Do You Remember This Iconic Atlantic City Department Store?

This was a grand and massive department store in its heyday.

Do you remember it?

This was the M.E. Blatt Co., billed as “Atlantic City’s Great Department Store.”

It later became known as Blatt-Snellenburg's and in its last incarnation, it was another famous Atlantic City Department Store called “Lit Brothers.”

This eight floor building had great runs that last from the 1920’s to the 1970’s.

It is now a government office building.

During the Blatt glory days, the community looked forward to the Christmas season, when Blatt’s would transform the entire top floor into Santa's workshop, complete with elaborate decorations and amazing Christmas themes.

This Bert Estlow photo below, shows in perfect detail how elaborate the M.E. Blatt Co. Department Store really was.

The address is 1300 Atlantic Avenue in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

The footprint is still there more than a century later and so are the memories.

The story actually began before the move to 1300 Atlantic Avenue.

A couple named Bertha and Samuel Braunstein opened a dry goods business on Atlantic Avenue in about 1900, around the turn of the century.

During these times, Atlantic City had mostly small dry goods stores, with the only department stores being satellite Philadelphia stores.

The Braunsteins were visionaries and created the first metropolitan-style store in Atlantic City.

From there, their son David Braunstein formed a partnership with Max Blatt. Blatt had a number of other business interests in Atlantic City.

It didn’t take long and Blatt quickly bought the Braunstein interest in the business and proceeded to move the store one block away to 1300 Atlantic Avenue, at South Carolina Avenue.

Blatt's death resulted in the store being sold to the Philadelphia-based Bankers Securities chain.

From there, it briefly became Blatt-Snellenberg & Co.

When Snellenberg's collapsed in the early 1960’s because of a strike … the stores were divided up and it became Lit Brothers.

I hope that you enjoyed this walk down memory lane.

Directly below, please enjoy our photo gallery, with comments about Great Department Stores that we loved, that are now closed forever.