entered through when I was a kid. It was the drapery and bedding department. Beyond that was the furniture display floor.
The chain link area out front was utilized for summer garden equipment, although in the end, this space was almost never used from what I can remember.