With locations from Chattanooga to Kalamazoo, Michigan, and points in between, Moskin’s was once billed as America’s largest credit clothing chain “with over a million satisfied customers.”
This photograph, part of the Chattanooga Free Press photo collection displayed at ChattanoogaHistory.com, is believed to have been taken here in December 1950. A sign visible in the store window touts easy credit terms: “Buy now and pay next year.”
The store’s location, 906 Market St., was part of a downtown block that was leveled in the 1970s to make way for Miller Park, a central city green space that opened in 1976 and was redesigned and re-landscaped in 2018.
According to a newspaper report, the chain’s first store was opened in Lima, Ohio, in 1907. An internet search reveals that there were once Moskin’s locations throughout the Appalachian region, including Chattanooga, Knoxville and Asheville, North Carolina.
According to a 2012 report in “The Atlantic” magazine, 21st century Americans spend only about a third as much for apparel as U.S. consumers did in 1950. In 1950, Americans spent on average about 12 percent of their income on clothes, compared to about 4 percent in more modern times.