Joseph Winchester Robinson was a merchant from Waltham, Massachusetts who moved to Rosemead, California in 1882 to develop orange groves.

Robinson found the quality of goods and service from local merchants lacking, and reentered the retail business, utilizing his contacts on the East Coast to deliver superior merchandise.

Robinson, moved into the vacated space and founded Blackstone's Dry Goods,[3] which would become a single-location downtown department store in its own right.

In January 1895 the J. W. Robinson Co., which by that time advertised simply as "The Boston Store", announced that after only eight years at Spring Street, more spacious quarters were necessary, and that a new four-story "Boston Dry Goods Store Building" was under construction at 239 S. Broadway (razed, currently site of a parking lot),[5] opposite the then City Hall.

The new building was promoted at the time as a sign that Los Angeles had come into its own as a "metropolitan center" and that it was no longer necessary to make "annual pilgrimages to San Francisco" to obtain a wide selection of fine merchandise.

The second floor housed various merchandise departments, areas to display delicate fabrics under gas light, a desk with stationery for customers to write, and the ladies' "parlors" (restrooms).

[8] As Los Angeles continued to grow, so did Robinson's business and in 1914 it announced its construction of a new $1,000,000, (~$22.5 million in 2023) seven-story flagship store with over nine acres (400,000 square feet (37,000 m2)) of floor space, along the south side of West Seventh Street stretching alone the complete block between Grand and Hope streets.

[11] In 1934, the building was remodeled for between $100,000 (~$1.78 million in 2023)–200,000 to a "restrained Modernistic" exterior, shedding some its more exuberant Art Deco features and adding more parking facilities.

[12] The Robinson's store closed in 1993 and the building, 600 West Seventh Street, currently houses telecommunications (voice, data and internet servers), offices and ground-floor retail.

The first stores adjacent or connected to shopping malls opened in Panorama City in the San Fernando Valley (late 1950s), Anaheim Plaza, on upper State Street in Santa Barbara (1960s), and Glendale.

Robinson's was dissolved into Robinson's-May there were almost 30 stores across Southern California from San Diego to Palm Desert to Santa Barbara.