photo courtesy hennepin country library, minneapolis
A Three Sisters store in Minneapolis.
In our April issue, I devoted an entire "Ask Vance" column to the old Three Sisters Building that still stands Downtown at the corner of Main and Union, though it's gone through other names over the years.
Of course, you remember that column, but if you need to refresh your memory of it, you can go here.
I hope you'll agree it's probably the finest writing you've ever read about the Three Sisters stories. It's what you'd call "niche" journalism. Well, it's certainly called something.
I mentioned that the Three Sisters store here was part of a national chain, and even though I'm sure you know how to use Google as well as I do — okay, probably better — I thought I'd share a few images of those other stores, not only for your viewing pleasure, but to show you that I wasn't just making that up. A few of these old stores seem to be locked in time — still standing, some of them looking as if they were abandoned yesterday.
Others, I suspect, are long gone — such as this old view (above) of the Three Sisters store that once stood in the heart of downtown Minneapolis. I'm sorry, but I don't know the exact location. At a glance, you can see that the signage is considerably more modern than what was used on the store in Memphis. This photo, which I believe was taken in the 1970s, is in the collection of the Hennepin Public Library in Minnesota.
photo by colleen kane, courtesy abandoned baton rouge
The sidewalk about the entrance to the Three Sisters store in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
For a whole series of views of another store elsewhere, I invite you explore a really nice website called Abandoned Baton Rouge. The creator, photographer, and main contributor, Colleen Kane, posted several photos of the Three Sisters store that stood on one of the major streets in downtown Baton Rouge, such as the two images you see here.
One of the columns inside the abandoned Three Sisters store in Baton Rouge.
I think you've gathered by now that Three Sisters apparently preferred downtown locations, but then again most of these stores originally opened before shopping malls and shopping centers drew customers to the suburbs.
While crawling around the World Wide Web, I also found some images of an old Three Sisters store that was located in Chicago, but since I can't really determine the copyright information, I'd rather not post them here. Just do a Google search youself, if you dare, and you may find other Three Sisters locations here and there.
For such a popular store, it's surprising that all of them closed. I'm just glad the wonderful building that was home to the store in Memphis has survived.
