With the demise of the Goodall Hotel on March 4, 1941, a large hole thereafter presented itself on the Marion public square. For 14 years, when one walked around the square, you could stop next to a railing and look down into the pit that represented where the old hotel had sat for almost 50 years.

That pit finally got filled in 1954 when the W.T. Grant Company decided to open a Marion store at 1102 Public Square. With two floors of merchandise to browse it was likely, for many, a hint at what “big city” department stores looked like for the first time.

A grand opening was held complete with ribbon cutting ceremony on March 17, 1955 to inaugurate the store. The ribbon was cut by Mayor William Shannon. About 3,000 people were estimated to have attended the store opening with many gifts being given away to the first customers. The grand prize was a television set.

The Grant store also, likely strikes a place in the hearts of any Marionites that grew up during the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. I think every kid of the appropriate age had to ride their coin operated rides in front of the store.

Employees would pull their buttered popcorn machine out onto the sidewalk on Friday nights and Saturdays and the intoxicating smell permeated the square on sultry summer days.

Unfortunately, due to national corporate leadership, the chain had to take bankruptcy in 1975, closing over 1,000 stores.

After the store closing, the building was occupied for a time by J.C. Penney in 1980, the U.S. Post Office in 1985 and purchased by the City of Marion as Marion City Hall in August of 1993.

W.T. Grant History

In 1906 the first “W. T. Grant Co. 25 Cent Store” opened in Lynn, Massachusetts. Modest profit, coupled with a fast turnover of inventory, caused the stores to grow to almost $100 million annual sales by 1936, the same year that William Thomas Grant started the W. T. Grant Foundation. By the time Grant died in 1972 at age 96, his chain of W. T. Grant Stores had grown to almost 1,200.

Like many national chain stores, Grant arranged for Columbia records to create a low price exclusive record label called  Diva, sold only at Grants. The label existed from 1925 through 1930.

Grant’s stores were slower than the Kresge stores to adapt to the growth of the suburb and the change in shopping habits that this entailed. The attempt to correct this was belated; in the 1960s and early 1970s, the company built many larger stores (later known as Grant City), but unlike Kresge’s Kmart they lacked uniform size and layout, so that a shopper in one did not immediately feel “at home” in another.

The chain’s demise in 1975 was in part due to a failure to adapt to changing times but was probably accelerated by management’s refusal until it was too late to eliminate the shareholder dividend. After the company began to lose money, funds were borrowed to pay the quarterly dividend until this became impossible. A final tactic to stay in business involved requiring Grant’s clerks and cashiers to offer a Grant’s credit card application to customers to boost sales in the stores.

Grant’s store-branded electronic and other goods were named “Bradford” after Bradford County, Pennsylvania, where William Thomas Grant was born.

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(Data from Wikipedia.com, Yearbook ads, Facebook and Marion City Directories, compiled by Sam Lattuca on 03/31/2013. Revised on 8/1/2024, added opening and photo)