Seven million people visit the Traverse City region annually, many strolling past 1889 Milliken Place unaware how important it was in creating the downtown shopping and dining hub that attracts them here.

The building and its sweeping display windows face the bay on the corner of East Front and Cass, a hint to its former heyday as Milliken’s Department Store, known to locals simply as “Milliken’s” – the one-stop shop for picking out a silk tie for dad, riding the elevator to the salon, or whiling away an afternoon poring over lipstick shades at the makeup counter.

It was, in a word, fancy. But its origin story is less-so.

Like the rest of downtown proper, Milliken Place was first constructed more than 100 years ago in 1889 as the brand-new home of Hamilton & Milliken, a clothing and dry goods retailer co-founded by a familiar name: James W. Milliken (father of TC’s 18th mayor, James T. Milliken and grandfather of Michigan’s longest-serving governor William Milliken).

James, an East Coaster, came to northern Michigan to work for Perry Hannah – the “father” of Traverse City – at the Hannah, Lay & Company Store during Traverse City’s industrial boom. At the time, horse and carriage still made its way down Front Street and the surrounding landscape was sparse, but the expansion of railroads, bridges, and electricity were ushering rural Grand Traverse County into modernity.

Over the next century, Hamilton & Milliken evolved into Milliken’s, the city’s most iconic department store, helping to anchor downtown’s identity by drawing in nearby shops, restaurants, and businesses. And whether it's about the luxe ladies room on the second floor, searching for hidden gems in the bargain basement, or watching fashion shows in the mezzanine, ask nearly anyone from Traverse City and they’ll have a Milliken’s memory to share.

Joneen Keaveney is one of them. “I always tell people I was raised in Milliken’s,” she says, describing it as the kind of attainable elegance that appealed to everyone from back-to-school shoppers to brides. “It was my mom's favorite store. I was always in it. I felt like it was my store.” These days, the ground floor of 1889 Milliken Place is the longtime home of coffee shop Espresso Bay and national clothing retailers like FatFace and Lululemon. But as Keaveney remembers it, it once smelled like designer perfume, new leather gloves, and donuts – because Potter’s Bakery had a location right inside the store, where shoppers who used Milliken’s parking lot could have their parking validated in exchange for a fresh baked treat.

Keaveney not only spent her childhood shopping there, but she also worked in the shoe department in 1995 as an assistant manager. By that time the store was no longer owned by the Milliken family. Along with its other three locations in Cadillac, Manistee, and Mount Pleasant, the family had sold the brand twelve years earlier to Ohio-based Uhlman’s Department Store. 

Despite the change in ownership, the draw of Milliken’s, and especially the second floor Tea Room which overlooked the busy shoppers below, didn’t change. “I used to love sitting up in the Tea Room and looking down at everybody, at the whole store,” Keaveney remembers. At different points during its run, the menu included 70-cent malted milkshakes, 35-cent cheesecake slices, and a grilled cheese BLT – the last of which, Keaveney notes, was likely inspired by her frequent off-menu lunchbreak requests until one day it finally appeared in print.

Besides locals and summertime visitors, the department store also saw international customers, specifically Canadians seeking sales, "because the cost of their taxes up there when they purchased stuff was outrageous,” Keaveney recalls. The drive and travel costs were worth it for our neighbors to the North because the experience at Milliken’s was just that great: “Everything they had was stylish and classy…even down to the dishes and music boxes, everything was just better.”

But the magic couldn’t last forever. Uhlman’s, Milliken’s parent company, was eventually acquired by Stage Stores in 1996, and though the stores continued under the “Stage Milliken’s” name for another five years, by 2001 financial struggles forced their closure.

In its final years, Keaveney could feel the charm of the store shifting. It’s something she first noticed while working in the shoe department. That’s when the stock started to lose its elegance as corporate sent her passing trends of the 90’s like chunky peep-toe-slip-ons in lieu of classic styles. “So I called them up and I said, ‘This is Milliken’s. We have to have heels. And so they started sending me heels for a while,” but that didn’t last long and after a while she says, it felt more like any shop that could be found in the mall and less like the special place she grew up loving. “It wasn't Millikens anymore.”

As for whether a place like Milliken’s, in all its elevated department store glam and glory could ever make a comeback, Keaveney is skeptical. “All those people that appreciate it are old or dead,” she says, adding that younger consumers, accustomed to a different way of shopping wouldn’t know what they’re missing out on enough to bring it back anyway: “Because they never experienced it.”