Talk:Miller's Department Store

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• From Knoxville Central Business Improvement District (CBID:

Did you know Knoxville was once the home of East Tennessee's largest department store? Millers' Department store (founded in 1905) was one of the first stores in the area to install an escalator and offer a store charge card - the Charge-a-Plate. The building was refurbished in 2000 and is headquarters for Knoxville Utilities Board and Image Point.

• Omniplan, an architecture firm in Texas, won awards for its work on some Miller's stores:

1976 Miller's Department Store - Bristol, Virginia	National Association of Store Fixture Manufacturers - Design Award
1976 Miller's Department Store - Bristol, Virginia	Texas Society of Architects - Commendation Award
1976 Miller's Department Store - Bristol, Virginia	Texas Society of Architects - Honor Award
1975 Miller's Department Store - Knoxville, Tennessee	National Association of Store Fixture Manufacturers - Design Award
1972 Miller's Department Store - Knoxville, Tennessee	Texas Society of Architects - Honor Award

• The Miller's building in Knoxville at 445 S. Gay Street is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It's described as follows:[1]

Miller’s Department Store built the corner building in 1905, with a 1911 addition to the north in the same Edwardian style as the original building. The third expansion was made in 1935 in the Art Deco style. In 1998, the rehabilitation of the three buildings was undertaken, with the recreation of original details and the return of the buildings to their earliest appearance.

• The Miller Brothers Department Store at 629 Market St. in Chattanooga is also on the National

Register.[2]

• In 2000 and 2001, Keep Knoxville Beautiful gave awards for two projects involving the old Miller's Knoxville building.[3]. Another website has a photo of a mural on the building and another has an interior photo.

• Miller's figured in some "firsts" in Oak Ridge in 1944:[4]

January 15, 1944 - Miller's Store - Negotiations for store on Broadway.

March 16, 1944 - Miller's Store - Ready to open store.

February 9, 1944 - Miller's Store - Sponsors Miss Oak Ridge contest at Center Theater.

--Orlady (talk) 00:24, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

• The Knoxville store was the site of civil rights protests, as described in the book Diary of a Sit-in, By Merrill Proudfoot. [5]

--Orlady (talk) 00:28, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

• Miller Bros. was one of the two anchors when Northgate Mall (Chattanooga) opened in 1972. That store "went through multiple ownership changes and names" and is now a Belk.(Memories Of Northgate Mall by John Shearer, March 17, 2007) --Orlady (talk) 04:34, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

What's the idea of "Miller's of Tennessee"?

This article has been moved from "Miller's Department Store" to "Miller's of Tennessee," with an edit summary that asserts that this is the "correct proper name of Dept store chain." What's the source of this information? Since the article is totally unsourced, I think we would all be challenged to identify the "correct proper name" of this store. However, neither my personal recollection (as a former customer and credit card holder of "Miller's") nor the sources I noted above provide a hint that the subject of this article was ever called "Miller's of Tennessee." It does appear that there may have been two different stores (Miller Bros. in Chattanooga and Miller's Department Store in Knoxville)... --Orlady (talk) 02:11, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Ah, now the article is being edited to make its content consistent with its new title. (Next time, please start making the changes before you move the article. [wink])--Orlady (talk) 02:13, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I've restored the name "Miller's Department Store". The inspiration for this was receiving the following email message:

I worked as a department manager for Miller's in the 70's. I do not recall it as ever being other than Miller's Department Store after the merge with Miller Brothers of Chattanooga. We were a part of Garfinkle, Brooks Brothers and Miller Rhodes which I believe was acquired by Associated Department Stores which was acquired by May Company, which in turn sold the West Towne location to Dillards not Proffits. Proffits was another department store based in Maryville that was family owned until purchased by Saks. Proffits was merged with an an Alabama company that was then later sold to Belks.

I looked into the sourcing for the article to see if I could figure out where the name "Miller's of Tennessee" had come from. Local sources clearly call it "Miller's Department Store," and the "Miller's of Tennessee" name came from national news sources. I found this NY Times article, which contains the "Miller's of Tennessee" wording in the following context:

Since the beginning of the year, Allied has sold store chains including Bonwit Teller, Joske's of Texas, Cain-Sloan of Nashville, Block's of Indianapolis, Dey's of Syracuse and Miller's of Tennessee - for a total of more than $500 million.

When I saw that, I realized that the "of Tennessee" -- and the "of Texas," "of Nashville," "of Indianapolis", and "of Syracuse" -- was not part of the store name, but simply the news media's effort to give some context for a store name that would not be meaningful to national news readers. That led me to conclude that the name "Miller's of Tennessee" never was valid. --Orlady (talk) 05:14, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

External links modified

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External links modified (January 2018)

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