Remembering Woolworth's, the beloved variety store chain

There was a time when being nickel-and-dimed wasn’t a bad thing. That time was the heyday of the five-and-dime store, where Long Islanders bought notions and sundries, knickknacks and doodads — everything from paper plates to paperbacks, model cars to makeup, and even the occasional goldfish.

Also called variety stores, to differentiate them from more upscale — even if only slightly — department stores, they traditionally were of Main Street, not the mall. Their long-gone names included McCrory, G.C. Murphy, J.J. Newberry and the biggest of them all, F.W. Woolworth.

Familiarly known as Woolworth’s, that defunct chain holds a special place in Long Island hearts since the eponymous Frank Winfield Woolworth built his mansion. Winfield Hall, in Glen Cove. Completed in 1915, four years before his death, that 16-acre site has been used a locale for the movie “The Greatest Showman” (2017), the HBO dramas “Boardwalk Empire” and “Mildred Pierce” and the Taylor Swift music video for “Blank Space.”

Woolworth’s was founded in Pennsylvania in 1879, and quickly dominated its field. The company moved its headquarters to Manhattan in 1913, when its newly inaugurated Woolworth Building was the world’s tallest.

There were 57 Woolworth’s stores across Long Island by April 1957, including a newly opened one at the Inter-County Shopping Center in South Farmingdale. Yet by 1988 only 21 remained on the Island, and just 13 when the parent company closed down the entire national chain in July 1997.

Until then, it was for many Long Islanders a place of first jobs, of eating at the lunch counter — a hamburger and fries with lettuce, tomato and onion cost 50¢ at the Oceanside Woolworth’s in 1955, plus three flavors of ice cream sandwiches for 9¢ each — and, especially, of toys.

“My mom would take us to Woolworth’s [in Bellmore] and she'd turn my sister and me loose while she did her shopping,” recalled retired attorney Gordon Ryan, 76, of East Hampton, of his 1950s childhood. “There was one aisle I can distinctly remember: down the right side of the store was all toys and models. It went from front to back — it was huge!” he said, still delighted by the cornucopia.

“I would pore over it deciding what I was going to get,” he went on. “I was starting to get into building model cars and battleships, and it was such a dilemma trying to pick: Should I get the Pontiac or the Cadillac or this ship? There were always so many choices.”

He doesn’t remember what toys his two-years-younger sister Dory would get, but real-estate agent Joanne Cohen, 63, of Huntington, remembers her own. “Barbie dolls. Ice skates. Hula hoops!” she said happily.

Raised in Roslyn, she went with her parents to the Woolworth’s in Uniondale’s Roosevelt Field, remembering it as a candy land of treats. “The soft ice cream, the endless varieties of candies including old ones like Wax Bottles, Candy Buttons, Necco Wafers and Mary Janes. The lunch counter! Amazing milk shakes! But the best part,” she said, “was taking the bus there with my friends in junior high school.”

That same Woolworth’s was where Westbury’s Bonnie Healy, 77, had her first job, at age 17 in 1966. “My mother passed away when I was 16, and my father worked,” recalled the retired X-ray technician, who was raised in Carle Place. Getting her driver’s license a year later, she found afterschool employment at the Roosevelt Field store, starting around Eastertime at the nut and candy counter.

“It was disastrous,” she said, “because I'm a chocaholic! And the nuts! The cashews were excellent!” She would sell “loose candies and jelly beans and warmed nuts” scooped out of large containers. “That was the more expensive stuff. There were also [cheaper] things sold in packages, like chocolate bunnies. And on Saturday before Easter, whatever [Easter candy] was left over, they gave to the employees.”

Healy stayed on for “probably half a year. It was mostly teenage kids and some older women.” She worked in other parts of the store as well. For example, “I had to scoop the dead fish out of the aquarium tanks. That was one of the more exciting jobs to do,” she joked.

The F.W. Woolworth Corp. itself, as late as 1981, ran the nation’s largest variety store chain and was the fourth-largest retailer overall. It was down to 13th largest seven years later, when it began fending off takeover attempts.

And in 1997, the company pulled the plug on its stores — done in, said industry observers, by not keeping up with the times, watching as chains like Walmart and Kmart overtook it. The parent corporation, which by now owned Foot Locker and other chains, rebranded itself as the Venator Group a year later — and in 2001 rechristened itself again, as Foot Locker Inc.

But back in the day, Woolworth’s was the place many Long Islanders went to buy “the little tchotchke stuff,” said Healy. “Stuff for your hair, ribbons sold by the yard off a spool, patterns for dressmaking, and buttons and needles and thread. And I think they had turtles there. I don't remember guinea pigs.”