Gertz faces the end of a grand shopping era in Jamaica, Queens on September 3, 1981

On the second day of September, 1981, a Friday, there came a whisper, a rustle, a certain...frisson of anxiety that ran through the immaculate, polished floors of the Gertz department store in Jamaica, Queens. It was the last gasp of summer, the city still sweating and groaning under a thick blanket of humid air. But in this cool, artificially-lit cathedral of consumerism, a chill had set in. The rumor, which had been circulating for weeks in the coffee shops and beauty salons of the borough, was now an Official Thing, a capital-O, capital-T statement from the high-and-mighty Allied Stores Corporation—the Gertz flagship, the very sine qua non of Long Island style, was to CLOSE.

The Gertz in Jamaica! Good heavens! It was like hearing the sun was going to take a permanent vacation, or that the Long Island Rail Road was suddenly going to start running on time. This was not just a store; it was a landmark! A monument to a bygone era of shopping, of a certain kind of refined, leisurely grace. It was the place where you could take a full afternoon and descend a series of escalators—escalators!—past displays of fine china and ladies' hats, down to the basement, where the bargains—the real bargains—waited like buried treasure. You could still get a hot dog and an out-of-this-world custard with chocolate syrup, and for a glorious moment, you could feel as though you were a part of something grand, a part of a New York that was fading even as you walked its hallowed halls.

But the city—and New York City most of all!—is nothing if not a cannibal. The old ways and the old places get gobbled up by the new, the bigger, the faster, the more convenient. It was the changing face of Queens, they said, the shifting demographics. The old guard was moving out, the new was moving in, and the grand old dame of department stores just couldn't keep up with the new kids on the block - the discount joints, and the malls with their cavernous parking lots and dozens of shops. 

The closing of the Gertz flagship was no mere business transaction. It was a cultural earthquake, a psychic wound, the final confirmation that the MALLS—those gleaming, sterile, and relentlessly NEW pleasure palaces in Hicksville, Massapequa, and Bay Shore—had won. The suburbs had triumphed over the urban heart, leaving its old, beating organ to wither.

And so it was that on September 3rd, the official word came down. The Gertz would close its doors in January of the following year. It was a death knell for a certain kind of life, a certain kind of grace, a certain kind of New York. A funeral for a department store! What could be more absurdly, exquisitely sad? And all across Queens, men and women who had bought their first suits, their first dresses, their first wedding gifts there, looked at the newspapers, sighed, and wondered what in the name of God would become of the world now. The end of an era! A final, melancholic gasp in the great, roaring, onrushing river of American life. And just like that, the Gertz, that grand old dame of Jamaica, was gone, swallowed up by the relentless, insatiable city. And the world—well, the world just kept on turning!

The people on the sidewalk knew better. They knew this was not a temporary setback. This was a DEATH. This was the moment the old Jamaica died, not with a bang, but with the sad, quiet whisper of a store closing, the final click of the lock on the big glass doors, leaving only the memory of what once was—the memory of a custard with chocolate syrup, and the faint, lingering scent of a perfume you can no longer buy.