Remembering Rich’s

When is a store more than a store? When it is an institution so enmeshed in people’s lives that the idea of an existence without it is hard to contemplate.

That describes Rich’s Department Store, a beloved Atlanta institution that became intertwined with the lives of the people who shopped there during its remarkable 138-year run.

Rich’s began as a dry goods store founded in 1867 by Morris Rich and his brothers until it was eventually absorbed by Macy’s in 2005. But for decades, the store was a meeting place, destination, friend and comforting beacon in hard times to the Atlantans who worked and shopped there. Shoppers dressed up for special occasions to dine at the downtown store’s Magnolia Room, celebrated with the store’s revered coconut cakes and marked the holidays by riding the Pink Pig. They also took advantage of a return policy so generous, the urban legend was that Rich’s would take back used snow tires. And Rich’s didn’t even sell snow tires.

All that history and lore is on display at the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum in “Return to Rich’s: The Story Behind the Store,” a six-month long exhibition documenting its importance to Atlanta’s history.

The show was inspired by a 2012 talk at the Breman by author Jeff Clemmons to celebrate the publication of his book, “Rich’s: A Southern Institution.” The talk drew a capacity crowd of more than 350 and lasted more than three hours with audience members expressing their love and devotion to the store in a Q&A session. “We knew at that point when we heard the response that we had to do a show,” says Aaron Berger, executive director at the Breman.

Rich’s was founded by a family of Hungarian Jews whose entrepreneurial spirit and dedication to enriching the lives of their fellow Atlantans imprinted the city in countless ways.

“I can’t think of many businesses in our city that have so shaped the cultural, social and political landscape as Rich’s,” says the show’s curator Catherine Lewis, an author, history professor and executive director of museums, archives and rare books at Kennesaw State University. Lewis has curated more than 30 exhibitions, many of them on Atlanta topics including Bobby Jones, Woodward Academy, Ivan Allen Jr., Piedmont Hospital and Delta Air Lines. Lewis also had a personal relationship to Rich’s.

“I also loved Rich’s,” says Lewis, who moved to Atlanta from Florida in 1986 to attend Emory University. “I was a loyal Rich’s shopper until it closed. I shopped mainly at the Lenox Square Rich’s and simply loved the store. It was heartbreaking in 2005 when it went away.”

Just how personally is Lewis invested in the “Return to Rich’s” show? After many tears and cries of protest, she managed to wrest a Priscilla stuffed animal away from her 4-year-old daughter Emma to fill a necessary space in the exhibition.

Some of the items on exhibit include the original Percival Pink Pig car from that adored holiday ride; the dress purchased by Margaret Mitchell at Rich’s for the Atlanta premiere of “Gone With the Wind”; the 1924 Rich’s clock — a meeting point for many Atlantans visiting the downtown store; and newspaper stories chronicling attempts to integrate Rich’s all-white Magnolia Room in the 1960s. A 1932 Henry Moore sculpture on loan from the High Museum testifies to Rich’s commitment to the arts in Atlanta. Purchased and donated by the store, it was the first piece of modern sculpture purchased for the Atlanta Art Association’s (now the High) collection. There are numerous thank you letters written to the store from grateful Atlanta schoolteachers who were able to cash their “scrips” (or I.O.U.’s) at Rich’s in 1934 when the City of Atlanta was unable to pay their salaries. In addition to such artifacts are numerous recorded anecdotes from devoted Rich’s customers, employees and executives describing their interactions with the store.

The exhibition is what the Breman’s marketing and communications manager David M. Schendowich calls a “crowd-sourced” exhibition.

“We took the approach of first finding stories about Rich’s and then locating artifacts that help make those stories tangible,” says Berger. Though there are documents and objects lent by the Atlanta History Center, Coca-Cola and Delta, the majority of artifacts have been loaned to the museum by Rich’s intensely loyal customers and employees.

Atlanta resident Brenda Bray Farmer, 71, loaned one of the three cameras Rich’s gave away with purchases, and she also recorded an anecdote about shopping at the Lenox Square Rich’s: When her 2-year-old daughter Kellywas asked where she got her beautiful blue eyes, the child replied “Rich’s!”

“I guess that is some estimation of how much time I spent at Rich’s!” says Farmer. “I have great memories of our first experiences with her there, like her first soft doll she saw and couldn’t leave without, and seeing Santa at Christmas for the first time and buying her first big-girl shoes. One of my first memories is riding up to Atlanta from Macon on the Nancy Hanks train to have lunch at the Magnolia Room and their famous coconut cake for dessert.”

There are also objects and anecdotes that reach beyond the store itself and testify to the civic responsibility exemplified by Rich’s, as when it purchased bales of cotton to support Georgia farmers after a dramatic dip in the price of cotton.

“The story of Rich’s is married to the story of Atlanta,” says Berger. “This was an opportunity to tell an historical story and to tell a Jewish story.”

The exhibit marks a shift of focus for the Breman in working to draw a broader, more diverse audience to the museum. “One of our goals is to take topics that people know a lot about — in this case Rich’s — and be able to draw out a Jewish component to it so you’re seeing it through a different lens,” says Berger.

Lewis sees the story of how Morris Rich built a cherished shopping empire in Atlanta as an instructive tale of Jewish integration into the life of the South.

“How a Hungarian Jewish teenager could come across the Atlantic with very little money and no retail experience and build one of the nation’s great department stores is a truly American tale,” notes Lewis. “This story was replayed in many Southern towns, with Jewish immigrants creating businesses and jobs, but I have yet to find a store that was as beloved as Rich’s.”