ALISON FURNITURE COMPANY

While many grocers in Wisconsin spent the 1960s and 1970s plunking little boxes upon the landscape, one firm...Kohl's...bucked the trend. Their dramatic and aesthetically-impressive arch-roofed stores...marked by a beam that protruded from the canopy to the ground...could be mistaken for nothing else.

Nowadays Kohl's is no doubt better known as the name of a seemingly-unconnected national department store. In fact, both the department store and the supermarket were founded in Wisconsin by the same man; and both Kohl's were under the same corporate ownership for close to twenty years.

In 1983 the supermarkets were sold to A&P; who ironically had left Wisconsin under their own name four years earlier. A&P ultimately shut its Kohl's operations down in 2003; though I assume they had retrenched from northeast Wisconsin some time before that. This particular location looked as though it had been a Big Lots for quite a while.

(Edit: Closed as of July 2010.)

This building was built in 1979 to house a catalog showroom for national retailer Best Products. "Best" closed its Bismarck store in 1997, and Office Depot and Big Lots occupied the building immediately after.

Office Depot openend less than a year following Staples in Bismarck. Despite the added national competition, local office suppliers such as Woodmansees and OMF continue to survive.

This is the only Big Lots located within North Dakota.