May Company California

The May Company terrazzo at the entrance of the company's flagship department store in downtown Los Angeles

May Company California

Type	Department store
Industry	Retail
Fate	Merged with J.W. Robinson's
Successor	Robinson's-May (1993) Macy's (2006)
Founded	1881 Los Angeles, California
Headquarters	Los Angeles, California
Products	Clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, and housewares.

May Company Department Store, prior to the conversion into Los Angeles County Museum of Art west building

May Company California was a chain of department stores operating in the Southern California and Nevada, previously with headquarters in North Hollywood, California. It was a subsidiary of May Department Stores and merged with May's other Southern California subsidiary, J. W. Robinson's in 1993 to form Robinsons-May.

May Company California was established in 1923 when May acquired A. Hamburger & Sons Co.^[1] (founded in 1881 by Asher Hamburger). The company operated exclusively in Southern California until 1983 when May Department Stores had dissolved Goldwater's, based in Scottsdale, Arizona and transferred its Las Vegas, Nevada store to May Company California.

The May Company store which was in Whittier, CA at the Quad opened in 1965 and closed on March 31, 1987, a mere 6 months prior to the Whittier Narrows Earthquake which took place on October 1, 1987 at 07:42. The store's three-level parking structure fell almost flat to the ground as a result of this quake, and the store itself suffered internal damage but remained intact until its controlled-implosion (via dynamite) a few years later.

Two well-known stores were located on the corners of 8th Street and Broadway, and Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue. The 1926 garage building at 9th and Hill Streets was one of the Nation's first parking structures (Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 1001).

References

1. ^ Pitt, Dale (2000). Los Angeles A to Z: An Encyclopedia of the City and County. University of California Press. p. 318. ISBN 9780520205307. http://books.google.ca/books?id=jhmY-UzUKOUC&pg=PA318. Retrieved 2009-02-04.