The recent sale of Arthur Barnett Ltd is the end of an era for an iconic store that has gone through many changes.
Once a traditional department store with stylish window displays of manchester, mantles and millinery, the business later became the developer and anchor tenant in a modern shopping mall.
This month, however, the name of the Dunedin landmark will disappear. The store has been sold to Southland-based, family-owned company H&J Smith and is being rebranded.
While the future of the 80 staff seems secure and the horse-and-rider sign will remain on the roof, broadcaster and writer Jim Sullivan says it will be the first time in 112 years that the Arthur Barnett name is not part of the ''Dunedin landscape''.
Sullivan's book, One Hundred Years of Loyalty: the story of Arthur Barnett Ltd 1903-2003, traced the impressive growth of the firm under founder Arthur Barnett, who was apprenticed to the drapery trade at 14 and opened his own George St store in 1903.
Like his, many department stores began as small draper's shops and grew into large, multi-storeyed establishments displaying the latest fashions and household goods in luxurious surroundings. Sullivan says Dunedin had more than its share, including Herbert, Haynes and Co; Brown, Ewing and Co; A. and T. Inglis; Penroses; the DIC; and the Drapery Supply Association (DSA).
By the 1930s, Arthur Barnett had a range of departments - mercery and clothing, carpet, dress, silks, haberdashery, knitting wools, perfumes and cosmetics, hosiery, gloves, mantels, fancy goods, underclothing, corsetry and furnishings - and lounge facilities that included writing tables, easy chairs and a private, free telephone.
In the 1950s an in-store post office was added and the firm began expanding into other centres, eventually opening branches in Balclutha, Oamaru, Alexandra, Christchurch and Melbourne.
Junior staff spent their days dusting, stocking shelves and running messages before being given more responsibility.
Sixteen-year-old Mary Davidson (now Mary Faithful) spent almost all day on a high stool folding accounts and franking envelopes but her other duties included collecting pennies from the spotlessly clean ladies' restrooms and picking up copies of the Evening Star from a kiosk across the road for the staff who wanted it.
In busy periods, she received money and dockets via the pneumatic Lamson metal tubes which ran through the store and sent back the correct change in return capsules.
Iolene Oaten (now McArthur) started work in the lingerie department in 1947 when many imported goods were still in short supply after the war and cardboard advertising signs filled gaps on the shelves.
In the packing and incoming goods department, 16-year-old Murray Marshall wrapped clothes, shoes and hats in brown paper, tied with string, and took the packages to the NZR bus, sometimes crashing to the ground if the large metal cage on the front of his delivery bike banged into a wall: ''I canned off a few times, going like fury through the little alleyways between buildings.''
Some of the orders he filled were generated by catalogues, but brightly-lit windows presenting merchandise from around the world were the department store's most powerful advertisement.
Former window dresser Ken Williams says all the Dunedin stores competed to produce the best displays each season and another part of his job was creating animated fairy-tale figures for Christmas displays in the basement.
Just as popular as Santa's cave was the tearooms which operated at the top of the store before the building of the Meridian mall and its food court.
In later decades, the decor was dominated by brown linoleum, green and gold wallpaper and green vinyl chairs, Sullivan writes.
In the 1960s, the 300-seat restaurant featured a large Shona McFarlane mural of prominent Dunedin buildings.
Arthur Barnett was a ''classic'' department store selling all things to all people, he says.
''You could do all your shopping there. It was a home away from home. You could go to the restaurant for lunch. It had a post office. Everything your house would need ... And a week didn't go by without it organising some promotion. It was a happening place.''
The events ranged from end-of-season sales, when crowds queued from early in the morning, to make 'n model dressmaking competitions, art exhibitions and appearances by Miss World contestants.
Headlines and milestones
In 1959, radio personality Selwyn Toogood offered a Skellerup raincoat, a candlewick bedspread and a superfoam mattress as prizes in a housewives' quiz in the ''daylight store'' (completed five years earlier, with large skylights to let in natural light).
Newspaper clippings from that year also reveal an anonymous benefactor treated 60 children from local orphanages to a spending spree in store, sheep were shorn on a balcony in the men's department and a fashion parade to mark Dominion Wool Week featured ''boyfriend sweaters'' and formal suits with beaver and silver fox collars.
Other promotions through the years saw elephants paraded through the china department and appearances by model Elle Macpherson, English comedian Julian Clary and the cast of the television series M*A*S*H.
On television's first night, in 1962, people crowded into the store to watch programmes on ''strategically-placed receivers''.
In 1967, Mary Marston, of Otematata, made a successful attempt on the world non-stop knitting record, throwing her needles in the air after 60 hours of continuous knitting, jogging up and down one of the aisles, then sitting down to a drink and a cigarette.
However, nothing compared to the headlines generated by a disastrous fire which began as a small outbreak near the switchboard in the basement on the night of December 9, 1959, and quickly swept through the store.
''Looking through the main door was like looking through into a firebox of a locomotive,'' the Otago Daily Times reported.
''Firemen chopped away the floor and the crowd gasped as the crimson flames funnelled through in long, vicious tongues''.
Mr Marshall saw the billowing smoke from his home in St Kilda.
''My father took me in and I remember standing there as close as I could get. It was engulfed,'' he says. ''But the next day we were called to a meeting and they told us they were going to rebuild.''
Within days, staff were working from adjoining premises. By the 1970s, the rebuilt store covered 1.4 ha and the firm employed more than 400 people.
Most of them were female and the deputy chairman predicted that new equal pay legislation would lead to price increases.
One of the women on staff was Mary Dean (now 92), who worked in the mantle department and remembers that women's tweed suits and fur coats were ''all the go''.
''It was a busy place in those days. It's not the same now.''
Another was ''fieldsman'' Violet Allpress, who worked on a commission basis and travelled as far as Milton every Tuesday and Friday with stock and samples, everything from weights to a wheelbarrow.
On one occasion, a family of five asked her to take them suitable clothes for a wedding the following day and she had to pack into her car what she thought they would like to wear.
The personal service created a loyalty among customers and there was also a spirit of camaraderie among staff, fostered by picnics, balls and sporting competitions.
Former chief cashier Shirley Wray, whose father Ted Callon, brother, uncle and son were all employees, has happy memories of the store: ''Anybody who worked there was part of one big family''.
Those not in managerial roles were expected to address their supervisors formally, however.
Former soft furnishings machinist Pam Cleminson (nee Thurlow), jokes they ''just about saluted'' their bosses; Jim Sullivan says for many years, the store operated a little like the sitcom Are You Being Served?, which was set in a fictional London department store called Grace Brothers and parodied the British class system.
''You had your Captain Peacock [the store's floorwalker] and then the managers of each department. It was almost an upstairs-downstairs type of thing in terms of hierarchy. But if you stayed long enough, you worked your way through [the ranks].
''And, given it started in the early 1900s, it was very important in women's employment. Until then, there were very few opportunities for women [other than] nursing, teaching and typewriting.''
Other milestones included the listing of the firm on the stock exchange in 1963, the opening of the Meridian in 1997, the subsequent sale of the shopping mall, and a successful takeover bid by directors Julian Smith and Trevor Scott in 2002.
Changing face of retail
In the 1980s, Arthur Barnett bought the ailing DIC chain. The expanded empire had 1200 staff and 19 stores but the venture lost the firm an estimated $20 million.
Eventually, specialty shops, megastores and suburban malls saw off most of New Zealand's big, old department stores.
Early next year, Wellington's Kirkcaldie & Stains will shut its doors before reopening as the first New Zealand store of Australian retailer David Jones.
That Arthur Barnett survived so long - albeit as a much smaller version of what it once was - was down to the energy of management and the constant investment in expansion, Sullivan believes.
''The fire in 1959 might have destroyed some firms but they overcame that and by building again in the '60s, they were tapping into a financially buoyant economy.''
H&J Smith chief executive John Green says department stores are the most difficult of all the retail sectors to be in, with their wide range of products demanding significant ''administration and management'' and putting them up against competitors who are specialists in their own fields.
However, people love the ''magic''department stores represent and the firm is confident there is a future for them, provided they stay relevant and offer the right products and services.
Mr Green adds the store's name will change about late September.
''It's a shame in a lot of respects. Both companies go back a long way, H&J Smith back to 1900 and Arthur Barnett back to 1903.
"But it's a matter of recognising that today the ability to market and promote your business to a wider audience is absolutely essential and the best way to achieve that is to reluctantly change the [Arthur Barnett] name.''
Iolene McArthur, the woman who began in the Arthur Barnett lingerie department as a 15-year-old, was saddened to learn of the sale but, like many former staff spoken to, was happy that a family-owned company would keep the store going.
''I'm pleased it's not another case of a business ending up with an overseas owner who knows nothing about it and sees it as just something in its portfolio,'' she says.
''If somebody was going to buy it, I'm glad it's a local.''
