Will it be 'Milene's'?

IF THE Filene's on Washington Street becomes a Macy's, will the Filene's Basement underneath it have an identity problem -- or, at least, a logic problem?

Filene's Basement may have been a separate company since 1988, but there has always been a nice symmetry to that building. It's a retail upstairs/downstairs that allows the customer to experience the polarities of the shopping experience in what feels like one big store. Upstairs, people say ''please" and ''thank you." Downstairs, fights can break out over the bridal gowns.

And it's all part of Boston's soul.

Change happens, yes. Cities grow up, and out, and international, and corporate whales move in to gobble the scrod. Anybody who hasn't noticed the landscape morphing hasn't been looking. A person has to straighten the shoulders and move on to the next morph.

A person had to let go of Gilchrists's, after all, and R.H. Stearns, and Kennedy's, and Raymond's, and Jordan Marsh, and the Boston Garden, and -- now that another corporate sponsor has been found -- will wave goodbye to the FleetCenter. A person saw Gillette swallowed by Procter & Gamble and John Hancock taken by Manulife.

So, it's not as if the pending disappearance of the Filene's name should come as a surprise. Federated Department Stores Inc. -- owner of Macy's and Bloomingdale's -- had long been in talks with May Department Stores Co., whose holdings include Filene's, Lord & Taylor, and Hecht's. The $10.4 billion acquisition was announced last week. But this latest morph still comes hard. The prospect of losing Filene's feels a little bit like losing Paul Revere, given that the immigrant founder, William Filene, opened his first retail store in the North End in 1851, according to the company's historical record. He opened a bigger store on Washington Street in 1890 and moved into the present location in 1912.

There's a lot of America in that story, and in the growth of the enterprise, which remained a Boston landmark while keeping up with the country's push into the suburbs.

But now department stores from previous centuries are passe, say the retail analysts, who look at changing demographics and tastes. America has embraced the big box store discounters, the specialty shops, and the Internet. In a culture where shopping is a near avocation and the consumer's pulse is taken at just about every point of sale, the word on department stores is: boring.

That assessment comes as hard as morphing to the person who still finds them interesting -- comforting, even, if one has shopped in them for a lifetime, and given them a special place in the heart's map of home. A Filene's Basement under a Macy's would require a new map--and maybe a good cry.