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Lost Treasures: Brock's Department Store
| Wednesday, Nov 8 2006 12:16 PM
Last Updated: Wednesday, Nov 8 2006 11:54 AM
Brock's Department Store
Photos:
Brock's Department store
Brock's linen floor.
Brock's fabric section
For 50 years Bakersfieldians bought their fine clothes at Brock’s.
Malcolm Brockbought the business from the Hochheimer brothers (after whom the store was named in 1919) in 1924 and proceeded to build a department store institution.
One of Brock’s early moves was to introduce a fashionable line of women’s ready-to-wear clothes, cementing the store as the first place to shop in the minds of Bakersfield’s style-concious.
In 1952 the Kern County earthquake damaged the store, but it didn’t close the business. Inventory was moved to circus tents in the Westchester and nicknamed “Brock’s Big Top,” while the main store was rebuilt.
Son John M. Brock took over when Malcolm died in 1962 and guided the store through its golden years.
“Brock’s was Bakersfield’s shrine to shopping,” said Sofiea Clerico, 67, who recalls shopping trips to Brock’s in the 1950s and 60s.
“It was such an elegant place to work,” she added, noting that J.C. Penny paid its employees 25 cents more per hour, but “everyone wanted to work at Brock’s.”
Graci Lee Bailey worked at Brock’s one year as a teenager, and vividly remembers the stiff job requirements.
“All of the people who worked there had to wear brown, black or navy, and in our department we had to wear all black – you had to be dressed up every day to work there,” she said.
Bailey had a demanding supervisor who required employees to wear a nice dress and black stockings. Bailey didn't own any, and she remembers the supervisor tartly suggesting that she buy a bottle of leg-make up and wear it every day.
When she got her first paycheck she immediately bought another dress, and the required stockings.
It was a demanding job, Bailey said, but overall a rewarding experience.
Brock’s elegance started at the cosmetics counter and continued on. Jewelry. Silk scarves. Greeting cards. Christmas-time decorations. Hats. Clothing. A lunch counter that served banana cream pie.
And Sally Shopper: Brock’s offered a service in which you called in your shopping list and had it delivered.
Alphonse Weill’s department store on the corner of 19th and K provided friendly competition for to Brock’s, as did the Fedway on 21st and Chester. Weill and Jon Brock often went on buying trips together, because there was “plenty of business” to go around in Bakersfield at the time, said Kern County Museum curator Jeff Nickell.
After 93 years in business, Weill’s was sold in 1966. Brock’s would follow two decades later.
As a small child, Leo J. Pierucci, now 89, lived on the corner of 18th and L, a few blocks away from Hochheimer’s. One day he went missing from the front yard of the house, sending his parents into a frenzy - until there was a knock at the door.
A Hochheimer’s employee found the young Pierucci in the toy department playing with a truck and walked him home, to his parents’ relief.
In 1967, a Brock’s satellite branch opened at the then-new Valley Plaza mall. Gottschalks purchased Brock’s in 1987.
The former Brock’s building on Chester Avenue now houses a furniture and antique store. A plaque on the northwest corner of the building commemorates the Hirschfeld-Hockeimer-Brock’s company.