click image to enlarge Upson Shoes Photo courtesy of VM+SD

click image to enlarge L.S.Ayres, Glendale Shopping Center, Indiannapolis Photo courtesy of VM+SD

While “what goes around, comes around” in shoe fashion, the same can’t be said of shoe retailing. The winkle-picker, a pointed-toe shoe with stiletto heels that was all the rage in the 1950s, is reflected in the current popularity of pointed toes and stiletto heels in women’s shoes. But the shoe stores of the 1950s were a far cry from those of today.

When shows such as “Father Knows Best” ruled the airwaves, most shoe stores were family-owned and -operated, stocking a variety of shoes for men, women, and children. Nordstrom was the largest independent shoe store in the United States, with more than 100,000 pairs of shoes on the four floors of its Seattle flagship store. In 1954, Naturalizer Shoe Store opened its first retail store in Jamaica, N.Y.

Located primarily in downtown locations, shoe stores of the sock-hop era were modest in size and furnishings, but big on customer service. Fixtures were simple and functional, with the shoes themselves taking center stage in glass storefront windows. Often those windows displayed an X-ray sign, inviting customers to come in for a custom shoe fitting that involved having their feet X-rayed with a fluoroscope machine.

Today, there are no fluoroscope machines—they were banned in the 1960s—and only a few family-owned shoe stores remain, having given way to department stores and self-service shoe warehouses. But a number of independent specialty shoe stores have carved out a retail niche, fashionably matching fixtures to the shoes they sell. Skechers, Puma, Clark, Cole-Haan, and Timberland are among the companies displaying their shoes on custom fixtures in their own stores as well as in other retail outlets. The atmosphere is high-tech, high-energy, and high-volume—decades of difference from the 1950s.