Wanamaker's

Wanamaker's was an American department store chain founded in 1861 by John Wanamaker. It was one of the first department stores in the United States, and peaked at 16 locations along the Delaware Valley in the 20th century. Wanamaker's was purchased by A. Alfred Taubman, who previously purchased the Washington, D.C. department store Woodward & Lothrop, in 1986.^[1] The store was acquired from bankruptcy by The May Department Stores Company in 1994, and converted all remaining Wanamaker's stores to Hecht's in 1995.

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Wanamaker's

Exterior of the former flagship John Wanamaker Store (2022)
Company type	Subsidiary
Industry	Retail
Genre	Department stores
Founded	1861; 164 years ago (1861) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Founder	John Wanamaker
Defunct	1995; 30 years ago (1995)
Fate	Acquisition by The May Department Stores Company
Successor	Hecht's
Headquarters	John Wanamaker Store, 1300 Market Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Number of locations	16 (at peak)
Area served	Delaware Valley
Products	Clothing footwear housewares furniture toys jewelry linens
Parent	The May Department Stores Company (1994–1995)

Wanamaker's was influential in the development of the retail industry including as the first store to use price tags.^[2]

19th century

John Wanamaker was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1838. Due to a persistent cough, he was unable to join the U.S. Army to fight in the American Civil War, so instead started a career in business.^{[citation needed]}

In 1861, he and his brother-in-law Nathan Brown founded a men's clothing store in Philadelphia called Oak Hall. Wanamaker carried on the business alone after Brown's death in 1868. Eight years later, Wanamaker purchased the abandoned Pennsylvania Railroad station for use as a new, larger retail location. The concept was to renovate the terminal into a "Grand Depot" similar to London's Royal Exchange or Paris's Les Halles and forerunners of the modern department store that were well known in Europe at that time.^{[citation needed]}

The Wanamaker's Grand Depot opened in time to service the public visiting Philadelphia for the American Centennial Exposition of 1876, and in fact resembled one of the many pavilions at that world's fair because of its fanciful new Moorish Revival façade. In 1877, the interior of Wanamaker's was refurbished and expanded to include not only men's clothing, but women's clothing and dry goods as well. This was Philadelphia's first modern-day department store, and one of the earliest founded in America. A circular counter was placed at the center of the building, and concentric circles radiated around it with 129 counters of goods. The store also accepted mail orders, though it was not a large business until the early twentieth century.^[3]^[4]

Wanamaker first thought of how he would run a store on new principles when, as a youth, a merchant refused his request to exchange a purchase. A practicing Christian, he chose not to advertise on Sundays. Before he opened his Grand Depot for retail business, he let evangelist Dwight L. Moody use its facilities as a meeting place, while Wanamaker provided 300 ushers from his store personnel. His retail advertisements—the first to be copyrighted beginning in 1874—were factual, and promises made in them were kept.^{[citation needed]}

Wanamaker guaranteed the quality of his merchandise in print, allowed his customers to return purchases for a cash refund and offered the first restaurant to be located inside a department store. Wanamaker also invented the price tag.^[5]

His employees were to be treated respectfully by management (including not being scolded in public), and John Wanamaker & Company offered its employees access to the John Wanamaker Commercial Institute, as well as free medical care, recreational facilities, profit sharing plans, and pensions—long before these types of benefits were considered standard in corporate employment.^{[citation needed]}

Innovation and "firsts" marked Wanamaker's. The store was the first department store with electrical illumination (1878), first store with a telephone (1879), and the first store to install pneumatic tubes to transport cash and documents (1880).

Wanamaker's commissioned a Philadelphia/New Jersey artist, George Washington Nicholson (1832–1912), to paint a large landscape mural, "The Old Homestead", which was finished in March 1892. The 7-by-14-foot (2.1 by 4.3 m) mural was still owned by Wanamaker's in 1950, but has since passed into a private collection.

20th century

The existing Grand Depot was razed and replaced with the flagship John Wanamaker Store in 1911. News of the Titanic's sinking was transmitted to Wanamaker's wireless station in New York City, and given to anxious crowds waiting outside—yet another first for an American retail store. Public Christmas Caroling in the store's Grand Court began in 1918.

In 1919, El Mundo, a Spanish newspaper, reported that Wanamaker's New York store had 100 specialized departments all under one roof, including a El Departamento de Latino-Americano de Servicio Personal (The Department of Personal Service for Latin-Americans).^[6]

Other innovations included employing buyers to travel overseas to Europe each year for the latest fashions, the first White sale (1878) and other themed sales such as the February "Opportunity Sales" to keep prices as low as possible while keeping volume high. The store also broadcast its organ concerts on the Wanamaker-owned radio station WOO beginning in 1922. Under the leadership of James Bayard Woodford, Wanamaker's opened piano stores in Philadelphia and New York that did a huge business with an innovative fixed-price system of sales. Salons in period decor were used to sell the higher-price items. Wanamaker also tried selling small organs built by the Austin Organ Company for a time.

After John Wanamaker's death in 1922, the business carried on under Wanamaker family ownership. Rodman Wanamaker, John's son, enhanced the reputation of the stores as artistic centers and temples of the beautiful, offering imported luxuries from around the world. After his death in 1928, the stores (managed for the family by a trust) continued to thrive for a time. The men's clothing and accessories department was expanded into its own separate store on the lower floors of the Lincoln-Liberty Building, two doors down on Chestnut Street, in 1932. This building, which also had a private apartment for the Wanamaker family on its top floor, was sold to Philadelphia National Bank in 1952; the initials on the building's crown read "PNB" until November 2014, even though the bank no longer existed.^[7]

In the late 20th century, Wanamaker's lost business to other retail chains, including Bloomingdale's and Macy's, in the Philadelphia market. The Wanamaker Family Trust finally sold John Wanamaker and Company, with its underpatronized stores, to Los Angeles-based Carter Hawley Hale Stores for US$60 million (~$220 million in 2023) cash in 1978.^[8] Carter Hawley Hale poured another $80 million into renovating the stores,^[9] but to no avail—customers had gone elsewhere in the intervening decades and did not come back.

In late 1986, the now 15-store chain was sold to Woodward & Lothrop, owned by Detroit shopping-mall magnate A. Alfred Taubman, for around $180 million (~$424 million in 2023).^[10] Taubman reorganized the business with a shortened corporate name (Wanamaker's Inc.), and poured millions more into store renovations and public relations campaigns. This too was no help, as Taubman's retail interests were heavily in debt and the stores' combined sales were a disappointment.

Acquisition by May and conversion to Hecht's

Woodward & Lothrop collapsed in bankruptcy, filing for Chapter 11 on January 17, 1994. The Wanamaker's chain was sold to May Department Stores Company on June 21, 1995. Wanamaker's Inc. was formally dissolved, and operations were consolidated with May's Hecht's division in Arlington, Virginia. After 133 consecutive years, the Wanamaker's name was removed from all stores and replaced with Hecht's. In 1996, May acquired Wanamaker's historic rival Strawbridge & Clothier^[11] and re-branded all Philadelphia-area Hecht's locations as Strawbridge's, including the Center City flagship. The building closed soon after for renovation and refurbishment, which saw the retail space reduced in size again to three floors, with two more upper floors converted to commercial office space. Th flagship structure was sold again in early 1997, to Amerimar Realty. The retail portion reopened in August 1997 as a branch of New York-based Lord & Taylor, another division of May Department Stores.^[12] In August 2006 the store was converted to Macy's, operated by the Macy's East Division of Federated Department Stores Inc., now Macy's, Inc., which acquired May in late 2005. The former New York Wanamaker's store on Broadway had retail space occupied by Kmart by 1996, and later Wegmans (2023).

The store was not immune to the major change in retailing away from regional chains to national chains. The uniformity of brand offerings and the cost savings available to national chains all worked against the viability of the store as an independent personality, although customers generally had a major say in determining store offerings and the magnificence of its commercial space did tend to cause it to be stocked with better offerings. Other retailers had also learned to offer goods with much smaller staff rosters. The ability of retailers to go national in opposition to regional tastes is still an experiment-in-progress with mixed results.

History

19th century

20th century

Acquisition by May and conversion to Hecht's

Suburban branch stores

In popular culture

See also

Gallery

References

Further reading

External links

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