Rankin's was a department store at 117 West Fourth Street at Sycamore in downtown
Santa Ana, California
Santa Ana () is the second most populous city and the county seat of Orange County, California. Located in the Greater Los Angeles region of Southern California, the city's population was 310,227 at the 2020 census, making Santa Ana the List of ...
. The Rankin Building is listed on the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
on its own and also as a contributing property of the
Downtown Santa Ana Historic Districts
Downtown Santa Ana (DTSA), also called Downtown Orange County, is the historic city center of Santa Ana and the county seat of Orange County, California. It is the institutional center for the city of Santa Ana as well as Orange County, a reta ...
.
The store had its origins as the Rankin Dry Goods company, founded in 1894. Mr. J. H. Rankin of
Bloomfield, Indiana, together with T. D. Huff & Sons opened up the dry goods store on the site of Swanner's Grocery Store. The store was enlarged three times before moving into the , three-story space at Fourth and Sycamore in 1917.
Locations
In 1956, Rankin's announced plans to open a branch in
Orange County Plaza
Orange County Plaza, later Garden Grove Mall, Garden Promenade, now The Promenade at Garden Grove, was, upon its expansion in 1959, with sixty stores, the largest shopping center in Orange County, California, and at the time billed itself as "Orang ...
at Chapman Avenue and Brookhurst Street in
Garden Grove, now site of The Promenade at Garden Grove. The branch was to measure .
In addition to its Santa Ana store, Rankin's had a location in Fullerton at
Orangefair Mall from 1958.
Advertisements promoted the Orangefair branch from May 3 through September, 1959.
Rankin Building (1917)
The 1917 building is a rectangular sand colored brick building featuring a grey pressed metal cornice, modified Chicago style upper level windows, and blue-grey ceramic brick on the first story. The building was rehabilitated in 1982 and the present storefront design dates from that rehabilitation program. The building is individually listed on the National Register (1983).
The architects were Elwing and Tedford of Santa Ana.
When opened on November 9, 1917, the building was referred to as the "Rutherford" building, structure or block. It was characterized as "metropolitan in nature" and "the most beautiful in the entire county".
Gallery
File:Rankins, Santa Ana, exterior, 1917 OCHS.jpg, Rankin's Department Store
File:Rankins, Santa Ana, interior, 1917, OCHS.jpg, Interior of Rankin's
References
{{History of Retail in Southern California
Defunct department stores based in Greater Los Angeles