61. AGUINALDO DEPARTMENT STORE the Biggest Mall in 1931

Before the SM Super Mall era, the Aguinaldo Department Store was the biggest shopping store in Manila in the 1930s.  

The Aguinaldo Department Store was located on Juan Luna Street. The building it occupied exists to this day as the Marvel Corporation Building with its distinct Katipunero and Liberty statues. Owned by Leopoldo R. Aguinaldo & Co. Inc., the store was one of the more posh department stores in Manila. The company started on July 4, 1921, and by 1925, it opened a New York buying office. In 1931, the company inaugurated the Aguinaldo Institute of Hair Science, which included make-up and beauty culture curricula. The same year it inaugurated a six-story department store on Juan Luna Street. The Aguinaldo Department Store sold footwear supplies, women's accessories, dress trimmings, men's furnishings, household furnishings, Coleman lamps, toys, novelties, giftware, and hair waving machines. In 1938, it added branches in Dagupan, Baguio and Ermita.

I was able to preserve some souvenir fans and a 1938 shopping catalog which I would like to share. 

AGUINALDO DEPARTMENT STORE from the store's souvenir fan

Souvenir postcard featuring the AGUINALDO BUILDING in Juan Luna St., Manila

AGUINALDO Shopping Brochure, December 1938

Shirts were very cheap back then.

  

 

Back of the brochure, December 1938

L.R. Aguinaldo & Co business envelope used during WWII (Oct. 14, 1943)

1931 L.R. Aguinaldo stationary promoting Aladdin lamps

 Source:  Binondo In The Twentieth Century by Lorelei D.C. de Vian