Boston Stores (California-based department store)

Boston Stores, originally and later still often called The Boston Store, was a chain of department stores based in Inglewood, California, just southwest of Central Los Angeles, that operated from 1934 through 1996.

Ira Kaufman started the chain with a single store in downtown Inglewood in 1934. It grew to 20 stores by 1990, 14 in California and 6 in Arizona, with around 1,000 employees. In 1990 its headquarters was moved to Carson, about 13 miles south of Inglewood.

There have been dozens of stores called "Boston Store" in the U.S., including J. W. Robinson's which went by that name in the late 19th and early 20th century in its downtown Los Angeles locations; and two unrelated "Boston Stores"—one operating in 1925 at 320 S. Broadway in Downtown Los Angeles in the old Blackstone's Department Store building; and another in 1939, with branches at 331 S. Broadway in the old Jacoby Bros. store and at 4755 Whittier Blvd. in East Los Angeles. Neither were related to the Inglewood-based Boston Stores.