Click here to read a nice history of the chain, and its acquisition in 1964 by the organization that would become Cook United. For the local angle, here's the article that appeared in the Journal on Sept. 22, 1964. (Note that Cook also owned Pick-n-Pay, the subject of yesterday's post.)
But that was still a few years away, when the full-page New Year's themed-ad below appeared in the Lorain Journal on Dec. 29, 1962.
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My original post on the Ontario Store in 2011 continues to be a popular online destination for people who remember Ontario and the various rebranding it went through here and around Ohio. By 2020, there were more than 40 great comments left on the original 2011 blog post; currently there are more than 60, and there's no sign of slowing down.
Lorain used to be a great place to launch a business, as it was the home of several original stores that led to the creation of regional chains. Besides Ontario, there was Muir's, and Kline's.
Of course, that made their eventually closings even more bittersweet.
1 comment:
We were definitely an “Ontario”
family, as we lived close to Elyria Avenue and it was conveniently located, and I remember it having a good selection coupled with affordable prices. But the store that sticks out most in my memory is Zayre’s. Why? Because our phone number was only one digit off from the store’s number. We would get wrong number calls all the time. At first, we were annoyed by the constant calls. But at some point, we learned to have fun with it by answering whatever question the caller might have, just making things up, telling them the store
was closing in 20 minutes so they’d better hurry, giving outrageously low prices on sale items… whatever we could think of. It was sort of reverse prank calling, and my whole family got in on it, so I’ll drag them all under the bus here. In hindsight, it was wrong. But it turned annoying wrong number calls into fun.
On behalf of my entire family- if you ever called Zayre’s department store and we gave you the wrong (but very funny) information- I sincerely apologize.
Charlie Marko
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