The Old Montgomery Wards Building in Menands
In 1929, Montgomery Ward opened this enormous art deco concrete store in Menands on Broadway. It had 1.1 million feet2 of retail space, nine floors, twelve elevators and over twenty acres of parking. It even had a railway spur line to a loading dock. In the beginning of the suburban big store automobile based retail boom in the 1950s, Broadway in Menands was a center of that. Now, almost all the old suburban style retail buildings that are left standing in the Village of Menands along Broadway, like the old Two Guys department store by NY 378, now house state offices, including this one in its present carnation as the Riverview Center. Though in no place, except maybe on the roof, can one actually see the Hudson River.
Regardless of what thinks of the look of the building, it is both an imposing and functional structure. It still is the dominant building in Menands.