#PFTL: A Cleveland Holiday Tradition of the Past - The Sterling Lindner Tree
There are a lot of facts and details about the Sterling-Lindner Davis Tree that will be revealed in the content of the postcards, so we'll let that happen there. The folks in the Archive are a good half century in age at a minimum, and none of us had ever heard of this thing, as it predates us all. Yet, as we were acquiring more and more cards, we started to see more of these pop up from time to time, and could tell this was really a big deal in its time.
Doing urban archeology from postcards is admittedly an odd approach to take, but we did want to represent the lifespan of this amazing tree as best we could without getting super repetitive (it'll be a little repetitive). The actual store opened in the Theater District in 1845 as Sterling & Welch. In 1927, they began decorating their massive indoor tree (I think the shortest noted height was 60 feet). By the early 50's, the company and 2 others were bought and merged into Sterling-Lindner Davis & Co. (SLD), and the annual tradition of decorating a giant indoor tree continued all the way through the end of business in 1968. As you read through the details on the cards, you can see how it got more and more lavish every year (the tree grows by almost 20 feet from start to finish).
The Traditional Sterling Tree (ca. 1935)Postmark: (Unused)Card Front: "Christmas at Sterling Lindner Davis" across the top, and "The Traditional Sterling Tree" at the bottom with a photo of the tree in the middle.
Card Back:
Printed Copy:
Each Christmas season, thousands of Clevelanders and visitors from miles around come to see the magnificent spectacle of the Sterling Lindner Davis' traditional Christmas tree, towering in the Great Court. A live, 50 ft. tree, festooned with 60 lbs. of 'icicles', 1000 yards of tinsel, 1500 ornaments, and illuminated by 6 banks of 750 candle-watt spot-lights. It requires 650 man-power hours to trim by swining stages suspended from the skylight. Once again, our Christmas tree awaits you... proud symbol that "There's Magic in a gift from S-L-D"!
The Traditional Sterling Tree (ca. 1950)Postmark: (Unused)Card Front: A photo of the Sterling Tree in the early 50's with "The Traditional Sterling Tree" printed at the bottom.
Card Back: Natural Color Reproduction. Curteichcolor Art-Creation.
Printed Copy:
The Famous Sterling Lindner Davis Christmas Tree It's America's tallest indoor tree, symbol of Christmas in Cleveland for over a quarter of a century. Towering 60 feet tall, the Sterling Tree is festooned with 60 lbs of icicles, 1,000 yards of tinsel, 1,500 ornaments. Once again, our Tree awaits you and our entire store family wishes you a happy holiday season.
The Traditional Sterling Tree (ca. 1955)Postmark: (Unused)Card Front: A photo of the Sterling Tree in the mid 50's. No printed text, but it looks like this is the earliest card we have that doesn't show a "Santaland" near the tree display
Card Back: Distributed by Bebout & Downs, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio 44134
Printed Copy:
The Famous Sterling Lindner Christmas Tree It's America's tallest indoor tree, symbol of Christmas in Cleveland for well over 30 years. Towering 60 feet tall, the Sterling Tree is festooned with 60 lbs of icicles, 1,000 yards of tinsel, 1,500 ornaments. Once again, our Tree is dedicated to community service in the Annual Christmas Seal Drive. . . and our entire store family wishes you a happy holiday season.
The Traditional Sterling Tree (ca. 1966)Postmark: (Unused)Card Front: A photo of the Sterling Tree in the mid 60's. No printed text, on the front of this one either, and the lighting from here on out seems to be much warmer than they had been.
Card Back: Sterling Lindner Christmas Tree
Printed Copy:
The Famous Sterling Lindner Christmas Tree It's America's tallest indoor tree, symbol of Christmas in Cleveland for 38 years. Towering 72 feet tall, the Sterling Tree is festooned with 60 lbs of icicles, 1,000 yards of tinsel, 1,500 ornaments. Our entire store family wishes you a happy holiday season.
The Traditional Sterling Tree (ca. 1970s)Postmark: (Unused)Card Front: A photo of the Sterling Lindner tree with "Sterling Lindner - Cleveland -" written in cursive at the bottom
Card Back: Nu-Vista Prints, P.O. Box 5220 Willowick, Ohio 44094
Printed Copy:
Sterling Lindner Christmas Tree Once a Cleveland tradition for 40 years, the Sterling Lindner Christmas Tree boasted of being the nation's tallest indoor decorated tree. Thousands of people delighted in this annual event from 1927 until the department store closed in 1968. The tree was covered with 75 pounds of icicles, 1,500 yards of silver tinsel, and over 2,500 sparkling ornaments.
Cleveland, Ohio
Sterling-Lindner David was, in its day, a massive force of a store, and considered one of the main shopping destinations for visitors and locals (people dressed nicely to go shopping there). While the business and its traditions are no more, the Sterling Building still exists 1255 Euclid Ave, now as the Bluebridge building. You may still be able to find signage or plaques saying that it's the "Sterling Building" posted somewhere.
One other fun tidbit: the movie "A Christmas Story" uses Higbee's (now Dillard's) as the department store to visit for seeing a tree and Santa, but, as the movie is set in 1940's Cleveland, most likely it would have been the SLD Tree that the family would've gone to see.