Where Women Got Their Shoes

In Greenbelt there were no shoe shops for women to purchase shoes for herself or the family. In some case women traveled to downtown Washington D.C. or Baltimore since they were the closest cites around. Once they got downtown, they shopped in places like Woodward & Lothrop and Hahn Shoes store. Woodies, (Woodward & Lothrop) is no longer in business, they declared bankruptcy a couple of years ago. It was a matter of transportation in order to go downtown for women to purchase shoes. Several people took the trolley downtown or drove their cars if they had one. If women had cars then they could afford a pair of nice shoes like the ones in the Greenbelt Museum. If women did not have cars then they took a trolley or went to Baltimore City instead with their husbands.

These ads are from the Greenbelt Cooperator. They both announce the selling of shoes for women and their families. The cool thing about these ads is that they offer to come to the homes and measure customers' feet and shoes would be fitted at home. This seems like a very time saving way for purchasing shoes especially for those customers who did not own cars to go shopping.

These two ads came from The Sear & Roebuck Catalog From the late 1930s (Blum, 147, 148). Women got a lot of their shoes from catalogs.

This ad came from the Greenbelt Cooperator (a Newspaper in Greenbelt). This is one of the few places that women could get shoes. This store was actually a drugstore. It is very interesting to know that people got shoes from drugstores. I guess much has not changed since we can buy Flip-flops at the CVS drugstore too.

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