On this day in Arlington history: November 16, 1951, the Kann’s department store opened in the heart of Arlington County.
S. Kann Sons Co., or more commonly Kann’s was a department store based in Washington, DC. 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. The company closed in 1975.
Kann’s was the second Washington DC 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.
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. It has since been demolished by the university.
