FREE: 1893-1959 Vintage $5 Detroit Token Coin: People's Outfitting Co. Gold Star Club

The listing, 1893-1959 Vintage $5 Detroit Token Coin: People's Outfitting Co. Gold Star Club has ended.

Vintage $5 Token Coin from People's Outfitting Co.
Michigan at Shelby Branch

People's Gold Star Club Member. Good on new purchase over $50.00.

About size of half dollar, looks like it's made of copper or bronze, green oxidization seems to confirm this. Interesting old coin.

People's Outfitting Co. Building
BY DAN AUSTIN, HISTORICDETROIT.ORG
http://www.historicdetroit.org/building/peoples-outfitting-co-building/

The 12-story Detroit Commerce Building is perhaps best remembered as the building knocked down for the Book-Cadillac’s parking garage.

But before Detroiters parked their cars on its grave, the site was home to the People’s Outfitting Co. department store - a place where generations of Detroiters went to shop.

People’s was founded by Leopold Wineman in September 1893 in a five-story building at Michigan Avenue and Shelby Street in Detroit.The original store was torn down and replaced with a 12-story terra cotta-sheethed skyscraper designed in the Chicago School style by renowned architect Albert Kahn and his associate, Ernest Denby. In the meantime, People’s temporarily relocated to 113 Michigan Ave., at the corner of Cass Avenue. A large banner was hung from the west side of the building advertising a “rebuilding sale” in all capital letters: “Down comes our building. $200,000 stock will be sold regardless of cost.” It was a heck of a sale considering $200,000 in 1915 is the equivalent of $4.4 million today.

The new, 175-foot-tall, steel-reinforced structure opened on May 11, 1916.

The move proved to be a success, and the chain spread to Cleveland, Indianapolis and other cities.

But it was too big to stay in business.

In 1959, People’s merged with the State Sample Co. department store and closed its downtown store. The company filed for bankruptcy 10 years later. Plans to resurrect it never panned out, mostly because of People’s debts.