The Shriver's Building

[gfsfadmin]

When I first moved to Sioux Falls in 1985, it was my junior year of high school. I went to Washington back when it was downtown. You know, where the WashPav is now. From out of the windows I could see the Shriver's building. It had been vacated years before and all the windows boarded up with pink and blue boards, if memory serves me. I wondered what the building was, being new to Sioux Falls. Urban renewal was waning and I'd seen plenty of the fallout up to this point.

A few years later my friend Cory and I got inside the building and did some exploring one late-summer night in 1988. Within, we found old telephone switchboards (the kind Lilly Tomlin used when she did her Ernestine character), we found the remnants of the old tea room on one of the upper floors, we found fashion remnants from the 60s and 70s. There was a fallout shelter in the basement and it was still stocked with biscuits and water drums. Cory tried a biscuit and did not like it. We managed to get onto the roof and look around a bit. It was an amazing adventure, and though legally probably not kosher, I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. The one thing I didn't get was a good idea of what the Shriver's building was like during its heyday.

[Foster]

Growing up in Sioux Falls (1943-60's) I remember Shrivers as THE department store in town. J.C. Penny and then Ward's were next.
At Christmas one of Shriver's inside (lobby) windows had a Santa Workshop animated display.

[psanderson]

One of the things I remember about Shriver's is that it had metal wires running overhead from the sales floor to a cashier. Money and the sales ticket were sent to the cashier in tubes and the change and receipts were sent back to the customers in the same tubes. These tubes were always zinging back and forth. It was similar to the way drive through banking is done now!

[Foster]

I had forgotten that system!

[Don]

Just like psanderson, I recall those tubes and watching the magic as my money disappeared and eventually returned with the correct change and the receipt. I have always wondered what the control room for the tube system must have looked like, how many people were working there, and how they knew which container went in which tube. I recall my Mom buying a lot of clothes there....for her, my sister, my Dad and me! We recently had a WHS '58 Reunion Party in what was the former basement of Shrivers. The place has really changed, but at least it did not fall victim to the wrecking ball.

[lizrichmond]

Wow, what a memory those little containers with my money are!! I graduated in the late 50's. The funny word I remember was mezzanine which was the floor between 1st and 2nd. Bought my first pair of clip on earrings in the first floor jewelry department...just to the right of the front doors...No pierced ears then!

[Chad Boese]

I live in Sioux Falls and have most of my life. A a grade schooler when school started in the Fall it was time for new clothes. Schrivers' was the place that Mom always took me for new school duds. Even as a young adult, my stature was smaller than the average, I was able to be out fitted in the boys large section.and for considerable less cost. Schrivers was an incredible Department Store for a town our size back then.

[Judith]

I haved lived in Sioux Falls all my life and seen many changes at the Shrivers Building.
It was a nice department store until the '60's I believe. I believe I remember Roger
Wilson's mother teaching knitting in the basement for many years. I don't remember
the windows being boarded up, but I remember it having little shops on the first floor
with a lovely restrauant on the second floor over looking Phillips Avenue. I am trying
to picture where the picture was taken from that is in one of the replies. Shrivers
is on the north east corner of 12th and Phillips. To the south of that corner is where
Smith Jewelry was and down the block a little ways the State Theater. There is now
a bank on that corner but the State Theater is still there.

[gfsfadmin]

Thanks for posting your memories, Judith.
The picture in the first post is taken from 12th street, to the south and east of Shriver's. It was taken back in around 1988 or so, before the parking ramp was built that would obscure much of the building were the shot taken today.

Is there a department store in the world today as warm and inviting as those of yore? I was never in the Shriver's building when it was a department store, but I did visit Brandeis in Omaha once upon a time when it was still open.

[Don]

Eric...you beat me to the punch on responding to Judith's post. I agree that the picture was taken from the corner of 11th Street and 1st Avenue. I took the earlier picture and lightened it a bit where you can see more detail and have a better understanding of where it was taken. I am unable to attach it to this post, but will send it to Eric in a separate email and he can post it if he wants.

Don

Here is the picture:[img]

Shrivers.jpg

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