Variety store
A variety store is a retail store that sells a wide range of inexpensive household goods. Variety stores have product lines including food and drink, personal hygiene products, small home and garden tools, office supplies, electronics, garden plants, pet supplies, remaindered books, recorded media, motor and bike consumables. Larger stores may sell fresh produce. Variety stores arose in the early 20th century, with Woolworth's model to reduce store overheads by simplifying the duties of sales clerks, they may now be found all over the world. A variety store sells all goods at a single price, in which case it may be called a price-point retailer; the name of the store reflects this, in different markets it may be called a dollar store, pound shop, euro store and so on. Some items are offered at a considerable discount over other retailers, whereas others are at much the same price point. There are two ways variety stores make a profit: Buying and selling huge amounts of goods at discounted prices provides a small profit margin, multiplied by the volume of sales.
Pricing many items at prices that are higher than regular retailers. These goods are bought by consumers who perceive them to be bargains based on the heavy discounts on other items in the store. In the case of fixed price-point retailers, this can be achieved by reducing the size of the package to one, smaller than what is found in other retail outlets. Variety stores with single price points buy products to fit those price points that are: generic brands or private labels specially manufactured using cheaper materials and processes than usual. Available through the grey market. Bought at a closeout sale, such as seasonal or promotional goods or bankruptcy stock. Sold in smaller unit sizes than elsewhere. Not all variety stores are "single price-point" stores if their names imply it. For example, in the United States, Dollar General and Family Dollar sell items at more or less than a dollar; some stores sell goods priced at multiples of the named price and, multiple items for the price. The discrepancy with the nominal price is compounded if sales tax is added at the point of sale.
In many countries, stock can be imported from others with lower variable costs, because of differences in wages, resource costs or taxation. Goods are imported by a general importer sold to the stores wholesale. Another source of stock is surplus items and out-of-date food products. Real Deals, a regional dollar store in the Syracuse, New York area, is stocked entirely with surplus goods such as these; the legality of selling out-of-date goods varies between jurisdictions: in general, most items can be sold in the United States regardless of their sell-by date, but in the United Kingdom it is illegal to sell goods after their "Use By" date. Although some people may link variety stores with low-income areas, this is not always true. For example, California has a variety store within its city limits though it has a median household income of nearly $185,000 a year. Studies of food discounters in Great Britain show quite a varied demographic, 99p Stores reported an increase in higher-income customers after the financial crisis of 2007–08.
The concept of the variety store originated with the five and ten and dime, nickel or dime, ten-cent store or dime store, a store offering a wide assortment of inexpensive items for personal and household use. The originators of the concept were the Woolworth Bros. in July 1879. Woolworth Bros. became F. W. Woolworth Company or just "Woolworth's." On 21 June 1879, Frank Winfield Woolworth opened his first successful five-cent store in Lancaster, after a failed attempt with a store he opened on 22 February 1879, in Utica, New York. Frank soon brought his brother Charles Sumner "Sum" Woolworth into the business. Together they opened a second store in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on 18 July 1879. Before they started their own stores, the Woolworth brothers worked for Augsbury and Moore, a dry goods store in Watertown, New York, it was they who lent Frank $300 in goods. Frank settled his debt by the time. Frank experimented with a 10¢ table in Lancaster, to his experiment of a 5¢ table at Augsbury and Moore, it was a success.
Sum managed the Harrisburg store, crammed it with goods, hired clerks, added a table with a ten-cent line of goods. Once again, the approach was a huge success; because of a rent dispute, Sum soon moved the Harrisburg store to York, on 6 November 1880, he opened the store in downtown Scranton and formally called it a "5¢ & 10¢ store". There, he developed and established the nickel-and-dime concept into American culture. Frank spent time opening more stores, working the back end of the business, buying in bulk for all affiliates and "friendly rivals," and buying from manufacturers to keep prices low. Meanwhile, Sum used his store to train new managers and develop many of the Woolworth concepts which included bright lighting, a polished high-luster floor, glass showcases, mahogany counters, goods people could touch. Before this, clerks had to work with each customer individually, handing them goods from cases or shelves; this required more clerks, with greater knowledge, so cost more. Before Woolworth, the prevailing thought was an entire store could not maintain itself with all low-priced goods.
The Woolworth Bros. and their affiliated partner stores featured goods priced at only five cents
Minneapolis
Minneapolis is the county seat of Hennepin County and the larger of the Twin Cities, the 16th-largest metropolitan area in the United States. As of 2017, Minneapolis is the largest city in the state of Minnesota and 45th-largest in the United States, with an estimated population of 422,331; the Twin Cities metropolitan area consists of Minneapolis, its neighbor Saint Paul, suburbs which altogether contain about 3.6 million people, is the third-largest economic center in the Midwest. Minneapolis lies on both banks of the Mississippi River, just north of the river's confluence with the Minnesota River, adjoins Saint Paul, the state's capital; the city is abundantly rich in water, with 13 lakes, the Mississippi River and waterfalls. It was once a hub for timber; the city and surrounding region is the primary business center between Seattle. In 2011, Minneapolis proper was home to the fifth-highest number of Fortune 500 headquarters in the United States; as an integral link to the global economy, Minneapolis is categorized as a global city.
Minneapolis has one of the largest LGBT populations in the U. S. proportional to its overall population. Noted for its strong music and performing arts scenes, Minneapolis is home to both the award-winning Guthrie Theater and the historic First Avenue nightclub. Reflecting the region's status as an epicenter of folk and alternative rock music, the city served as the launching pad for several of the 20th century's most influential musicians, including Bob Dylan and Prince. Minneapolis has become noted for its underground and independent hip-hop and rap scenes, producing artists such as Brother Ali and Dessa; the name Minneapolis is attributed to Charles Hoag, the city's first schoolmaster, who combined mni, a Dakota Sioux word for water, polis, the Greek word for city. Descendants of first peoples, Dakota Sioux were the region's sole residents when French explorers arrived in 1680. For a time, amicable relations were based on fur trading. More European-American settlers arrived, competing for game and other resources with the Native Americans.
After the Revolutionary War, Great Britain granted the land east of the Mississippi to the United States. In the early 19th century, the United States acquired land to the west from France in the Louisiana Purchase. Fort Snelling, just south of present-day Minneapolis, was built in 1819 by the United States Army, it attracted traders and merchants, spurring growth in the area. The United States government pressed the Mdewakanton band of the Dakota to sell their land, allowing people arriving from the East to settle there. Preoccupied with the Civil War, the United States government reneged on its promises of cash payments to the Dakota, resulting in hunger, the Dakota War of 1862, internment and hardship; the Minnesota Territorial Legislature authorized Minneapolis as a town in 1856, on the Mississippi's west bank. Minneapolis incorporated as a city in 1867, the year rail service began between Minneapolis and Chicago, it joined with the east-bank city of St. Anthony in 1872. Minneapolis developed around Saint Anthony Falls, the highest waterfall on the Mississippi River and a source of power for its early industry.
Forests in northern Minnesota were a valuable resource for the lumber industry, which operated seventeen sawmills on power from the waterfall. By 1871, the west river bank had twenty-three businesses, including flour mills, woolen mills, iron works, a railroad machine shop, mills for cotton, paper and planing wood. Due to the occupational hazards of milling, six local sources of artificial limbs were competing in the prosthetics business by the 1890s; the farmers of the Great Plains grew grain, shipped by rail to the city's 34 flour mills. Millers have used hydropower elsewhere since the 1st century B. C. but the results in Minneapolis between 1880 and 1930 were so remarkable the city has been described as "the greatest direct-drive waterpower center the world has seen." A father of modern milling in America and founder of what became General Mills, Cadwallader C. Washburn converted his business from gristmills to revolutionary technology, including "gradual reduction" processing by steel and porcelain roller mills capable of producing premium-quality pure white flour quickly.
Some ideas were developed by William Dixon Gray and some acquired through industrial espionage from Hungary by William de la Barre. Charles A. Pillsbury and the C. A. Pillsbury Company across the river were a step behind, hiring Washburn employees to use the new methods; the hard red spring wheat that grows in Minnesota became valuable, Minnesota "patent" flour was recognized at the time as the best in the world. Not until did consumers discover the value in the bran that "... Minneapolis flour millers dumped" into the Mississippi. After 1883, a Minneapolis miller started a new industry when he began to sell bran byproduct as animal feed. Millers cultivated relationships with academic scientists at the University of Minnesota; those scientists backed them politically on many issues, such as in the early 20th century when health advocates in the nascent field of nutrition criticized the flour "bleaching" process. At peak production, a single mill at Washburn-Crosby made enough flour for 12 million loaves of bread each day.
Further, by 1895, through the efforts of silent partner William Hood Dunwoody, Washburn-Crosby exported four
North Loop, Minneapolis
The North Loop is a neighborhood of the Central community of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The neighborhood is known as the Warehouse District from the city's shipping hub years, it includes the Minneapolis Warehouse Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The North Loop is located just northwest of the central business district between downtown Minneapolis and the Mississippi River. Streets in the North Loop are oriented to be parallel to the river, which means that they run at a 45-degree angle relative to the grid of the rest of the city. Although the extent of the neighborhood technically extends further to the south, the main residential and commercial area of the North Loop is a rectangle bounded by Hennepin Avenue, Plymouth Avenue, the elevated 4th street freeway entrance/exit in the southwest, the Mississippi River in the northeast. Washington Avenue is the main thoroughfare through the neighborhood; the James I. Rice Park, in the northeast portion of the neighborhood along the river, is popular with residents during the summer months.
The bike trail and West River Parkway that runs through the park are part of the Grand Rounds Scenic Byway. The park added a playground in 2010 located. For most of its history, the North Loop was an industrial area, it was home to numerous warehouses and factories. Much of the warehouse district is listed on the National Register of Historic Places; the warehouses that characterize the district are six to eight stories high, about 62 structures on seven square blocks contribute to the district. The predominant form of design is the Chicago Commercial style, but many other styles were built, including Italianate, Queen Anne style, Richardsonian Romanesque, Classical Revival, early 20th century commercial styles; the warehouse district was in turn associated with the railroad transportation network, under development at the time, which connected Minneapolis with the rest of the Midwest and the rest of the country. These warehouses were used for storage of goods related to milling and manufacturing.
The nomination for the National Register of Historic Places states that the district, as a whole, comprises a cohesive district of buildings with a common physical appearance, as well as a common age and original use. In the 1980s, the Warehouse district was the epicenter of the Minneapolis art scene until the area's buildings became more commercially desirable in the 1990s. At its peak, the Wyman Building, 400 First Avenue North, was home to more than twenty contemporary art galleries. No Name Gallery was located in the eastern part of the neighborhood, before it moved out of the district and became the Soap Factory. While some industrial tenants remain, many of the old factories and warehouses have been converted to commercial space or loft condominiums and apartments; the area still retains some feel of its industrial past, as many newer buildings have attempted to replicate the style of the old warehouses. Since the mid-1990s, when the gentrification of the neighborhood accelerated, thousands of people have moved into the North Loop.
The neighborhood is popular with people who work in downtown Minneapolis, whose proximity allows residents to walk, bike, or take a short bus or METRO ride to work. Coffee shops, bars, art galleries, small retail stores have moved into the neighborhood in recent years; the Tony-award-winning Theatre de la Jeune Lune and the Traffic Zone Center for Visual Art, a prominent artist cooperative and gallery space, are located in the eastern part of the neighborhood. The largest employer is the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, located at the southwest end of the Hennepin Avenue Bridge. In September 2006, the North Loop Neighborhood Association received funding to build a dog park for North Loop residents. A temporary dog park has been built on 7th Ave. Target Field, home of the Minnesota Twins, opened in 2010, is on the southwest edge of the neighborhood. Plans call for the construction of condominiums and apartments for several thousand new residents near the stadium; the area is served by Target Field, the new terminus for the Northstar Commuter Rail, Metro Transit Blue and future light rail lines.
Interstate 335 Neighborhoods of Minneapolis North Minneapolis Encyclopedia Stein LLC Neighborhood Retail Design Firm North Loop Neighborhood Association Warehouse District Business Association Theatre de la Jeune Lune Traffic Zone Center for Visual Art Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Commission map of the Warehouse District
Edward Burgess Butler
Edward Burgess Butler was an American businessman who founded Butler Brothers department stores. He served as the first president of the Pasadena Society of Artists, he was born on December 1853 in Lewiston, Maine to Manly Orville Butler and Elizabeth Howe. He had eight siblings: two of them, George H. Butler and Charles H. Butler formed a partnership with Edward. Manly owned a grocery store. In 1858, his family moved to Boston, he attended the Boston public school system. With two of his brothers, George Henry Butler and Charles Hamblet Butler, he founded Butler Brothers in Boston in 1877. For five years he sold goods throughout New Canada as a traveling salesman, he married Jane Holly in 1880, she was the daughter of William Henry Holly, of Connecticut. With his wealth he collected works by George Inness, donated the collection to the Art Institute of Chicago. Having trained under Frank Charles Peyraud, Butler became a landscape painter. For a time he exhibited his works under a pseudonym, "Edward Burgess".
In 1908, he exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago. One of his oil paintings was displayed at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915. Butler moved to California after he retired from business, he died in Pasadena, California on February 20, 1928. Director of Illinois Merchants Trust Company Chairman of Ways and Means committee Chairman of the World's Columbian Exposition President of the Glenwood, Illinois Manual Training School Trustee of Hull House Trustee of Chicago Orphan Asylum Trustee of Girls' Refuge Trustee of First State Pawners' Society Trustee of Art Institute of Chicago
Butler Brothers
Butler Brothers was a retailer and wholesale supplier based in Chicago. It was founded in 1877 as a mail-order company by Edward Burgess Butler. In the 1920s, Butler Brothers moved into retailing with "L. C. Burr" stores. In the early 1930s, they developed the Ben Franklin Stores and Federated Stores, both of which were franchised five and dime stores. Most were in small towns. By 1936 there were 2,600 Ben Franklin stores and 1,400 Federated stores.. In the 1940s and 1950s, Butler Brothers was one of the largest wholesalers in the country. Unlike many modern franchises, which seek to present a uniform identity to consumers, the Ben Franklin franchise benefitted dime store owners by making weekly shipments from their warehouses, where tens of thousands of items were kept in inventory. Not only could a store owner order merchandise on Friday and receive it on Tuesday to replenish empty shelves, but by consolidating shipments, saved a considerable amount on freight, found it easier to manage his inventory.
Butler Brothers organized special sale events every few weeks. Stores could order salebills with their own names on them, in many cases, with sale prices they chose for the merchandise. Manufacturers would offer special prices to get the extra sales inherent by being included in such large promotions, which Butler Brothers would pass along, In February 1960 the company was bought out by City Products Corp of Ohio, a company, in existence since 1894 as an ice company, for $53 million plus assumption of Butler Brothers liabilities. Ben Franklin Stores Butler Brothers Company, now known as Butler Square, in Minneapolis, Minnesota's warehouse district Ronald D. Michman, Alan J. Greco.
Butler Square
Butler Square is a former warehouse and office building in Minneapolis, United States. The building is located within the Minneapolis warehouse district and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971, it is significant for its restrained Chicago School design by major Minneapolis architect Harry Wild Jones, as a leading example of the older warehouse/office buildings in Minneapolis–Saint Paul. Jones designed other buildings in Minneapolis such as the Minneapolis Scottish Rite Temple, Calvary Baptist Church, the Lakewood Cemetery Chapel, the Washburn Park Water Tower, it was built as a warehouse for Butler Brothers, a mail-order firm. It had rather heavy construction in keeping with its function as a warehouse, featuring thick interior masonry walls with thin, recessed windows topped by corbelled parapets; the interior is built with heavy timber posts and beams, cut from Douglas fir grown near Aitkin, Minnesota. The columns are 24 inches wide at the bottom level diminishing to 9 inches wide on the top level.
The basement included a horse stable, to accommodate deliveries, the building had three large coal-fired boilers for heating. Mechanical elevators were used to move goods throughout the building; the building had a rail spur to facilitate boxcar loading. As truck transportation became more competitive with rail transportation, the urban location of the building rendered it inefficient as a warehouse. In 1972 real estate developer Charles Coyer purchased the building with plans to rebuild the east half of the building as an office-retail complex; as part of the renovation, a central atrium in the eastern half of the building was built to allow natural light into the building. This made the retail and office space more marketable, since the large floor space and small windows made it difficult to get enough natural light into the interior. James H. Binger purchased the building in 1979 with similar plans to develop the west half of the building; the atrium on western side was built with more of the heavy timber construction exposed, more efficient mechanical systems were installed.
The renovation of the building has served as a catalyst for additional development and preservation within the Minneapolis Warehouse District. National Register of Historic Places listings in Hennepin County, Minnesota Butler Square
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, with about 6,700 undergraduate students and about 15,250 postgraduate students. Established in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, clergyman John Harvard, Harvard is the United States' oldest institution of higher learning, its history and wealth have made it one of the world's most prestigious universities; the Harvard Corporation is its first chartered corporation. Although never formally affiliated with any denomination, the early College trained Congregational and Unitarian clergy, its curriculum and student body were secularized during the 18th century, by the 19th century, Harvard had emerged as the central cultural establishment among Boston elites. Following the American Civil War, President Charles W. Eliot's long tenure transformed the college and affiliated professional schools into a modern research university. A. Lawrence Lowell, who followed Eliot, further reformed the undergraduate curriculum and undertook aggressive expansion of Harvard's land holdings and physical plant.
James Bryant Conant led the university through the Great Depression and World War II and began to reform the curriculum and liberalize admissions after the war. The undergraduate college became coeducational after its 1977 merger with Radcliffe College; the university is organized into eleven separate academic units—ten faculties and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study—with campuses throughout the Boston metropolitan area: its 209-acre main campus is centered on Harvard Yard in Cambridge 3 miles northwest of Boston. Harvard's endowment is worth $39.2 billion, making it the largest of any academic institution. Harvard is a large residential research university; the nominal cost of attendance is high, but the university's large endowment allows it to offer generous financial aid packages. The Harvard Library is the world's largest academic and private library system, comprising 79 individual libraries holding over 18 million items; the University is cited as one of the world's top tertiary institutions by various organizations.
Harvard's alumni include eight U. S. presidents, more than thirty foreign heads of state, 62 living billionaires, 359 Rhodes Scholars, 242 Marshall Scholars. As of October 2018, 158 Nobel laureates, 18 Fields Medalists, 14 Turing Award winners have been affiliated as students, faculty, or researchers. In addition, Harvard students and alumni have won 10 Academy Awards, 48 Pulitzer Prizes and 108 Olympic medals, have founded a large number of companies worldwide. Harvard was established in 1636 by vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1638, it acquired British North America's first known printing press. In 1639, it was named Harvard College after deceased clergyman John Harvard, an alumnus of the University of Cambridge, who had left the school £779 and his scholar's library of some 400 volumes; the charter creating the Harvard Corporation was granted in 1650. A 1643 publication gave the school's purpose as "to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when our present ministers shall lie in the dust".
It offered a classic curriculum on the English university model—many leaders in the colony had attended the University of Cambridge—but conformed to the tenets of Puritanism. It was never affiliated with any particular denomination, but many of its earliest graduates went on to become clergymen in Congregational and Unitarian churches; the leading Boston divine Increase Mather served as president from 1685 to 1701. In 1708, John Leverett became the first president, not a clergyman, marking a turning of the college from Puritanism and toward intellectual independence. Throughout the 18th century, Enlightenment ideas of the power of reason and free will became widespread among Congregational ministers, putting those ministers and their congregations in tension with more traditionalist, Calvinist parties; when the Hollis Professor of Divinity David Tappan died in 1803 and the president of Harvard Joseph Willard died a year in 1804, a struggle broke out over their replacements. Henry Ware was elected to the chair in 1805, the liberal Samuel Webber was appointed to the presidency of Harvard two years which signaled the changing of the tide from the dominance of traditional ideas at Harvard to the dominance of liberal, Arminian ideas.
In 1846, the natural history lectures of Louis Agassiz were acclaimed both in New York and on the campus at Harvard College. Agassiz's approach was distinctly idealist and posited Americans' "participation in the Divine Nature" and the possibility of understanding "intellectual existences". Agassiz's perspective on science combined observation with intuition and the assumption that a person can grasp the "divine plan" in all phenomena; when it came to explaining life-forms, Agassiz resorted to matters of shape based on a presumed archetype for his evidence. This dual view of knowledge was in concert with the teachings of Common Sense Realism derived from Scottish philosophers Thomas Reid and Dugald Stewart, whose works were part of the Harvard curriculum at the time; the popularity of Agassiz's efforts to "soar with Plato" also derived from other writings to which Harvard students
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