I thought this might be of interest, from blogdowntown.com:
38 Years Ago: Broadway Department Store Moved Off Namesake Street
By ERIC RICHARDSON
Published: Wednesday, November 16, 2011, at 09:46AM
USC Archive
DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — On November 16, 1973, the doors to the Broadway Department Store were closed one final time at 4th and Broadway, the corner the then-massive store had inhabited since its founding in 1896.
The next day, the store opened its doors at 7th and Flower, inside the new mixed-use Broadway Plaza.
It was actually in August of 1895 that the "Broadway Department Store" opened its doors at 401 S. Broadway, but the store's first incarnation was forgettable. J.A. Williams and Co. opened the small store, advertising that "the people of Los Angeles have never seen goods sold at our prices." The store made it through the holiday season and then promptly went bankrupt.
On February 24, 1896, Arthur Letts took over operation of the failed enterprise, advertising a massive bankruptcy sale to move all of the store's previous wares within 30 days.
Letts had a magic touch, and by 1911 the store had grown to four floors and 125,000 square feet.
It wasn't enough, though, and in 1913 Letts leased three floors in the Clark Hotel on Hill Street as a temporary home during the construction of a new nine-story building with nearly 11 acres of floor space. The three-phased construction project wrapped in 1915.
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