Marketing in a Multicultural Neighborhood: An Archaeology of Corner Stores in the Urban Midwest

Abstract

Corner stores were the most common consumer outlet in the urban Midwest from the mid-19th century until World War II. In the early-20th century in Indianapolis, Indiana, the near westside was dotted with more than 100 modest stores managed by African Americans, European immigrants, and white Hoosiers. Archaeological excavation of a ca. 1889–1969 store illuminates the widespread entrepreneurial ambition of urban newcomers, the increasing ethnic insularity of corner stores between 1900 and 1920, and the eventual decline of corner stores in the face of urban renewal and the arrival of chain stores in the 1930s.