Well Heeled

A tiny store with huge deals on designer shoes

eorge’s Shoes is all about quality over quantity. Family owned since 1922, this amazingly tiny space is a shoe-lover’s (and bargain-hunter’s) heaven. Although the store is barely 25 feet square, and its inventory isn’t the biggest, this keeps the overhead (and prices) low, while the selection is surprisingly broad, with name brands such as Michael Kors and Kate Spade from stores including Neiman Marcus at discounts of 50 percent or more. Arpie

Shhhh! The first George’s Shoes opened in 1922 in Inman Square. In the 1960s the shop moved to its current location in Jamaica Plain when founder George Davidson’s son Benton Davidson took it over.

Shhhh! In 1992, Benton’s daughter
Susan opened a second location,
Benton Shoe Co., in Manchester, New Hampshire.
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Shhh who knew

Massachusetts became the world capital of shoemaking in the 1880s thanks largely to a black inventor from Dutch Guiana, Jan Ernst Mazeliger of Lynn, who invented a machine that could make up to 700 pairs of shoes per day compared to an expert shoemaker's 50.