When you visit Downtown Management District’s (DMD) Peppermint Lane this year, know you’re taking part in a time-honored Corpus Christi tradition. Revived in 2018, Peppermint Lane returns to its home on Chaparral Street where it served as the city’s holiday shopping destination in 1964 and ’65.
While the carnival rides, train and Santa photo ops may have attracted children to the original Peppermint Lane, it was Lichtenstein’s, Woolworths, Fedway, Kress, W.T. Grant and other shops, including numerous shoe, dress and jewelry stores, that drew throngs of holiday shoppers. The wide array of retailers provided an opportunity to buy for any age, budget and taste.
Today, The Cosmopolitan, with its architecture that mimics the iconic corner of Lichtenstein’s, stands on that site amid the holiday decor that runs from Taylor to Lomax Streets. Lichtenstein’s is often the centerpiece of stories about shopping in downtown in the 1960s—its window displays alone were a destination.
In the street’s transformation into Peppermint Lane, holiday decor spanned four blocks of downtown and was sponsored by the Central Business District Association. A seven-member committee, the association functioned much like DMD does today, amplifying the work of downtown businesses to strengthen the entire area.
Whether you visited Peppermint Lane in the 1960s or not, the chance to kick off your shopping there, and support a strong downtown, lives on with DMD’s Peppermint Lane again this year.
