Sears 1068 (San Francisco, California)

Sears #1068 was a Sears department store located at 3120 Mission Street in San Francisco, California. The store opened March 7, 1929 and closed 1975. Sears was a major institution in San Francisco since it opened its flagship store at Army (Cesar Chavez Street since 1995) and Mission in 1929. “We feel sure that our entry into San Francisco,” Sears boasted in a full-page advertisement in the San Francisco Call, “will be welcomed in the friendly spirit always manifested by one of the greatest cities in the world.” And, indeed, it was: Sears soon became the commercial hub of the Mission District, employing about 250 full time, unionized, workers. But in 1975, the Mission Sears closed its doors. The store had been roiled by an eight-month strike, but there was more going on beneath the surface, as a Sears spokesman told the New York Times: “We weren’t competitive here with the convenient suburban malls.” Indeed, the expansion of suburbs in the East and South Bay challenged San Francisco’s regional retail dominance, and the Mission Sears paid the price. Furthermore, the largescale movement of generally-low income Latin American immigrants into the Mission significantly diminished local purchasing power.