Kann's department store
The Virginia Square store offered every efficiency a mid-century shopper could want
Kann's was the second Washington D.C. based department store chain to open a suburban location in Arlington.
On November 16, 1951, Kann’s department store opened in the heart of Arlington County. S. Kann Sons Co., or more commonly called Kann's was a department store based in Washington, D.C. It was the District's second department store and it was founded in 1893, by Louis, Solomon, and Sigmund Kann. The store remained family owned until 1971, when it was sold to L. S. Good and Co. of Wheeling, West Virginia.
Kann's was the second Washington D.C. based department store chain to open a suburban location in Arlington. Just two weeks after rival Hecht Company opened its store at Parkington Shopping Center less than a mile away, Kann’s opened its store at North Fairfax Drive and North Kirkwood Road. The $4.5 million, three-story store, known as Kann's Virginia, opened in conjunction with the neighboring Virginia Square Shopping Center. According to a description in the Washington Post, the store’s exterior was made of “brick, crab orchard stone, glass and natural wood” intended to “harmonize the structure with the casual beauty of the Virginia environs.”
The Virginia Square store offered every efficiency a mid-century shopper could want, including parking for 1,000 cars and large, unobstructed shopping floors color-coded to indicate the type of merchandise on display. Items could be purchased one by one and dropped off at a collecting center on each floor that would send them down to the parking level via conveyor belt for speedy delivery to one’s car.
At its opening, the store featured:
• Imported squirrel monkeys from Brazil named Teeny, Weeny, Eeny, and Miney in a large glass cage to entertain children in the shoe department
• A "Kannteen" restaurant in the basement
• A customer lounge, and
• A hospital room with nurse in attendance.
When it closed in 1975, the store was acquired in 1979, by George Mason University, which used the building for its Arlington campus. The building was used first for the law school and later for the School of Public Policy. It has since been demolished by the university.
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