It Was Fun Shopping Lafayette in ’60s

   In the 1950s and ’60s, my folks did most of the their shopping at businesses in our hometown of Darlington. Since the selection of goods was limited, they also headed down Old State Road 47 to Crawfordsville about once a month. A couple of Dad’s high school buddies, Bill Stewart and Al Niswonger, lived in Lafayette, and we visited with their families every once in a while. And each summer, Mom and Dad took us to Columbian Park, which had a lot of fun things for kids to do! But I don’t recall my parents ever shopping in Lafayette when I was young.

   When my wife and I married in 1966, just a few months after both of us graduated from high school, we lived in the small town of Clarks Hill, which is located just off US 52 in the southeast corner of Tippecanoe County. With me attending Purdue and working at National Homes, and my wife working in Lafayette, most of our shopping was done in Lafayette. There was a wide variety of stores, especially in the downtown area on Main and South streets and around the courthouse. A few that I recall were J.C. Penneys, Rapp’s Double R Corral, Loebs, The Fashion, Gluck’s, Geislers, Stecks, Woolworth, Chupp’s Jewelers, Reifers Furniture, The Sportsman, Lehnen’s Furniture, Montgomery Wards, Kresge’s, The Baltimore, O’Rears bakery, McCord’s Candies and Deckers Sporting Goods. At that time, we also took in movies at two downtown theaters…The Mars and The Lafayette, both of which were elaborately decorated inside. The downtown was a unique and fun place to go!

   On the north side of town there was Market Square Shopping Center, which had opened in 1958, and it also had several businesses, such as L.S. Ayres, Smith Shoes, Richman Brothers, Diana Shop, Fannie Mae Candies, Olan Mills Photography, Hooks Drugs, Arni’s and Pizza King…just to mention a few. Clarks Hill had a very small IGA grocery, which was quite handy since we lived only a block away, but we did most of our grocery shopping at the Payless grocery on Elmwood Avenue in Lafayette, which had opened up in 1960. I could not believe how many food items they stocked!

    Well, time changes everything, and Lafayette today is not the same as it was in the 1960s. When K-Mart opened, and then later on when Tippecanoe Mall came into existence on US 52 on the south side of town, many of the downtown businesses, along with those at Market Square experienced a severe decline in customers and eventually closed. Don’t get me wrong…there are many more businesses and retail stores in Lafayette today than there were back then, but the large majority are chains and franchises. The unique character of the once vibrant stores have been replaced by concrete, nondescript clones of the faceless corporations that own them. You can see the same stores in any large city in America today. A couple of those older businesses remain, but much of downtown Lafayette has been replaced with offices, gift and antique stores, and a few eateries and coffee shops. Market Square suffered the same fate.

   Yes, we started shopping at the mall, the cookie-cutter franchises, and the big name big-box stores…and if you’ve seen one, then you have seen them all. The population of Lafayette and greater Lafayette has also increased by leaps and bounds. Thousands of new homes, apartments, condominiums, factories, strip malls, stores and warehouses have taken over hundreds of acres of some of the best farm land in Indiana. Driving in traffic on such streets as Creasy Lane, State Road 26 and Concord Road takes skill and a bit of luck. At one time, US 52 south had one stoplight…at the intersection of Teal Road. Now as you head north on US 52 coming to town, there are SEVEN stoplights as a result of increased traffic, new construction and new side roads.

   So, here’s a question you might want to consider…Can a great city become too large? If you remember Lafayette back then, and compare it to today…you will know the answer.

John “Butch” Dale is a retired teacher and County Sheriff. He has also been the librarian at Darlington the past 36 years, and is a well-known artist and author of local history.