Hens and Kelly

12/28/2014 30 images Share: , , Album RSS
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Hens and Kelly was a Buffalo-based department store known for its use of "green stamps" as a way of saving money and ensuring a customer's return.

With each purchase, the customer would receive stamps redeemable for merchandise or money off their next purchase. Most of its stores are now but a memory. This location was closed, but intact as it was originally designed by architect Roxie Gian in 1960. Half of the original sign was still up on this building, part of a plaza which housed other western New York favorite retail spots as Schiffs, Davids Bridal, Your Host restaurants, and Loblaws markets.

This plaza, a testament to local retail history, had its days numbered by locally infamous Benderson Development and Wal Mart. It was demolished to make way for a Wal Mart Supercenter.

Employees and management placed 42 time capsules in the bricks of the store during it's construction, and an effort was made by a friend of mine, Joseph Dietterich to retrieve some of them before it was completely razed. "They weren't time capsules in the traditional sense, each manager/buyer for the chain, all the upper level executives each got a personal capsule in which they could place simple notes etc. they were homemade using various pipe fittings and were designed to fit inside the holes in the center of the bricks. They came up with most of those, but did not find the purported "scroll time capsule" (employees wrote notes on a 60 foot scroll, also entombed in the walls)."

Note: It was a very hot day, creating a thick fog inside the store. Very neat.

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