Weinstock's:: Sacramento's Finest Department Store

by Annette Kassis

In 1874, David Lubin hung a provocative sign over a ten by twelve-foot space on the corner of Fourth and K Streets in Sacramento, California: D. Lubin: One Price." Thus began the dry goods store that would evolve into Weinstock, Lubin, and Co., one of Sacramento's landmark businesses and eventually a regional giant. While many Sacramentans will remember Weinstock's spectacular Christmas displays, the signature children's milk bar and the gala openings of suburban stores at Country Club Plaza and Sunrise Mall, historian Annette Kassis goes beyond the storefront to uncover the philosophy that placed Weinstock's at the forefront of business innovation. More than a retail establishment, Weinstock's one-hundred-year legacy brought high fashion, progressive politics and the leading edge of modernization to California's Capital City."

144 pages, Paperback

First published August 7, 2012

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who has now lived in the Sacramento area for a year and a half and will be leaving the area in the next six months, I suddenly got a craving to take in all I could about the city before I left. I want to be able to appreciate what is around me before I say goodbye to it all. As such, I had never heard of Weinstock's; I picked up this read as an impulse buy at Costco, which was bundled with a bunch of books about local history. I am SO GLAD I chose this one. While I will never be able to say that I stepped into a Weinstock's, nor be able to say that I can reminisce about what Sacramento life was like before much of the reurbanization and redevelopment of Old Town/Downtown was taken on, I can see the impact of what such a major department store in the early history of Sacramento was like for residents. I always find it truly amazing how a simple, little hole-in-the-wall store like David Lubin's (literally 10 by 12 feet in size) became the expansive major department store that was Weinstock, Lubin. Kassis does a wonderful job in narrating the story of how Lubin's tiny store with a unique gimmick for the time (one price for items) gained him the massive legacy that it did. The integrated pictures of the old stores and the historic relevance for putting the store's success in context with the times was well accomplished. I also appreciated how Lubin treated his employees with dignity and kindness and attempted to treat them as humans with a goal for career building rather than how many retail employees are treated today (and are ultimately set up to funnel through the job as a revolving door). Reading this short work of nonfiction inspired me to try out other works by Kassis, as I enjoyed her style of description of something that could easily be a boring topic and transforming it into a genuine interest in local history.

[Hannah Moring · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a little biased because my great great grandfather is David Lubin, but I found the book very interesting.