Italian marble rose 29 feet, while the interior lobby ceiling was an impressive 32 feet high; the doors were made of hammered copper. The outside face of the building had alternating intricate stone and wrought iron ornamental grillwork, with the Harris coat-of-arms molded into the stonework. The San Bernardino Sun wrote: Towns do not have department stores. The Inland Empire has arrived." 1930s–1970s The company survived the Depression by carefully managing costs and business relationships. Through the 1940s and '50s, the store was famous for its animated Christmas window displays on E Street and its Santa Claus. In 1947, the store added the first escalator (then called a "motorstair") in the Inland Empire. Harris continued to expand their San Bernardino and Redlands stores and opened a branch at Riverside Plaza on September 30, 1957. With suburbanization, San Bernardino sought to revitalize its downtown. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, due to the Central City redevelopment program, structural changes were carried out at the flagship in the name of modernization and it became an anchor store of the new Central City Mall 1980s–2009 In 1981, Spanish retailer El Corte Inglés, S.A. acquired the Harris Company and its nine stores which included Bakersfield, Hemet, Indio, Moreno Valley, Palmdale, Redlands, Riverside, San Bernardino and Victorville. In 1997, the Harris Company invested $27 million to update its nine-store chain. The Harris Company was acquired by Gottschalks in 1998, and the stores were initially renamed Harris-Gottschalks. Most of the original Harris stores eventually dropped the name Harris, except the Bakersfield, Indio and Moreno Valley locations, which continued to operate under the Harris-Gottschalks name. The original flagship store in downtown San Bernardino closed on January 31, 1999. After the downtown San Bernardino store closed, the Riverside store became the largest store in the chain at 204,000 square feet. On January 14, 2009, Gottschalks filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In March 2009, Gottschalks announced that it had lined up a group of bidders to liquidate the chain, if a buyer was not found by March 30. On March 31, Gottschalks announced it would liquidate its remaining stores, and on July 12, 2009 all of the Gottschalks stores were closed. Holiday seasons The original Harris Company store in downtown San Bernardino and adjacent to Carousel Mall is still remembered today for its magnificent Christmas and Easter promotional displays. The family likewise provided lavish holiday decor for its