What started this new approach to Hoxsie was when I found this receipt from The Carl Company in one of my folders the other day, and just decided to share it on Instagram. No big back story, no comprehensive history of Schenectady’s most fondly remembered local department store – just a paper cash register receipt. I don’t even know what year it’s from.
And I have a bunch of other little bits of Carl Company ephemera I’ve been wanting to share, like this book for saving Carl’s Gold Bond Stamps:
A different Gold Bond Stamp book is shown below, from around 1964, when Carl Co. had grown to four stores with its Shoporama store.
I definitely have some actual stamps somewhere in this house – and when I finally find them I’ll scan and post them.
If you want a nice capsule history of The Carl Company, I can offer this from the Schenectady County Historical Society:
The Carl Company began as a dry goods store owned by Charles W. Carl, Sr. (1871-1940) at Medina, New York in 1891. Carl soon expanded, opening several stores in western New York State, including stores in Lockport, Brockport, Tonawanda, and
Hornellsville. The Lockport store was one of the Carl Company’s earliest, opening in 1891 or 1892 and remaining in operation until 1968.In 1906, the Carl Company shuttered several of its smaller stores to open a store in Schenectady, and Charles W. Carl, Sr. and his wife, Lily Swick Carl (d. 1976), moved to the city. The Schenectady department store was initially located in the Kinium Building at 256 State Street (now 240 State Street) before the Carl Company constructed a new building at 430 State Street in 1916, where the store remained until closing in 1991. The downtown store was further expanded in 1925, as the Carl Company acquired property on Smith Street across from the rear of the store for a warehouse and expanded the store west on State Street. In 1972, the building was renovated and modernized. By the following year, after the closure of the H.S. Barney Co. and Wallace Co. stores, Carl’s became the sole Schenectady-based department store downtown.
The Carl Company continued to grow in the area. Its first area branch store, at 288 Saratoga Road, Schenectady, in the Mayfair shopping center … was opened in 1954. With the opening of the Mayfair store, the Carl Company became the first locally-owned department store to open a branch location. In 1963 the Carl Company opened its Shoporama store in Rotterdam, followed by a Saratoga Springs store in 1973, a Clifton Park store in 1976, an Amsterdam store in 1981, and a Troy store in 1983. After operating as a cash-only store and offering Gold Bond Dividend stamps with each purchase since 1894, Carl Company first offered charge accounts in 1957. The company continued to offer its Gold Bond Dividend stamps until its stores were closed in 1991.
These Gold Bond stamps were exclusive to Carl Company – the stamps they gave out had their logo imprinted on them, so were only redeemable at their stores. (That was different from how, for example, S&H Green Stamps worked, which would be collected at various stores and redeemed at central offices.) There was also a national Gold Bond stamp company, begun by Curt Carlson in 1938, if Wikipedia is accurate. But Carl Company’s Gold Bond stamps predated that company by at least 25 years, so it’s not clear to me there’s any relation.
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