Samuel H. Kress was born in 1863 in rural Pennsylvania. Although trained as a schoolteacher, Kress was attracted to the mercantile trade and, in 1887, opened a stationery store in Nanticoke. He was successful and broadened his lines of wares until he found himself with a full-fledged variety store. Quickly expanding throughout the country, he found a growth opportunity when Key West, Florida, caught his eye. It was a happy group of Key Westers who welcomed their first variety store to town when it opened in 1912.

By the time this picture was taken in the 1930's (enlarge), the Kress store had been a fixture in Key West for at least 20 years and S. H. Kress & Co. had spent a number of those years with the highest per-store sales of any five-and-dime retailer in the country (a run that would last until 1947.) Part of that success over comparable retailers like McCrory, Kresge, Woolworth and Grant had to do with merchandise and service and part had to do with one of Samuel Kress' dreams­ designing his stores to be public works of art. So Kress & Co. employed a Corporate Architect named Seymour Burrell. Burrell and his staff rose to the challenge and turned out Kress stores that looked like Gothic churches and ones that looked like Art Deco palaces.

Eventually the variety store went out of style. With the advent of big box stores, the variety retailer either adapted or disappeared­ of the names listed above, the only one viable in 2008 is Kresge: the "K" in K-Mart.

Key West's Kress Store lasted until the early 70's. After its demise, a local developer named David Wolkowsky (the man who conceived of and built the Pier House) bought the building. He fixed it up a bit and built a home for himself on the roof. It just so happened, he knew two nice guys who were making a go of it with a small fabric/drapery/decorative items shop down the street by Appelrouth Lane and who were mighty crowded in there. Maybe they'd be his tenants...

The soul of Fast Buck Freddie's is laid bare for all to see in the store's window displays. Always exceptional, they can only be compared to Saks Fifth Avenue in NYC or the great Marshall Field in downtown Chicago. Changed monthly, the window above is from the Famous Kisses series (enlarge) in February, 2007.

If you'd like to see the house on the store's roof, just go to the Top of the La Concha hotel across the street. The view is spectacular and the cocktails are wet.

And if you're wondering about the name "Fast Buck Freddie's?" It's slightly adapted from the title of a song from the Jefferson Starship album Red Octopus with a wonderful lyric by Grace Slick:

"It's only a fast buck, but it's so hard to make that kind of money."

A sentiment shared by Samuel H. Kress, Bill Conkle and Tony Falcone, no doubt.

Store photos courtesy of Fast Buck Freddie's.