April 1, 2018: Through the window on the first floor of Sears at Waterloo’s Crossroads Mall.
The new Sears Roebuck Department Store, twice as big as the old and sparkling with the innovations of a “more modern and fashionable” head office, will open its doors to the public at noon Tuesday, with a grand opening scheduled for the following morning. — Waterloo Daily Courier, March 24, 1969
A full-page inside spread in the Courier showed off the accoutrements of “one of the largest and most modern department stores in the Sears chain.” According to the photos, Sears “will be the first store in the Crossroads Center enclosed mall, the first such facility in Iowa.” It had the first escalator in Black Hawk County.
The first steel beams planted at Crossroads Mall were for the Sears. It was one of the first 14 stores to sign long-term leases. Fifty years almost to the day that “Shopping Center Building Started” (Courier, March 27, 1968) foretold a massive new development for Black Hawk County, that first store is counting down to its last sale, another data point in the retail apocalypse.
When it closes, there will be four full-fledged Sears stores left in Iowa — Cedar Rapids, Davenport, Des Moines, and Sioux City.
As I mentioned before, this was “my” Sears. I would put good odds that this was the first place I rode an escalator. (Mom’s was the Des Moines downtown Younkers.) I remember taking detours past the TVs on the way from Bishop’s (closed January 2011) to Waldenbooks (closed January 2010).
Nearly every major appliance for 40 years, including my college fridge, came from here. The demise of the Waterloo store and the long-term decline of Sears in general can be summed up in this anecdote: In the search for a vacuum at the end of last year, Mom tried Sears first. The kind she wanted wasn’t in stock, and she ended up finding one cheaper online.