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Who remembers in the Washington, D.C.; Atlanta; Houston; and Chicago areas the Service Merchandise and Best Products similarity chain W. Bell and Co.?

I am a native Washingtonian; so, I definitely remember W. Bell. When I worked at 19th & L Streets, N.W. in the early 80's, W. Bell was located diagonally across the street from my job. I shopped there quite a bit, probably too much. LOL! Not far from where I lived, there was Maryland location on Rte. 450 at 7933 Annapolis Road in New Carrollton, MD (now zoned as Lanham, MD)...in a shopping center with an A&P supermarket and other smaller stores. That former W. Bell location has been home to Office Depot for several years...and after the A&P there closed, the interior was remodeled and became LaFontaine Bleu in the 80s.

I remember the late 1970's-early 1980's jingle for W. Bell "You gotta think of Bell in the first place, 'cause the first place for value is Bell."

dth1971 wrote:Who remembers in the Washington, D.C.; Atlanta; Houston; and Chicago areas the Service Merchandise and Best Products similarity chain W. Bell and Co.?

The one in Atlanta was just across I-75/I-85 from The Varsity...I near Gordy Tire (Gordy Tire and The Varsity were both in the same family)...near the Georgia Tech campus and North Avenue. We usually shopped there or Ellman's, sometimes we also went to Citizens Jewelers (also a catalogue chain of sorts at one time) and Bennett's.

W. Bell also had 3 locations in Baltimore: Mt. Royal Ave. (downtown), Security Blvd. (Woodlawn) and York Road (Cockeysville).

At one time one had to be buying in the name of a business to purchase from W. Bell, and they were pretty strict about it. IIRC it had something to do with the so-called "fair trade laws" that were still in existance at the time. When Best Products came to Baltimore (circa 1972) they passed catalogs out left and right and pretty much said "c'mon in". Until fair trade was repealed (c. 1976?) one supposedly had to be buying for a business to deal with Best also, but they treated it as at most a formality, certainly they were no where near as rigid about it as Bells was.

All 3 locations still stand: Not sure what is in downtown, Woodlawn is an A.J. Wright and Cockeysville has been subdivided in to several stores including a Jo-Ann fabric & crafts.