Bond Clothing Stores, Bond Clothes, Bond Clothiers, or Bond Stores, was a men's clothing manufacturing company and retailer. The company catered to the middle-class consumer.
History
The company was founded in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1914, when Mortimer Slater, with Charles Anson Bond and Lester Cohen, founded the stores as a retail outlet for their suit manufacturing company. Charles Anson Bond, whose name was chosen for its market value and meaning left Cleveland for Columbus, Ohio where he opened a branch of the company. Bond stepped away from active management when he was elected Mayor of Columbus in 1907. The first store featured fifteen-dollar men's suits. As president Slater built the concern into a million-dollar corporation, increasing the number of employees from fifty to more than 4,000. At his retirement in 1924, the concern had twenty-eight stores in large cities. Charles Anson Bond also sold his interests in the 1920s. Bond Stores, Inc. was organized in Maryland on March 19, 1937, by the consolidation of Bond Clothing Company, a Maryland corporation, and its subsidiary, Bond Stores, Inc. The principal executive offices of the corporation were located at 261 Fifth Avenue in New York City. During the 1930s and 1940s, it became the largest retail chain of men's clothing in the United States, best known for selling two-pant suits. In 1975, the company was sold to foreign investors, then broken up and sold in smaller groups to its management. For instance, 13 stores were operated by the Proud Wind, Inc. company.
Manufacturing operations
In 1933, company president Barney S. Ruben moved the manufacturing center of Bond Clothes from New Brunswick, New Jersey to Rochester, New York where he spent his youth and got his start in the clothing industry with Fashion Park Clothes. By the end of the 1930s, the manufacturer grew to employ over 2,500 people. During the 1940s the company expanded to larger manufacturing facilities on North Goodman St. In 1956, wholly owned manufacturing plants operated at New Brunswick, New York City, and Rochester. The Rochester facility was later sold to General Dynamics. The company's manufacturing facilities remained in Rochester until 1979, when the factory was finally closed.
Retail stores
Bond Stores operated numerous retail outlets in the United States. Principally a men's clothier, by the mid-1950s some stores also carried women's clothing, and later became known as "family apparel centers." In 1956, the chain operated nearly 100 outlets from coast to coast in principal cities, in addition to more than 50 agency stores that sold goods in smaller communities. In the late 1960s there were around 150 retail outlets. By 1982, that number had dwindled to 50. Around 1970, new management knowledgeable in fashions took over Bond Clothes, but their knowledge of the retail clothing industry did nothing to save Bond Clothes from its eventual demise.
Its New York City flagship store was at 372 Fifth Avenue at 35th Street, the former flagship of Best & Co. Known as "Bond Fifth Avenue," they began leasing the store and the adjoining 12-story office tower from Best & Co. in 1947. In 1948, Bond renovated the entire building with ultra-modern interiors under the direction of designer Morris Lapidus. Bond stayed in the building until the mid-1970s. The building has most recently been redeveloped by the Paratis Group as a commercial / residential complex known as the "372 Fifth Avenue Loft." The company also operated a store at Times Square. That outlet opened in 1940, was dubbed "the cathedral of clothing." The store closed in 1977. Starting in 1980, the building was a dance club called Bond International Casino, notable for hosting a concert by The Clash in 1981. The building housed a restaurant called until December 2015. The site is now under construction to house a new GAP and Old Navy in 2017.
During the late 1940s, Bond built one of its last stand alone downtown stores. Designed in a high concept art moderne style in Cleveland, Ohio, at Euclid Avenue and East Ninth Street in 1946/7. The structure replaced a previous building built in 1920. The structure used the site's sharp angle to its advantage by creating a tower crowned with windows facing inbound Euclid Avenue traffic".. The circular forms of the tower were repeated in the roof's overhang. On the Euclid Avenue and East Ninth Street facades, open gill-like projections held vertical window columns facing east and south. The building was faced with rose granite sheets and the BOND name was illuminated in red neon. Inside, the round themes were repeated in ceiling moldings, mirrors, and plaster reliefs. Following Bond's closure, the structure stood for many years until it was razed in the 1970s.
Bond Stores operated at least two locations in the Buffalo, New York area. In 1940, they took over the Givens, Inc. women's and children's apparel store at 452-54 Main Street in downtown Buffalo. A suburban location opened in 1962, at the new Boulevard Mall.
Dallas, Texas
Two Bond Stores were located at 1500 Main Street and 1530 Main Street, now The Joule Hotel.
Between 1948 and 1954, Bond Clothes operated a massive sign on the east side block of Broadway between 44th and 45th streets in New York's Times Square. The sign had nearly 2 miles of neon and included two 7-story-tall nude figures, a man and a woman, as bookends. Between the nude figures, there was a and waterfall with 50,000 gallons of recirculated water. Beneath the waterfall was a zipper sign with scrolling messages. The Bond zipper was made up of more than 20,000 light bulbs. Above the waterfall was a digital clock with the wording "Every Hour 3,490 People Buy at Bond." Some of the sign remained in place to advertise the Bond Stores location until the store's closure in 1977.
