Judy Caliva, in green apron, helps customers at Haase Shoe Store and Young Folks Shop on Oak Street store in New Orleans on Wednesday, December 4, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
The front of Haase Shoe Store and Young Folks Shop in New Orleans on Wednesday, December 4, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
Judy Caliva, right, of Haase Shoe Store and Young Folks Shop, hugs longtime friend and customer Gail Sehulster on Wednesday, December 4, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
Sherilyn Underwood and her grandson, Russell Helling, 2, walk into Haase Shoe Store and Young Folks Shop to buy shoes in New Orleans on Wednesday, December 4, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
Haase’s Shoe Store and Young Folks Shop clerk Marnie Woynowski, right, a retired assistant principal from Holy Name of Jesus School and also Christ the King, notates the growing height of Russell Helling, 2, on Wednesday, December 4, 2024. The various heights of countless other customers are also documented on the wall. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
Russell Helling, 2, gets excited about trying on a Mardi Gras marching boot at Haase’s Shoe Store and Young Folks Shop in New Orleans on Wednesday, December 4, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
The display window in front of Haase Shoe Store and Young Folks Shop in New Orleans on Wednesday, December 4, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
This pew used for people to sit and try on shoes at Haase Shoe Store and Young Folks Shop is from the Ursuline Academy chapel in New Orleans on Wednesday, December 4, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
Ceiling tiles feature the hand-painted logos and mascots of various private schools around the New Orleans area inside Haase Shoe Store and Young Folks Shop on Oak Street in New Orleans on Wednesday, December 4, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
Haase Shoe Store and Young Folks Shop seamstress Pam Waldron moistens the tip of a thread as she threads it to make a school logo on a shirt at the Oak Street store in New Orleans on Wednesday, December 4, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
Terranique Gordon, right, shops for baby clothes at Haase Shoe Store and Young Folks Shop on Oak Street in New Orleans on Wednesday, December 4, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
A statue of Mary and baby Jesus above the doorway where shoes are stocked at Haase Shoe Store and Young Folks Shop on Oak Street in New Orleans on Wednesday, December 4, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
Haase’s Shoe Store and Young Folks Shop clerk Marnie Woynowski, right, a retired assistant principal from Holy Name of Jesus School and also Christ the King, notates the growing height of Russell Helling, 2, on Wednesday, December 4, 2024. The various heights of countless other customers are also documented on the wall. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
Ceiling tiles feature the hand-painted logos and mascots of various private schools around the New Orleans area inside Haase Shoe Store and Young Folks Shop on Oak Street in New Orleans on Wednesday, December 4, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
A statue of Mary and baby Jesus above the doorway where shoes are stocked at Haase Shoe Store and Young Folks Shop on Oak Street in New Orleans on Wednesday, December 4, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
It had been a while since David and Karen Dickerson last visited Haase Shoe Store on Oak Street. The couple used to shop there for their boys, now 40 and 45. But the Wednesday before Christmas, they were back, buying shoes for their surrogate grandson, Jaxs.
David Dickerson held the toddler on his lap, while store clerk Laura Anderson pressed the boy’s socked foot against a wooden measuring stick to check his size.
The front of Haase Shoe Store and Young Folks Shop in New Orleans on Wednesday, December 4, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
Dickerson shook his head as he took in the surroundings, remarking that so much about the store seemed unchanged: the classic saddle oxfords and Mary Janes on display; the vintage NFL pennants on the wall; the Buster Brown light fixture from the 1950s.
“I haven’t seen Buster Brown in forever,” Dickerson said. Then, he asked Anderson, “How long have y’all been here?”
It’s a question a lot of Haase customers ask, because to many who grew up or raised their kids in New Orleans, it might seem like Haase’s, as it is colloquially known, has been around forever.
At 103, it might as well be forever. The store has been in business longer than most people alive today, and it’s the only place some customers have ever gone for children’s shoes.
Terranique Gordon, right, shops for baby clothes at Haase Shoe Store and Young Folks Shop on Oak Street in New Orleans on Wednesday, December 4, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
Shopping at Haase’s immediately transports customers to a different era. It still operates from its original humble storefront, shaded by a bright green awning and framed by two giant glass display cases, much like it did a century ago. Third- and fourth-generation members of the same family still own the business. One even lives in the second-floor apartment above the store, just like his great-grandparents did a century ago.
But this iconic retail establishment hasn’t survived the competitive threats of the past half-century — suburban shopping malls, big box chains and, most recently, the internet — merely because it’s managed to hang on to its charming, retro trappings.
Rather, it has built a fiercely loyal customer base of people like the Dickersons by selling quality, timeless merchandise and placing a premium on customer service.
Judy Caliva, right, of Haase Shoe Store and Young Folks Shop, hugs longtime friend and customer Gail Sehulster on Wednesday, December 4, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
“We’re unique; we’re old world,” said Judy Caliva, one of the store’s owners. “We do whatever we have to do for our customers. And we have fun.”
When Boris and Della Haase opened the store in 1921, Oak Street was a bustling retail corridor with dozens of merchants, five banks and a streetcar line. Boris was a traveling shoe salesman who wanted to hang out his own shingle. So he bought a double on Oak Street, hired Abry Bros. to raise the structure, and put the store underneath.
The couple had four children and raised their family in the house upstairs. After a few years, Della saved up enough “kitchen money” to open Haase Young Folks Shop in the space next to the shoe store. When the kids got older, they helped out on nights and weekends. The family business was their life, and it prospered.
Sherilyn Underwood and her grandson, Russell Helling, 2, walk into Haase Shoe Store and Young Folks Shop to buy shoes in New Orleans on Wednesday, December 4, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
In the late 1960s, the Haase’s daughter, Vera May Haase Caliva, who’d raised her own family by then, took over. Though familiar with the business, she didn’t know anything about running it.
“So the Brown Shoe Company sent a man down here, who spent three days teaching her how to order, pay the bills, invoice, set up the display,” said Judy Caliva.
Judy Caliva, in green apron, helps customers at Haase Shoe Store and Young Folks Shop on Oak Street store in New Orleans on Wednesday, December 4, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
Vera May Caliva was a quick study and for much of the next four decades was the matriarch of Haase’s. She wore a suit or dress to work every day, complete with stockings, pumps, pearls and perfectly coiffed hair. But that didn’t prevent her from climbing storeroom stepladders or kneeling on the showroom floor to fit the growing feet of a child in need of new party shoes.
“Everybody knew Mrs. Caliva and loved her,” Judy Caliva said. “When people come in, they tell me they can still picture her sitting on the stool she always kept near the counter.”
When Vera May Caliva retired in 2009, Judy Caliva, her daughter-in-law, took over because no one else in the family wanted to run the store.
Haase Shoe Store and Young Folks Shop seamstress Pam Waldron moistens the tip of a thread as she threads it to make a school logo on a shirt at the Oak Street store in New Orleans on Wednesday, December 4, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
“They thought about closing it, but I said you can’t do that,” said Judy Caliva, who was teaching at Holy Name of Jesus at the time. “I said I’d give them one year.”
That was 15 years ago, and Caliva is still running Haase’s, along with her husband, Kevin Caliva, and nephew, Chris Boyer. She’s a natural at it and performs the role as if it were her lifelong passion — visiting with customers, joking around with kids and bringing big energy to a small store.
“We laugh a lot and we hug,” she said. “There are no strangers. Just friends we haven’t met.”
Russell Helling, 2, gets excited about trying on a Mardi Gras marching boot at Haase’s Shoe Store and Young Folks Shop in New Orleans on Wednesday, December 4, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
They make it look fun at Haase. The eight employees have all known each other for years, and many of the customers are longtime regulars or friends. When business is slow, there’s chatter and joking. Even when it’s busy, everyone is generally friendly, and the kids are cute.
But it’s actually not easy to run a small business amid rising prices, shrinking margins and the ubiquity of online shopping.
“So many little moms have some upstart and sell something really cute online with a sweet story behind it,” Caliva said. “It’s hard to compete with that, and then they’re gone three years later.”
Haase has a few things going for it that help explain why it’s still here. School shoes are one of them. Back-to-school sales account for about one-third of the revenue at Haase, and the store stocks the uniform shoes of nearly a dozen Catholic schools in the city, which refer their students to the store.
Haase is also one of the few places that carries hard-to-find items like white leather “high tops” for toddlers and double T-strap Mary Janes. The store sources those shoes from a handful of old-line vendors, including a family-owned business in Pennsylvania, the Kepner-Scott Shoe Co., that makes the shoes by hand and has been around longer than Haase.
The store does use computerized systems to help manage the inventory and do their books. But because they’ve been in business so long, the Calivas intuitively know how much merchandise to stock, which sizes sell best, and where the sweet spot is between ordering too many pairs and running out.
“We make sure we don’t run out of shoes,” Caliva said. “Generally, we do pretty well with that.”
This pew used for people to sit and try on shoes at Haase Shoe Store and Young Folks Shop is from the Ursuline Academy chapel in New Orleans on Wednesday, December 4, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
Haase has also diversified over the years. It does a brisk monogram business, which accounts for another 20% of overall sales. And it has begun mixing in a handful of trendier items in a nod to the Swiftie influence on young fashion — iridescent skater skirts in cotton candy pink and candy apple red, white cowboy boots for girls, glittery rose gold tennis shoes for babies.
“We have to keep up with the times, and people just dress more casually today,” she said. “But it’s a balance, and people come here for smocks, Feltman, classics. If it’s too fashion forward, they get it at Walmart or online, not here.”
Hasse also distinguishes itself with service, offering to deliver monogrammed orders to regular customers and an easy policy on returns.
“Personal service is everything,” she said. “It’s not about the sale but about the person feeling like you care about them.”
There’s a certain sentimentality, too. In New Orleans, that counts for a lot.
On a recent weekday, Kim Brookins strolled her grandson, Ezra, down Oak Street to pick up a shirt she had monogrammed for him and a sweatshirt she had monogrammed for her great niece. She’s been shopping at Haase’s since the 1980s. Her mother shopped there, too.
The display window in front of Haase Shoe Store and Young Folks Shop in New Orleans on Wednesday, December 4, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
“They’re a wonderful store, very family-oriented,” Brookins said.
Caliva and her employees hear those kinds of comments all day long. And it keeps them going.
“Sometimes, people just come in here because they want to reminisce,” she said. “They want to see what it looks like. They’re happy it still looks the same.”
Read next: Look behind the scenes at Casamento’s restaurant, a timeless seafood magnet in New Orleans
Email Stephanie Riegel at stephanie.riegel@theadvocate.com.
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