In the years before suburban malls, holiday shopping was a bustling expedition to downtown Indianapolis department stores. From H. P. Wasson Co, at the northwest corner of Meridian and Washington Streets, the festive buyer, often a mother with children in tow, would dash across the street to L. S. Ayres & Co. on the southwest corner of the intersection, and then slog to Wm H. Block Co. at the southwest corner of Market and Illinois Streets. The intended object of the trip was delayed at each stop to join a crowd of humanity pressing to get a good view of windows displaying elves mechanically scurrying about busily filling orders in Santa’s workshop or merrymakers mechanically offering Christmas cheer in a quaint snowy village.
The unique holiday decorated store window was as traditional as the Christmas tree and was eagerly anticipated by all, especially children. Artistic window decorators transformed show windows that in prior years had been decorated with evergreen and holly enveloping select store wares, and an occasional real Santa Claus, into magical wonderlands. The When Clothing Store, 30 N. Pennsylvania, transformed one of its show windows in 1890 into “a hill and big snow bank” with little sledding children “sliding down the incline.” This novel display drew such attention that the following year saw a rivalry among the downtown stores — Wasson’s had a French sculptor give live demonstrations in one of its store windows that drew such large crowds the police arrested the artist for “obstructing the sidewalk.” It was suggested the police arrest the monkeys in the show window of the New York Store on a similar charge; another store seemed to have gotten its holidays mixed when it displayed a “gigantic spider web and a huge spider,” while a live Santa Claus in his workshop kept “the automatons wound up” in another show window. These exhibits were so popular that rails were put in front of the windows to “avert danger from the pressure of the throngs.”
In the early years of the 20th century, most store windows continued to be “dressed up for Santa Claus” with displays of inventory — “warm, wooly things,” shirts and ties, fancy combs and novelties, “bits of fancy work,” and “silver and cut glass” — arranged amid sprigs of greenery and beribboned gift boxes wrapped in shiny paper. A few Christmas windows displaying toys — “choo-choo” trains, dolls, and sleds — drew the wondering gaze of children. Here and there a store window featured an idyllic holiday scene, Santa’s sleigh drawn by deer atop a house while through the home’s window children could be seen tucked in their beds as the Jolly Elf arranges gifts beneath the Christmas tree. Ben Shirley, the creative window trimmer at the Star Store on West Washington St, constructed a holiday window display that featured a “locomotive and a train of cars” whirling through “tunnels, over inclines and back and forth at a rapid rate.” A “lively roller coaster” added to the delight of the children flattening their noses against the glass. More traditional seasonally decorated windows exhibited “a pretty Christmas tree,” but to the regret of many, in some years no downtown window displayed a real Santa Claus.
Electricity brought colorful Christmas lights to brighten show windows and enabled the life-like movement of figures in some displays. However, a mix of faulty wiring and flammable decorating materials often led to spectacular show window fires. Electrical inspectors from fire insurance companies soon joined holiday shoppers and wide-eyed children in viewing the Christmas windows, and new building ordinances prohibiting the use of unsafe decorative materials in store windows soon followed.
Of the major downtown department stores, L. S. Ayres & Co. probably holds more Christmas memories, especially for the children of the fifties. Each holiday season, at least two of its show windows were transformed into a fantasy land. In 1914 the show windows facing Washington Street held a reproduction of a Montreal, Quebec winter carnival with skiers and tobogganists schussing and racing down the slopes of a miniature snow-covered Mt. Royal in “realistic motion.” Skaters gliding across an ice rink and a reproduction of one of the Canadian city’s famous ice palaces completed the scene, enchanting young and old alike. Several decades later on Thanksgiving eve in 1953, six Christmas windows “depicting a novel and entertaining story” opened the holiday season drawing thousands of spectators daily. Using 32 angel figures, most of which had mechanical movements, the windows portrayed “the magic of Christmas and the angelic behavior of children preceding the great holiday.” Each year’s theme for Ayres’ Christmas windows was planned by the display department in the early summer, and while elves in Santa’s workshop made Christmas toys, carpenters, painters, and craftsmen designed and made each fantasy in the Ayres workshop for holiday windows that would enchant and delight children of all ages.
Adding to the L. S. Ayres Christmas magic were massive, densely lighted garlands encircling the first floor over the windows, enhancing the scenes below. The building’s façade for many years evoked the holiday spirit with a five-story illuminated candle above the wishes of the season, “Merry Christmas.” Overlooking the frenzied comings and goings of shoppers and the clusters of wide-eyed children gazing in wonderment at the Christmas window fantasies was the bronze Cherub nestled on the bracket of the great Ayres clock. Ah yes, and beyond the twirling doors was the real Santa Claus waiting to hear the Christmas wishes of every boy and girl.
Indianapolis downtown Christmas store windows are mostly a memory. Today’s generation of children look in awe at the Circle of Lights — the lighting of the “World’s Tallest Christmas Tree” — and other holiday events that will form memorable traditions. Whether one recalls fond Christmases past or looks with wonderment at Christmas present or holds with eager anticipation Christmases future, above all, “keep Christmas well…And so as Tiny Tim observed, ‘God Bless Us, Every One!’”
