J.L. Hudson's Department Store

01 / The story of this place

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The J.L. Hudson Company opened its 25-story flagship store on Woodward Avenue in downtown Detroit in 1911, eventually expanding it into one of the largest department stores in the world, with more than two million square feet of retail space and, for a time, the second-tallest building of its kind after Macy's in New York. Generations of Detroiters shopped, worked and were photographed with Santa Claus there, and the store's annual Thanksgiving parade, launched in 1924, grew into the modern America's Thanksgiving Parade. Diana Ross, later of the Supremes, was hired there in 1960 as the store's first African American bus girl, and actress Ellen Burstyn modeled for Hudson's around 1950 and 1951 at age eighteen. Suburban shopping malls and a declining downtown eroded Hudson's business for decades, and the flagship store closed for good in 1983. The vacant, deteriorating tower stood for 15 more years until the city imploded it on October 24, 1998, and the Hudson's Detroit mixed-use skyscraper development now occupies the site.

1. Opened in 1911, once one of the world's largest department stores
2. Diana Ross was hired here in 1960 as the store's first Black bus girl
3. Ellen Burstyn modeled here around 1950-1951
4. Closed in 1983; the empty tower was imploded on October 24, 1998
5. The Hudson's Detroit development now stands on the site