Department stores were magic, but I'll keep the mall

For some, the news that Macy's is cutting back its hours at the downtown St. Paul store came as a surprise: There's a Macy's in downtown St. Paul? If you knew that, you're a freelance cat-swinger who enjoys practicing your art undisturbed and finds the evening hours at the store an excellent time to hone your skills.

Or you're a classic old-line St. Paulite who takes the Macy's store as a sign that downtown's long, proud retail tradition survives. Your mom brought you downtown to shop. You brought your kids downtown.

A department store is an urban tradition, and they'll have to pry the charge card from your hands with the jaws of life.

If only there were more of you.

If you study enough old photos of downtown -- both Minneapolis and St. Paul -- you're struck by one question: Where did everyone go?

The sidewalks are always packed; the shots of crowds crossing the street at a light look like two armies colliding in battle. Even the shots of the early 20th century have bustling streets, although they may just look more dense because the women wore skirts that were 4 feet in diameter, as if they were being propelled by small concealed children pumping their ankles back and forth.

Downtown looked bigger, too -- five-story brick buildings bristling with signs are far more interesting than blank-walled bunkers like City Center, and a twenty-story tower clad in stone somehow looks more massive than a 40-story glass skyscraper, its mirrored walls making it look like an improbable mirage. It all looked hand-made, human-scaled.

Jumble-shops Kresge's and Grant's were side-by-side on Nicollet, with the gleaming white Depression-era Woolworth's standing where the IDS rises today. You could go downtown, buy a comb, goldfish, a fur, dentures, shoes, a car, a milk shake, a baseball bat, flowers, catch a show, dine at the Forum for 47 cents (pie included) and order some coal while you were in the neighborhood.

What killed it? Something better. Or more convenient, if you like. It's one thing to romanticize the glory days of downtown retail; it's another to stand outside in the sleet with an armful of packages waiting for a trolley to clatter along and drag you halfway across town.

The moment people could get in their car, drive to a Dale, and shop in the modern utopia of a climate-controlled mall, they did. They're not coming back, either. Not until you give them free parking and shops they can't get elsewhere. There's a word for all those people in the old photos: Captive audience.

It's still a shame to lose it. I grew up in Fargo, which had a thriving downtown before it was nuked by the mall on the edge of town.

Going to the department stores with Mom was like going to Manhattan -- the crowds, the rattling elevator-cage doors, the mysterious bong! that summoned floorwalkers or managers, the shhhhh-foomph of items arriving from the pneumatic tubes. A basement grill with the urban perfume of hamburgers, coffee and cigarettes. Very adult, but also a specifically female domain in those days; it felt like the Strategic Air Command HQ, if built by women.

I recently read a history of the Hudson store in Detroit -- think Dayton's, times ten. It had everything. A nursery. A bowling team. A newspaper. An infirmary. You could be born there; you could die there. In between, you'd never be bored. They were like cities, the great stores. We were great cities because we had them.

Would I swap free parking and climate control and online shopping with doorstep delivery for the old ways? I'd be lying if I said yes. I'd love to go back in time and spend days in the old downtowns.

But I'd never take my hand off my ticket back. I suspect most would feel the same way. We get the cities we want.