While driving north on High Street from German Village two weeks later, I noticed two cranes struggling to pull the large Lazarus sign down from the High Street side of the store. I suspected that the shoppers there that day, jubilant over their bargains, were not among those who had bared their souls over the Columbus airwaves earlier that month. Gaudy signs trumpeting discounts of 80 percent dangled haphazardly from the ceiling above an expanse of empty sales floor. The High Street level men’s wear department, once brimming with Tommy Hilfiger and Lacoste, was a wasteland of vacant prefab shelving and dilapidated unclothed mannequins. I went to Lazarus on its last day of business, not to shop but to try to make the store’s closing seem real. The End of the End Shelves once brimming with clothing were empty on the store's last day of business. Where did they go when the Chintz Room shut down and the seats were removed from the lounge a few years before Lazarus closed? On these evenings, we would see the same half dozen older men and women sitting in the same seats, teasing each other and talking. After my dance classes across Town Street from Lazarus, my mother and I would wait in this lounge for my father to meet us after work, and then we’d all go home together. Right outside the restaurant was a large common space with plenty of stuffed seats and portraits of members of the Lazarus family peering down from the walls. A businesslike flick of the wrist signaled you to follow her to your table. With military precision, she would hold up the same number of fingers as there were people in your party. She was middle aged and wore her hair in an impeccable beehive that matched the formality of her jacket and skirt. Lazarus was home to many fine restaurants, but I remember the Chintz Room for its hostess who, it seemed, had worked there forever. Someone would always drop a coin or two into the cup and pass by without taking a pencil. A few pencils poked up out of a small tin cup before him on the sidewalk. He sat cross-legged on the sidewalk with his back against Lazarus’ outer wall. Each time I went to Lazarus the same blind man with no arms was selling pencils just outside Lazarus’ Front Street entrance. It was the people-family and strangers-who breathed life into our trips to Big Laz. “I know,” she said, “and now there’s nowhere downtown to shop.” Though true, this comment missed the bigger point. I recently bemoaned the loss of downtown Lazarus to a colleague. Ironically, I have little specific recollection of any of the goods we bought at Lazarus over the years. We’d unload from the bus in front of Baker’s shoe store on High Street and enter Lazarus through the side door off of the alley between the north and south Lazarus buildings, weaving through racks of men’s clothing toward the escalator that would carry us to other departments.
My name is Bonnie, I’m going to Baltimore, and I’m going to buy a big blueberry.” And so on. Sometimes we played the alphabet game to pass the long bus ride: “My name is Althea, I’m going to Albuquerque, and I’m going to fly an airplane. I remember as a child riding the COTA bus with my mother down High Street to Lazarus – Big Laz, as she called it. They were adventures animated by a vivid cast of recurring characters. My early trips to downtown Lazarus weren’t ordinary shopping trips. And think of the story itself as one Columbus native’s eulogy for the icon that defined our city and united its people.
Consider the time you take to read this story as the official moment of silence Lazarus never had. People say funerals are for the living, but they exist to honor the dead. Lazarus was buried, as it were, in a pauper’s grave. Although all Columbus lamented the store’s closing, there was no public ritual of mourning. Lazarus even hosted its own funeral in an extended clearance sale leading up to its last day of business. No formal ceremony accompanied the removal of the giant Lazarus sign from the building’s High Street façade. But no minute of silence at noon last August 14 marked the store’s closing. What did Columbus do for the store that, since 1851, had done so much for it? Sure, for a while local talk radio stations hosted call-in shows on the store’s closing and newspapers ran stories announcing Lazarus’ imminent demise. It takes time to bounce back from something like that. After all, the center of Columbus life for more than a century was excised without ceremony. Judging from the outpouring of grief that washed over Columbus last August in anticipation of the event, I suspect I’m not alone. One year after downtown Lazarus closed its doors for good, I'm still lamenting its loss. Photos by Jennifer Hambrick © Workers remove the iconic Lazarus sign from the store's High Street facade, August 28, 2004. Return to Homepage A Year Without Lazarus
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