10 Popular Upstate New York Department Stores That Are Now Gone

When I grew up, department store shopping was a way of life.

Nobody shipped anything back in the day, and if you wanted something, you had to battle traffic, weather, other shoppers, and parking spot bullies to look around a department store.

I'm an 80s and 90s kid; those were the decades that shaped my life, and it was so different growing up in the Capital Region back then, especially around Christmas time.  As convenient and easy as Amazon is, there was something special about Christmas shopping in a department store that is lacking today.

The decorations, the music, the hustle, the sense of accomplishment! Remember obsessively calling Toys R Us to see if they had Cabbage Patch Kids, Transformers, or a Nintendo 64 in stock? And if they did, you put everything on hold and raced over to a place like KB Toys at Crossgates Mall, praying it was still in stock.

I'm not sure I'd ever want to return to how things used to be, but it's fun and nostalgic to reminisce.

Do you remember any of these?