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The LA Times has a blog called "The Daily Mirror" in which they look at newspapers from the same day as the current date 100, 70, and 50 years ago (currently 1909, 1938 and 1958). I'm more interested in some of the ads than the articles they're discussing, and one in particular piqued my curiosity a week or so ago-- an 1958 ad for a department store named "Haggarty's" that had (at the time) three locations in the LA area (one was in Pasdena, IIRC.) In those days, even chains that became much larger didn't have a lot of stores-- for example, contemporaneous ads for the May Co. show only six stores at the time. So I gather that Haggarty's must have been fairly well known.

Anyway, I can find no other evidence of this store's existence. I Googled the name and came up virtually with nothing. I grew up in the Bay Area in the 50s and 60s, so I don't have much knowledge of SoCal stores at that time. Can anyone shed any light on this apparently forgotten chain?

By the way, it's fascinating to check out some of the ads in the papers of the past. I highly recommend checking it out once in a while.

Haggarty's seems to have disappeared in the early 1970's. The last display ad I could find was on 1/2/1970. The Pasadena store closed in May 1970. The branch stores were very small--the Downey store was 9000 square feet--and my impression by the ads is that they sold only women's clothes though some stores had children's clothes as well.

The first store was at 522 W. 7th. The Beverly Hills store opened in 1938 at 9544 Wilshire and evantually housed the chain's business offices.

These are the store locations from 1964 and 1970:

1964: Beverly Hills, Pasadena (350 S. Lake), Santa Ana, Lakewood, Bakersfield, Glendale, Palm Springs

1970: Beverly Hills, Pasadena, Lakewood, Canoga Park, Glendale, Downey (Stonewood), Pasadena, Palm Springs

Where in Stonewood was it I wonder.

A few more things as I've had time to look them up:

Haggarty's was founded in 1905 on Main St. in Downtown LA. The 7th and Grand store opened in 1917, closed in 1963, and was 62,000 sq ft. They also had a store in San Diego that closed in 1962. In 1963 the chain was owned by the Roy L. Ash family, Ash being the president of Litton.

The Palm Springs store was located at 205 S. Palm Canyon Drive and opened in 1960. It was only 3000 sq ft. This is almost directly across the street from the last remaining Desmond's department store.

The chain was forced into bankruptcy on May 26, 1970, with debts of $4.4m. Seven of their nine stores had been shut down shortly before or at the time of the bankruptcy. The Beverly Hills and Palm Springs stores remained open in hopes of finding a buyer. The Beverly Hills store would become a Roos/Atkins and the Palm Springs store would become a women's store called Draper's.

Sorry, Jeff, don't know where in Stonewood the store was located.

For a small footprint, it probably was divided into a couple stores.