Webb's City
Webb's City was a one-stop department store that was located in St. Petersburg, Florida. Founded in 1926, it claimed to be "the World's Most Unusual Drug Store;" founder James Earl "Doc" Webb has been described as "the P. T. Barnum of specialty store retailing". Sideshows included animal tricks, acrobats, and talking mermaids. At its peak, Webb's City had 77 departments, 1,700 employees, and covered about ten city blocks. It was considered a forerunner to the shopping center. The jingle in its radio ad was: "There'll be no more hoppin' around the town a-shoppin', Webb's City is your one-stop shopping store." As shopping centers became popular, business dwindled at Webb's City, which closed in 1979.Doc Webb's philosophy regarding to Webb City was "stack it high and sell it cheap", a tactic years later picked up by Sam Walton for his Walmart empire. Ronald D. Michman and Edward M. Mazze attribute its success in St. Petersburg, which was "populated by a larger than average number of elderly citizens who desired to patronize an interesting complex to spend their pension money". Because of its location, sales, and low prices its shopping base primarily consisted of senior citizens and African Americans. The store hired from the African American community, though it had whites-only shopping areas and purposely did not allow black workers to rise in rank. This racial glass ceiling and discrimination became the focus of Civil Rights sit-ins and controversies during the 1960s.
Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Webb's City (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).Webb's City
Doctor Martin Luther King Junior Street South, Saint Petersburg
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Geographical coordinates (GPS)
Latitude | Longitude |
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N 27.768333333333 ° | E -82.645277777778 ° |
Address
Doctor Martin Luther King Junior Street South
33701 Saint Petersburg
Florida, United States
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