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A modest shop in the Brockton Arcade is the last outpost of a Riverside retailing dynasty.
Since the Great Depression, four generations of the Cree and Stephenson families have operated clothing stores in this city for women, men and children.
The Peggy Cree Shop. Cree’s Merry-Go-Round. Don Cree Ltd. Peggy Cree’s. Stephenson’s. Cree’s for Beautiful Clothes.
Stephenson’s and Cree’s merged in 1993 to become Stephenson Cree. It has hung on as a small independent clothier for more than three decades, during which the world has been transformed by the internet and rocked by a pandemic.
Inevitably, owner Corol Cree has decided to close Stephenson Cree and retire.
“I’m sorry it ends with me,” Cree said last week from behind her crowded desk. “There are no more Crees.”
It’s enough to make you cry.
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Debbie Schwartz examines a top Tuesday at Stephenson Cree, the Riverside women’s clothing store. The shop will be closing later in Nov. after nearly 70 years. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
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Debbie Schwartz examines a top Tuesday at Stephenson Cree, the Riverside women’s clothing store. The shop will be closing later in Nov. after nearly 70 years. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
A Facebook post about Stephenson Cree caught my eye. Its closing was the sort of milestone that ought to be commemorated in the newspaper, I thought.
In the Cree stores’ heydays, everything was commemorated in the newspaper.
“Life is so different. It used to be you would never not have an ad in the Press,” Cree told me wistfully.
In an earlier time, various Cree stores could outfit a woman from cradle to grave. Cree’s Merry-Go-Round was for children. Peggy Cree’s was for preteens and teens. Cree’s was for young women. Stephenson’s was for women 40 and up.
The last store, Stephenson Cree, a cozy 2,000 square feet, came to specialize in clothes for older women.
At this point, you won’t find much left to choose from. Cree stopped ordering new stock and markdowns have taken care of much of the rest. But to quote the saying, everything must go.
Mannequins, hangers, furniture and display racks are for sale. So are Christmas decorations and some unusual items pulled from the basement. Those include dozens of compact discs, a printer for store price tags, a sewing machine and, mysteriously, a shoeshine kit.
“My grandfather never threw anything away,” Cree said with a chuckle. She found payroll records in which employees made 55 cents an hour.
Her grandfather was Meredith Cree, a Riverside native who graduated in 1923 from Poly High. He backed his wife, Peggy, when she wanted to open a fashion store downtown alongside her mother, Corol Stephenson.
“They called it the Peggy Cree Shop,” Laurie Lucas wrote in a 1993 P-E feature, “and filled the store with elegant suits, dresses and coats that Peggy bought in Los Angeles.”
The store opened Sept. 1, 1933, in the First National Bank building, according to an ad in the Riverside Enterprise that proclaimed: “New Fall Dresses, priced from $1.95 to $10.95, sizes 14 to 46.”
(My thanks to Main Library archivist Ruth McCormick, a researcher who in this instance was a Cree searcher.)
In 1943, Peggy and Meredith opened Cree’s Merry-Go-Round, a children’s store with 165 departments, while selling the Peggy Cree Shop to her mother, who renamed it Stephenson’s.
Donald Cree — Peggy and Meredith’s son, and Corol Stephenson’s grandson — was the third generation. He opened Don Cree Ltd., a men’s wear store, in 1948, also downtown.
When the Brockton Arcade shops began opening in the mid-1950s south of downtown, the Crees bought in early, with Don Cree and his mother opening branches there. Stephenson’s, which Peggy Cree had bought back from her mother, joined them in 1961.
Downtown was fading. The Crees closed their old stores in 1962 to concentrate on Brockton Arcade. Still, there were a few side ventures: a store in Corona, a store at Riverside Plaza and an early 1970s anomaly run by Don Cree, the Dande Lion, a unisex clothing shop.
Say what?
“It was the hippie store,” said Debbie Smith, Corol Cree’s older sister, with a laugh. “I got all my leathers there.”
Corol Cree joined the family business out of Poly High in 1974, working behind the scenes on the business side.
“She was a terrific bookkeeper,” Smith said. “She replaced two other women. She could do everything and go home at 1 p.m.”
Corol Cree joined her mother, Chris, on buying trips and began assuming more responsibility. By 1993, when Stephenson’s and Cree’s merged and moved into the Cree’s space, Corol Cree was the manager. Four years later, she bought the store from her parents.
Stephenson Cree trended older and aged along with customers. The past decade, Cree said, “our customer base wasn’t necessarily working anymore.”
One of their loyal customers, Louis Moore, was shopping during my visit. “This is just an institution,” Moore, who gave her age as “over 75,” told me. “I hate to see it go. They had beautiful clothes. The service is always excellent.”
Moore said her fallback will be the Chico’s chain, the only women’s shop aimed at a customer of her age.
Debbie Schwartz came in a bit later “for the sale, and to say goodbye,” she said. “I’m really sad they’re leaving. They’re a Riverside staple.”
Cree remembers when the store had customer charge accounts and sent out sale mailers to regulars that resulted in lines down the block.
But times, and fashion, changed.
People stopped dressing up for church or weddings. Men rarely wore suits. Women began to ignore that year’s fashion dictates on skirt length. People shopped online. “The younger generation is less interested in service, more interested in pricing,” Cree reflected.
The pandemic further dialed things down. Cree said women no longer felt required to dye their hair and realized “they had three closets full of clothes already” waiting for them.
Her father, Don, died in July 2024 at age 96. Cree and her sisters sold their wing of Brockton Arcade. At 69, health issues have limited her mobility.
“It’s time for me to let it go,” Cree said.
The store is open only three days per week, Tuesday to Thursday, and will probably close around Thanksgiving.
“I have a philosophy. The clothes you like best are the ones you wear in retirement,” Cree confided. “I think what I will be wearing is my casual oversized T-shirts at home with soft knit pants.”
She added: “The next generation is going to want to wear their workout clothes.”
brIEfly
Speaking of fashion, at Art’s Bar and Grill in Riverside on Tuesday, server Debbie Hodson was wearing a T-shirt with this brassy message: “I’m going to stop asking ‘How dumb can you get?’ People seem to be taking it as a challenge.”
David Allen asks the questions Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, and follow davidallencolumnist on Facebook or Instagram, @davidallen909 on X or @davidallen909.bsky.social on Bluesky.
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