Mammoth Mart was a discount

department store chain A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store made a dramatic appea ...

, located in the

northeastern United States The Northeastern United States, also referred to as the Northeast, the East Coast, or the American Northeast, is a geographic region of the United States. It is located on the Atlantic coast of North America, with Canada to its north, the Southe ...

, primarily in the

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...

area. The chain was founded by Max Coffman and Henry Gornstein in

Framingham, Massachusetts Framingham () is a city in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. Incorporated in 1700, it is located in Middlesex County and the MetroWest subregion of the Greater Boston metropolitan area. The city proper covers with a popu ...

in 1956, and was something of a prototype for the large, downscale department store, selling housewares, hardware and clothing in stark, unfussy buildings, usually in suburban

shopping center A shopping center (American English) or shopping centre (Commonwealth English), also called a shopping complex, shopping arcade, shopping plaza or galleria, is a group of shops built together, sometimes under one roof. The first known collec ...

locations. Other discount department store retailers like

K-Mart Kmart Corporation ( , doing business as Kmart and stylized as kmart) is an American retail company that owns a chain of big box department stores. The company is headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, United States. The company was inco ...

Zayre Zayre () was a chain of discount stores that operated in the eastern half of the United States from 1956 to 1990. The company's headquarters was in Framingham, Massachusetts. In October 1988, Zayre's parent company, Zayre Corp., sold the stores ...

, and

Bradlees Bradlees Department Store, more commonly known as Bradlees, was a discount department store chain based in Braintree, Massachusetts, which operated primarily in the Northeastern United States. Bradlees sold various retail items in its stores, inc ...

would subsequently expand on this concept. Their advertising mascot was Marty the elephant, a smiling, blazer-wearing mammoth.

History

In 1956 Max Coffman and Henry Gornstein opened the first Mammoth Mart (at the time known as Mammoth Mills) in Framingham, MA. It was originally called Mammoth Mills due to the first store being in a mill building that used the same name. The name was changed to Mammoth Mart in 1962. By 1969 the chain had 35 stores. In March 1970 Mammoth Mart diversified their holdings by acquiring the eight-unit Boston Baby chain of juvenile merchandise stores, eventually expanding the division to fifteen stores. This venture was a failure, and the chain liquidated in 1973. In September 1970 Mammoth Mart acquired two locations from Key Stores. The cost of liquidating Boston Baby, combined with the economic effects of the Energy Crisis of 1973, rising inflation, increased shrinkage and Phase IV of the Nixon Administration's program of Wage and Price Controls, forced the company to file for bankruptcy protection under Chapter XI of the

Bankruptcy Act of 1898 The Bankruptcy Act of 1898 ("Nelson Act", July 1, 1898, ch. 541, ) was the first United States Act of Congress involving bankruptcy to give companies an option of being protected from creditors. Previous attempts at federal bankruptcy laws had ...

—one of the precursors (along with Chapter X of the 1898 Bankruptcy Act) of today's

Chapter 11 Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, wheth ...

— on June 17, 1974. The chain was acquired by now-defunct

King's Department Stores King's Department Stores was a chain of discount stores in the Eastern United States. The chain started in 1956, in Brockton, Massachusetts. They expanded to 187 stores (three stores operated in the Buffalo, New York area). In 1978, they purcha ...

for $43 million on June 15, 1977. The final locations were rebranded as King’s by 1978.

References

Companies based in Massachusetts History of New England Economy of the Northeastern United States Defunct discount stores of the United States Defunct department stores based in Massachusetts Retail companies established in 1956 Retail companies disestablished in 1978 1956 establishments in Massachusetts 1978 disestablishments in Massachusetts {{US-retail-company-stub