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department stores

Discover the Hidden History All Around You

You wouldn’t want to see one of New England’s historic buildings, landscapes or icons without knowing about its hidden past, would you?

New England has plenty of landmarks with obvious history, from taverns and meetinghouses to mill yards and monuments. But New England is even more drenched in history than you might imagine.

That road you take to work might have once been trod by French soldiers during the Revolutionary War. A child might have gone to the gallows by that statue you just passed. A world-famous architect, now forgotten, might have designed that pretty church you saw.

The New England Historical Society has regularly posted a feature listing six such noteworthy items, hidden or otherwise. Each New England state gets one. The Six Oldest Houses. Six Mysterious Stone Structures. Six Landmark Signs. Six Irish Landmarks. You get the picture.

New England’s Hidden Past

Now, New England Historical Society authors Dan and Leslie Landrigan have compiled 60 lists of six landmarks into a book called, New England’s Hidden Past: 360 Overlooked, Underappreciated, and Misunderstood Landmarks. If you travel anywhere in New England, this would be a handy book to have around. Looking for a scenic drive for some leaf-peeping in fall? You could take an old Indian trail. Fascinated by the Underground Railroad? Here are six stops.

Trying to find one of each hidden landmark in each New England state can be tricky, especially when Vermont and Rhode Island are so small. But a list of revolutionary forts takes you to the top of Mount Independence in Orwell, Vt., for one of the largest, least disturbed revolutionary sites in America. A list of places where gallows once stood takes you to the spot on a Rhode Island sidewalk where 26 pirates met their maker – all in one day.

New England’s Hidden Past takes readers to the grave sites of revolutionary heroines, Loyalist houses, stagecoach stops, historic department stores, ghost towns and Little Italys. Anyone who loves New England history will love this book.

Order it here and you’ll help local bookstores and the New England Historical Society.

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When Downtown Department Stores Spelled Christmas

Generations of New Englanders remember fondly the glorious downtown department stores at Christmas. Those great retail palaces brought magic to the holidays with stunning window displays, conversations on Santa’s lap and walks through enchanted villages.

Window shopping at Christmas, Providence, 1940. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Window shopping at Christmas at one of Providence’s downtown department stores, 1940. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

The holiday season brought out the best in the great downtown department stores. They were at once arbiters of quality and fashion, makers of dreams, vibrant elements of city life and landmark consumer paradises.

A trip to a department store often marked a milestone. There we bought a back-to-school outfit, a wedding dress, a new suit for the first job. And at Christmas, the trip to the downtown department stores meant – well, Christmas.

Filene’s Christmas decorations, 1950. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Downtown Crossing

During the heyday of Downtown Crossing in Boston, carolers serenaded shoppers atop the Filene’s marquee. A giant manger scene loomed above Summer Street at Jordan Marsh and three large gold bells swayed with the Christmas music.

“I remember going to Downtown Crossing in the early 1970’s and being met by enormous crowds of people who were towered over by the Boston Police officers on their mounted horses…what a sight!,” commented Ellis Paulman.

“I visited Gilchrist’s, R. H. Stearns, Filene’s, and Jordan Marsh,” he wrote. “It was an exciting time and an exhilarating experience for this small-town boy from Connecticut!”

A Boston newspaper reporter in 1956 waxed elegiac about the scene: “Gay Christmas music on the streets and in the stores added to the spirit and helped brighten the mood for the intrepid shoppers,” he wrote. “Store windows, a kaleidoscope of color, added to the gay splashes of varied hues on Christmas-wrapped bundles. Everything was bright and cheerful and sparkled in the sun.”

Jordan Marsh nativity scene, 1950. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Under the Shepard’s Clock

It was the same on Congress Street in Portland, where Porteous boasted ‘lavish and delightful’ Christmas decorations of colored lights, thousands of yards of greenest evergreen and ‘truly fascinating show windows.’

In Hartford, a Christmas village with historic scale-model Connecticut buildings rested atop G. Fox’s marquee, and for several years the store windows featured Christmas paintings from the Wadsworth Athenaeum.

The Outlet, Image courtesy David Laroche.

The three great Providence stores on Westminster Street – Shepard’s, Cherry & Webb and Gladdings – decked themselves out for the holiday, and if you got lost you waited for your parents under the tall, neon-lit Shepard’s clock. The Outlet Company in downtown Providence outlasted them all. Founded in 1891, it grew to occupy a city block. Woonsocket, R.I., 15 miles north, had its own institution: McCarthy’s. It had a sidewalk clock, too, and a talking Christmas tree during the holidays.

McCarthy’s. Image courtesy David Laroche.

The Good Old Days

Internet sites are filled with blogs and websites devoted to department store history. eBay does a brisk business selling branded items from favorite stores. Books have been written about them: Denholms: The Story of Worcester’s Premier Department Store, G. Fox & Co.: Where Connecticut Shopped and Filene’s: Boston’s Great Specialty Store.

The Connecticut Historical Society not only houses the Remembering G. Fox & Co. archives, it hosts G. Fox talks that draw attendees dressed in G. Fox items (the store closed in 1993). Elizabeth Abbe, who presents the talks, compares the G. Fox & Co. fans to the cult following of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Downtown Providence at Christmas, 1940. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Today, the great Providence Shepard’s store – once the country’s largest — is used by the University of Rhode Island. The Porteous flagship store on Congress Street is the Maine College of Art. Sage-Allen in Hartford was converted to luxury apartments. Jordan Marsh’s Enchanted Village is now at a Jordan Furniture store in Avon. What remain as department stores are invariably Macy’s.

A $35 Teddy Bear

But back in the day, you brought your best self to the great old downtown department stores. You hoped to find the wondrous toy, the fantastic dress, the wild extravagance you just had to have.

In 1965, a 19-year-old Hartford Courant employee spent her entire Christmas bonus on a Stieff teddy bear at G. Fox. “I believe he cost $35,” she posted in The Department Store Museum blog. “That was outrageous for a 19 yr old to spend on a Teddy Bear. Oh my goodness I have so many great memories.”

A Boston Christmas shopper, date unknown. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

A shopper at Boston’s downtown department stores, date unknown. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

For roughly 50 years, from the 1920s to the 1970s, downtown department stores transported customers from their everyday cares. Their vast assortments of merchandise put flesh on our admittedly materialistic dreams. The stores sent buyers all over the world to bring back wares to would wow customers.

Filene’s

Filene’s opened a Paris office in 1910, which established its reputation as a fashion authority and sent stock to its high-end French Shop.

That was just one of many shops within Filene’s flagship store, designed by the great Daniel Burnham. There was ‘Young Breed,’ ‘Varsity Shop’ and ‘Junior Gown Shop.’ There was a special repair department, back when you repaired broken merchandise rather than replacing it.

Filene’s was known for its Lilly Pulitzer clothes, its Kimberly knits, its ski shop, its cruise shop, its Oxford shop and its fine men’s clothing.

And the basement! Filene’s paid 10 cents on the dollar for leftover merchandise from stores like I. Magnin. Bargain hunters could thrill to the shopping hunt with end-of-season luxury goods at a fraction of their original prices — with labels and original price tags still intact.

Christmas crowds at Downtown Crossing, date unknown. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Items purchased at the great department stores sometimes took on special significance. Such was the case of a handkerchief from Boston’s R. H. Stearns, a 10-story emporium that offered simple elegance to little old ladies from Beacon Hill.

A woman told the Department Store Museum that she met a handsome sailor on the Boston Common in 1958. “We went for a walk on Tremont St. I was having a sneezing attack from Hay Fever. My sailor friend went into RH Sterns and purchased a fancy lace hankie for me. I kept the hankie for over 50 years. We rediscovered each other in 2011 and just married this past April 2012. I gave him back the hankie. He couldn’t believe I kept it all these years. The hankie is still in good shape and just as beautiful as the day he gave it to me.”

Customer Is Always Right

Downtown department stores treated customers like royalty, but perhaps no store treated customers better than G. Fox. Its motto: The customer is always right.

G. Fox flagship store, Hartford.

Beatrice Fox Auerbach, the beloved matriarch who presided over G. Fox’s glory years, would not allow a customer to go away unhappy. The hallmark of G. Fox since her grandfather founded it in 1847 was free home delivery –- first by wheelbarrow, then by horse-drawn carriage, and finally by automobile and truck. In 1947, G. Fox celebrated its centennial by delivering packages by helicopter.

Recalled one G. Fox employee, “The policy was if a customer wanted to return a spool of thread, the great G. Fox fleet would pick up the thread.”

Auerbach was so anxious to please customers that on Christmas Eve she kept a small staff and drivers on standby until midnight for desperate parents who still needed a Christmas gift.

As far back as 1917, Hartford had an amazing emotional attachment to G. Fox. When the five-story store burned down that year, 98 percent of the customers still paid their bills though all customer records had been destroyed. The owners paid employees their salaries during construction of the new store, and Hartford merchants let G. Fox sell its goods in their storefronts.

Good Employers

The great downtown department stores treated their employees well, with employee cafeterias, on-site nurses, paid vacations and sick days and benefits. Auerbach promoted minority employees at G. Fox well before it was the norm. Edward Filene encouraged the company’s union and instituted profit-sharing. His brother Lincoln stood at the door on Christmas Eve and shook the hand of every Filene’s employee.

As a result, department store employees could be fiercely loyal. For example, a Cherry & Webb employee drowned during the Hurricane of 1938 while trying to rescue the furs in the Providence store’s basement.

Holiday decorations at Houghton & Dutton, one of Boston’s great lost downtown department stores.

Lowell’s Bon Marche in 1938 had 62 employees who were 10-year veterans of the store.

“I loved, loved, loved working for this store,” wrote one Jordan Marsh employee.

A G. Fox employee tells of his late mother who retired from G. Fox. She proudly won many customer service awards and was buried wearing her G. Fox name badge.

Sensory delights

Shopping filled the senses at the great downtown department stores: the ring of the bell, the smell of the city, the shining marble, mahogany and brass and most of all the merchandise displayed in tasteful wooden-and-glass cases.

Window shopping in Downtown Crossing. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Window shopping at the downtown department stores in Boston. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Children found it exciting to dine in the elegant restaurants of the downtown department stores, like the Venetian Tea Room at Read’s in Bridgeport or the Top o’ the Town Restaurant at Forbes & Wallace in Springfield. They had to wear their Sunday best and put on proper manners.

“It was a tradition in my family to go to Providence on Thanksgiving night to walk off our big dinner and to window shop,” commented Gail Merrill. “It was the first night that they lit the Christmas lights and all the store fronts had beautiful displays! The dolls and train sets were sure to be on every child’s list! Shepard’s, Gladdings, and the Outlet window displays rivaled New York’s. Oh the memories!!!

Each department store had a signature food item. Shepard’s in Providence had chicken croquettes, while Gilchrist’s in Boston had almond macaroons. Sage-Allen in Springfield smelled like sticky buns, so spicy they almost burned the tongue. The aroma from the bakery wafted up the escalators, drawing customers into the basement.

Date nut bread sandwiches with cream cheese were a favorite at G. Fox. And Jordan Marsh’s blueberry muffins were a required treat at the end of shopping trips to Boston. Since the bakery closed in the early 1990s, baker John Pupek opened the Jordan Marsh Blueberry Muffin Co. in Brockton, which sells the muffins at Macy’s in Portland.

The Rise of Downtown Department Stores

With roots in 18^th– and 19^th-century dry goods stores, the department stores flourished because New England flourished. For a time, New England cities supported several of the country’s largest downtown department stores.

Providence merchant Benjamin Thurber in 1766 founded the oldest, Gladdings. The store’s bunch of grapes insignia therefore became the longest continuously used trade sign in American history.

Yankee merchants also founded Jordan Marsh and R. H. Stearns. Eben Jordan founded Jordan Marsh in 1841, and then R. H. Stearns founded his eponymous store in 1848.

Many department stores had immigrant roots. Gerson Fox, who opened G. Fox in 1847, was German Jewish, as was William Filene, who founded his namesake business in 1881. Forbes & Wallace founder Andrew Wallace was born in Scotland, and Worcester’s Denholm & McKay founder William Denholm was a native of Dundee.

Shopping for Christmas bargains in Providence, 1940. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Shopping for Christmas bargains at downtown department stores in Providence, 1940. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Bon Marche

The rise and fall of Bon Marche in Lowell, Mass., typified the fate of downtown department stores.

Lowell native Frederic Mitchell opened his first store on Merrimack Street in 1878, displaying merchandise on draped packing cases so the millworkers would eye it as they passed by. As a result, millworkers flocked to Bon Marche on the day the ghost walked – payday.

During the world wars, Lowell’s mills churned out munitions and textiles to clothe the troops, and Bon Marche helped with the war effort. During World War I, Bon Marche collected peach pits for gas masks, and sold war bonds and stamps during both wars.

After World War II, Bon Marche went back to its main marketing proposition by offering deals that couldn’t be beat and rock bottom prices. The store furthermore had a big rock sticking out of the basement floor, a glacial erratic too large to remove during construction.

When Lowell struggled, so did Bon Marche. By 1976, Bon Marche turned into a Jordan Marsh, and by the 1990s, the building had no tenants.

The high water mark for Boston’s downtown department stores probably came in 1956, when it had seven department stores at Christmas: R.H. White, Gilchrist’s, R.H. Stearn’s, Raymond’s, Kennedy’s, Jordan Marsh and Filene’s.

Downtown Crossing pre-1956. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

At Downtown Crossing pre-1956, the year downtown department stores reached their peak. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Suburban Flight

It would be the last Christmas for R.H. White’s, the first victim of the middle-class flight to the suburbs.

Then after 100 years in business, Raymond’s declared bankruptcy in 1972 and killed off its spokesman, the swamp Yankee Uncle Eph.

Subsequently in 1976, Gilchrist’s, one of the big three in Downtown Crossing with Jordan’s and Filene’s, closed 134 years after it opened.

R. H. Stearns, which had towered over Boston Common in a landmark building for seven decades, shut its doors in 1978.

Kennedy’s then closed in the early 1980s, having grown from a small men’s store in 1892 to a fixture of New England retailing.

Jordan Marsh became a Macy’s in 1996.

And finally Filene’s, the last to give up the ghost, became a Macy’s in 2006.

Memories

Memories of the great old downtown department stores live on, though, in tissue-wrapped ornaments tucked away in Steiger’s boxes or childhood Santa photos from Sage-Allen.

A typical sentiment expressed on the Forgotten New England site: “To mourn the loss of the Bon Marché Department Store in Downtown Lowell is almost like mourning the loss of a beloved grandparent.”

A Springfield resident posted on the Department Store Museum site that nothing could replace her beloved Forbes and Wallace. “My mother and I shopped that store ‘til the bitter end of July of 1976. Broken Hearted over the tearing down of that retail mecca! Nothing can replace my beloved Forbes and Steigers stores! Nor the magic of then-downtown Springfield, Mass!”

How we miss those downtown department stores.

Special thanks to the Department Store Museum and Shopping Days in Retro Boston. This story about downtown department stores was updated in 2022.

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Six Historic Downtown Department Stores

In the time before Amazon, downtown department stores used to provide a special shopping experience. People dressed up when they went to visit downtown department stores, plastic charge cards in hand. They often stayed for the day, patronizing nearby theaters, banks, restaurants and other stores, maybe Kresge’s or Woolworths.

Downtown department stores played a vital role in local economies — and to a city’s identity.

They offered convenience, modernity, style and elegance: the best and latest merchandise, large selections and top quality. And the great downtown department stores prided themselves on gracious service.

At Christmas, downtown department stores took on magical qualities with festive shop windows, patient Santas and evergreens and twinkling lights everywhere.

Downtown department stores have pretty much disappeared, replaced by suburban shopping malls, which in turn are falling prey to Amazon.

Here are some memories of six downtown department stores that once graced New England:

Department Store Historic District

G. Fox, the most beloved of Hartford’s downtown department stores

Customers from the entire region of central Connecticut traveled to Hartford for the city’s three leading downtown department stores: Sage Allen & Co., Brown Thomson & Co., and G. Fox & Co. Now, along with the 1889 Sage Allen sidewalk clock and the G. Fox warehouse, they belong to the Department Store Historic District.

Henry Hobson Richardson, of Trinity Church fame in Boston, designed the Brown Thomson building, and Cass Gilbert designed both the Woolworth Building in New York and G. Fox in Hartford.

If you couldn’t find an item in one of those stores, you probably couldn’t find it. At Brown Thomson you could buy a Cadillac along with a full line of automotive supplies.

Hartford’s department stores appealed to all the senses. At Sage Allen, the aroma of spicy sticky buns pulled customers into the downtown basement. Shoppers also loved G. Fox’s cream-cheese-and-date-nut-bread-sandwiches.

None of the downtown department stores treated their customers as well as G. Fox. If a customer wanted to return a spool of thread, a vehicle from the G. Fox fleet would pick up the thread.

Since 1847, the store always offered free home delivery, first by wheelbarrow, then by horse-drawn carriage, then by car and truck. In 1947, G. Fox marked its 100th anniversary by delivering packages by helicopter. On Christmas Eve, G. Fox kept a small staff and drivers on standby until midnight for desperate parents who needed an emergency Christmas gift.

Everyone in central Connecticut knew exactly where to meet someone at the clock — the Sage Allen sidewalk clock, a landmark since 1889. The clock disappeared after a windstorm damaged it and finally returned in working order in 2007.

All three of Hartford’s great downtown department stores are sorely missed. They disappeared in the early 1990s, felled by two large regional malls.

884-956 Main St., 36 Talcott St., Hartford, Conn.

Porteous

Portland’s Congress Street Porteous today

Porteous, Mitchell and Braun opened in 1904 on Congress Street in Portland, the largest department store in Maine. Porteous boasted ‘lavish and delightful’ Christmas decorations of colored lights, thousands of yards of greenest evergreen and ‘truly fascinating show windows.’

Two years after it opened, the store advertised in the Chamber of Commerce Journal of Maine. “We have spared neither time, money, nor inventive genius, to make this store … THE Christmas Store of the City and State.” The merchandise was “peculiarly and ideally correct for Holiday gift giving. Every nook and corner of this splendid building radiates the true Christmas spirit. COME AND SEE WHAT WE HAVE DONE FOR YOU!”

And the people did come to see the spectacular store decorations and awe-inspiring toy and doll departments.

One shop window displayed an old-fashioned circus. Inside the store, hundreds of decorated Christmas trees, Christmas baskets and red holly bells wowed customers.

The store hit its heyday in the late 1970s and early 1980s, expanding to shopping malls in Auburn, Bangor and Presque Isle, Maine, Burlington, Vt. and Newington, N.H.

The Texas-based Dunlaps store chain started running Porteous in 1993. By the late 1990s it began closing stores because it couldn’t compete with other retailers. By 2003 Dunlaps shut the doors to the last Porteous store in Presque Isle. The flagship store in Portland closed just short of its 100^th birthday that same year. The store is now home to the Maine College of Art.

522 Congress St., Portland, Maine

Filene’s

Filene’s Christmas decorations, 1950. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Filene’s got its start as Filene’s Sons and Co. in 1881. William Filene, a German-Jewish immigrant from Prussia, had arrived in Boston in 1848 and began building up his small empire of little retail shops.

Filene’s sons, Edward and Lincoln, made the store a household name after inheriting it in 1901. Edward pioneered the store’s basement annex, thronged by bargain-hunters week after week. The annual wedding dress sale drove brides-to-be into frenzies and usually made the local news.

One suburbanite born in 1946 remembers the glory years of Boston’s downtown department stores: “We went “in town” for everything,” ML told the history of department stores. “You would never consider buying a winter coat locally – you always made a trip to Filene’s, Jordan Marsh, R. H. Stern or R. H. White.” Filene’s actually sent photographers to customers’ homes to take baby pictures — or you could go to the store for that first communion photo.

Shoppers at Boston’s downtown department stores at Downtown Crossing pre-1956. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

At Christmas, the store shook off its humbler aspect, decked out and decorated for Christmas. It became a centerpiece of Boston’s Downtown Crossing, along with rival Jordan Marsh.

From 1930 through the 1990s, Filene’s stores sprang up in malls throughout America.

The 1990s brought on the store’s shrinkage, however, and in 2006 the name Filene’s disappeared from the retail landscape, merged with Macy’s. The former flagship Boston store now houses the Irish retailer Primark’s first U.S. store.

10 Summer St., Boston, Mass.

Varick’s

Varick’s is on the right

Elm Street was the place to be in Manchester, N.H., at Christmas. When the shifts ended at the gargantuan Amoskeag mill yard, workers went to Elm Street to mingle with friends, have a meal and spend their paychecks at the shops that lined the street.

In the heart of the shopping district was the John B. Varick Co. at 809-819 Elm St. For years it was the largest hardware store outside of Boston, but it also sold a huge variety of merchandise, including sporting goods, jewelry, silver, fishing gear, seeds, toys, luggage and radios. Varick’s stocked up on silverware at Christmas, a popular item during the season.

Varick’s was founded in 1845 by John P. Adriance. His nephew John B. Varick came to work in the store at age 16, and two years later bought the company from his uncle with a partner. Varick ran the business for 53 years until his death in 1902. Sons Thomas and Richard took over the store, and by 1916 they owned the Varick Building, half of the Varick-Sullivan Building and three warehouses, two of which were next to railroad tracks and could handle seven cars of freight at once.

Varick’s offered low prices because of low insurance rates, no rent, ideal freight conditions and its ability to buy in large quantities without borrowing money, The Granite State Monthly explained.

The store also boasted an early and massive sprinkler system. The reason? Fire wiped out the store in 1888, 1892 and 1914. The last fire gutted the five-story store brick building after it reached the sporting goods department and ignited powder and cartridges.

John B. Varick’s sons had died by 1943, and the business was sold to the Gould family after World War II. By 1951 the company closed its doors. Today the building includes retail space and apartments.

819 Elm St., Manchester, N.H.

Westminster Arcade

Westminster Arcade, the granddaddy of Providence’s downtown department stores. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Providence’s Westminster Arcade, built in 1828, is the first indoor shopping mall in America. In the heart of downtown Providence at Westminster and Weybosset Streets, it’s a long narrow building with European-style skylights, Greek columns weighing 13 tons each and granite walls. Inside, walkways were lined with shops that had interior-facing windows displaying their wares.

Cyrus Butler built the arcade, and at first people called it Butler’s Folly because it was so far from the town’s retail district. Eventually three sisters opened a fashionable hat shop in the building. The shop was popular and other retail establishments located nearby on Westminster Street.

“I have a wonderful memory of my mom bringing my brother and me to the Arcade at Christmastime,” remembered Audra Wooten. “It was so festive and exciting to see as a child.”

The three great department stores that grew up on Westminster Street – Shepard’s, Cherry & Webb and Gladdings – decked themselves out for the holiday, and if you got lost you waited for your parents under the tall, neon-lit Shepard’s clock.

The Arcade survived a fire and three hurricanes, but never made money and was nearly torn down in 1944. The Metropolitan Museum of Art called it one of the finest commercial buildings in the history of American architecture.

In 1976, it received National Historic Landmark status. The building fell into disrepair, and by 2008 it had emptied. Developers restored it and by 2013 converted the building into retail space and tiny apartments.

65 Weybosset St, Providence, R.I.

Montgomery Ward

Montgomery Ward, one of Burlington’s downtown department stores.

Church Street in Burlington, Vt., has long been a busy downtown shopping corridor lined with impressive brick buildings. At Christmas, the lighted trees along Church Street imparted a festive holiday air.

Montgomery Ward’s 515th store opened on Church Street in Burlington on Dec. 28, 1929. It missed the Christmas season though plasterers, carpenters and painters tried to get it done in time by working around the clock.

The company had settled on an ambitious plan to expand its stores, but fast. Its mail-order sales had dropped, and its rival Sears was opening hundreds of stores on the outskirts of major cities.

Montgomery Ward decided to challenge Sears in smaller cities, where country people were driving their new cars to shop. By 1930, two out of three Vermont farms had a car, up from one in four a decade earlier.

In 1927 Montgomery Ward had only 36 stores. Two years later, it had more than 500, 200 more than Sears. Architects in Chicago probably designed the one in Burlington, which has wide Chicago windows on the second floor.

The Burlington store announced its opening with an ad in the Burlington Free Press promoting electric washing machines, vacuum cleaners, men’s
suits, ladies’ dresses, automobile tires, radios, and a ‘smart three-piece living room suite covered with peach mohair.’

The company’s timing — the eve of the Great Depression — didn’t help the store’s survival. It lasted only 32 years, closing in December 1961. Various retailers have operated in the building since then, and a bank now uses part of it.

Today Church Street belongs to Burlington’s lively outdoor pedestrian mall.

52-54 Church St., Burlington, Vt.

Photos: Howland-Hughes By GrammarFascist – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44118309. Montgomery Ward by By Mfwills; cropped by Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:32, 22 October 2013 (UTC) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29141129. This story about downtown department stores was updated in 2022.

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R. H. Macy Starts His Thanksgiving Parade in Massachusetts

R. H. Macy took a long and winding path to becoming the merchant prince of New York City. Early in his journey, he introduced the Macy’s Parade — in Massachusetts.

Macy had opened a dry goods store in Haverhill, but it didn’t succeed. He also opened stores in Boston and Marysville, Calif., but those failed too.

When he finally opened a fancy dry goods store on Sixth Avenue in New York, he had reached his 36th year. And he had learned from his mistakes.

Rowland Hussey Macy

R. H Macy

Rowland Hussey Macy was born in Nantucket on Aug. 30, 1822, the fourth of six children in a Quaker family. His father owned a small shop. At 15 he shipped out aboard the whale ship Emily Morgan and spent four years at sea. He returned with a red star tattooed on his forearm, to mark the star that once guided him safely through a thick fog into port.

He also came back with a $500 share of the catch – about $11,000 in today’s money. With that money he started a small thread-and-needle shop in Boston, but within two years he had to close it. Then he opened a dry goods store, which failed in 1845. On the last page of the account book he wrote,

I have worked Two Years for Nothing.

Damn,

Damn.

Damn.

Damn.

Haverhill

Macy’s in Haverhill

In 1843, R.H. Macy moved to Haverhill, Mass., and started another dry goods store. He chose as its trademark a rooster bearing the words, “While I live, I’ll crow.” That motto proved prescient, for his flair for promotion helped him found the world’s first department store.

But that was still years away. In Haverhill, he hoped the nearby mills would send him customers, but the store folded within a year.

In 1849, he decided to follow the California Gold Rush with his brother Charles. He sailed to California, leaving his wife and two small children behind. The Macys opened Macy & Co., in Marysville, Calif., to provision miners. The store failed after two months when the miners gave up looking for gold and moved on.

He returned to Haverhill in 1851 and opened still another dry goods store with still another brother, Robert. He called it “Haverhill Cheap Store,” eventually moving to 70 Merrimack Street.

The First Macy Day Parade

In 1854, the Macy brothers held a Fourth of July parade as a way for the city’s immigrant mill workers to celebrate America. The parade, led by a band, marched past the Cheap Store. The weather was hot, the road dusty and only about 100 spectators showed up. It was a far cry from today’s extravagant Thanksgiving Day parade.

After that store closed he opened another at 68-74 Merrimac St., which survived for three years. Macy advertised the store as the “greatest emporium east of Boston.” He also boasted that management visited Boston every week for new styles — and New York every 60 days.

He also tried his hand at real estate speculation in Wisconsin and made some money.

4 Rules for Success

The first Macy’s in New York

With his real estate profit and money from financial backers, he moved to New York City in 1858. He started a fancy dry goods store on Sixth Avenue with a red star as his trademark.

Macy had learned from his past mistakes and relied on four principles considered radical at the time:

Sell at fixed, marked prices.
Sell for less than other stores.
Buy and sell for cash.
Advertise vigorously.

On the day he opened his door, he sold $11.06 worth of dry goods. Thirteen months later, he had sold $90,000 worth of products and employed 15 people.

For the next two decades, R.H. Macy looked for new things to sell and new ideas to promote them despite his failing health. He adopted the store Santa Claus, themed exhibits and lit-up window displays to draw in customers. He offered a money-back guarantee and sold made-to-measure clothing for men and women. In 1874, Macy put up a window display that included dolls themed to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Macy wrote all of his own advertisements, spending 3 percent of his sales on advertising when his competitors spent 1 percent.

Macy’s flagship store.

His store grew into one of the world’s most successful department store chains, with a flagship building so large it could fit 10,000 average-size houses inside it.

R.H. Macy died while in Paris in 1877 while hunting for new items. Thirty-seven years after his death, Macy’s presented the second Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City.

Need some new ideas for your Thanksgiving feast? How about trying something old — and authentic — from the New England Historical Society’s latest ebook. Available from Amazon (click here).

With thanks to The Grand Emporiums: The Illustrated History of America’s Great Department Stores by Robert Hendrickson. This story was updated in 2022. If you enjoyed it, you may want to read ‘When Downtown Department Stores Spelled Christmas’ here.

Image: Macy’s in Herald Square By Ajay Suresh from New York, NY, USA – HeraldSquare-Oct14-1, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74460073.

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Jennie Cramer – New Haven’s “Beautiful Victim” of 1881

Jennie Cramer and her mother Christina had an awful fight on Thursday, August 4, 1881. Jennie and her friend Blanche Douglass had been dating two of the Malleys – members of one of New Haven’s wealthiest families – and they hadn’t come home the night before.

Cover of the book about the murder of Jennie Cramer, The Beautiful Victim of Elm City

If she didn’t stop her scandalous behavior, Christina threatened, Jennie, 21, would have to find her own place to live. Jennie insisted she did nothing wrong, that she only spent the night at the hotel where Blanche was staying because Blanche was ill and she could find no one to accompany her home.

In truth, the two girls had stayed at the Malley mansion. Jennie thought it would sound better to say they had stayed in Blanche’s rooms. But Jennie probably did believe the rest of it – that Blanche was sick. The best evidence suggests that Jennie never knew exactly what was going on with the Malleys and Blanche.

Walter Malley

Walter Malley’s father, Edward, owned Malley & Co., a very successful dry goods store. The department stores it spawned would remain in business through 1982. Walter was a shy boy, musical and artistic but unambitious. He attended college but never graduated, and lived at his family’s mansion.

His cousin Jimmy was more outgoing and a harder worker than Walter. The two had met Blanche (one of several names she used) at a brothel in New York, and she was “dating” Walter.

Jimmy, meanwhile, was attracted to Jennie Cramer. Jennie’s father, a cigar maker, was far less wealthy than the Malleys. Jennie herself is generally described as beautiful, but not extraordinarily smart.

Illustration of the discovery of Jennie Cramer from The Beautiful Victim of Elm City

Nevertheless, Jennie was very protective of her reputation. She hoped her beauty would allow her to marry well. While she was open to Jimmy’s attention, she did not intend to sleep with him.

With this in mind, Blanche, Walter and Jimmy cooked up a scheme. The three would try to find a way to have Jimmy and Jennie spend the night together. Jennie never knew of the scheme, and in all likelihood never knew that Blanche was a prostitute.

Savin Rock

On Wednesday night, they put their plan into action. Walter’s father Edward was away at Saratoga. The mansion was vacant. The four spent some time drinking and eating and singing, and then Blanche began to protest that she was feeling ill. Blanche would later say she heard Jimmy and Jennie fighting in the next room that Wednesday night, as Jennie fought off his advances – apparently successfully.

After telling Jennie’s mother the altered version of the story, Blanche said she went to her dressmaker. She saw Jennie on a horse-pulled trolley headed to Savin Rock in West Haven, home of an amusement park. It was the last she ever saw of Jennie – or so she said.

Postcard of The Colonnade at Savin Rock.

Witnesses would later come forward and say they saw Jennie Cramer with two men and a woman who looked like Blanche and the Malleys at Savin Rock on Friday. With Jennie missing, her father began making the rounds looking for her.

He questioned Jimmy Malley, who said Jennie had spoken of going to New York, perhaps with Blanche. Walter made a show of taking a train toward the city, but turning back when he received a telegram at Stamford informing him Blanche was in New Haven.

No one knew where Jennie was. Until Saturday morning, when a fisherman at Savin Rock found a body – Jennie Cramer – in the surf. He pulled her to shore and ran for the police.

The first assumption was that she had drowned. But a cursory exam showed she had no water in her lungs. The next assumption was that she had killed herself because of the fight with her mother, but that, too, would soon seem far-fetched.

Arsenic and Lies

Over the next several weeks, some of the truth about Jennie Cramer began emerging. An autopsy revealed she had been raped. Further analysis found arsenic in her system. Some theorized that perhaps she had taken it herself, which some girls did to improve their complexion.

No, there was too much arsenic in her body to have been the residual effect of small doses of arsenic. Rather, she had taken a large dose and it killed her. Suicide made little sense, unless it was in despair over being attacked.

The more stones the police turned over, the worse things looked. When they discovered Blanche had told a slew of lies about herself in the initial inquiries, they arrested her and the Malleys. A grand jury declared Jimmy was the killer and that Walter and Blanche were his accomplices. They would have to stand trial.

The Edw. Malley Co. logo

While the case was proceeding, however, the Malleys did not stand idly by. Edward hired a team of lawyers and detectives. Rumors spread that he was paying off witnesses to change their stories – to become less sure they had witnessed the Malley boys with Jennie on the Thursday and Friday in question.

Blanche’s performance, even with legal coaching, was shaky. One of the Malley family, she would later say, asked how much money she would require to run away and get on the next steamer to Europe. Either confident of victory, or fearing she was being set up, Blanche refused.

The Trial

In the spring 1882, the trial kicked off. The press covered the salacious story extensively. New Haven at the time was a mini-melting pot of immigrants, with an entrepreneurial and clannish nature.

A small book was published about the case, and the Malleys tried to buy up every copy to shore up their image. There was little doubt among the public that the wealthy Jimmy Malley was guilty, but the jury found otherwise.

There was ample evidence that the Malleys and Blanche had lied repeatedly, but the judge instructing the jury told them there was only one question before them. Had the threesome poisoned Jennie Cramer with arsenic? On that point the jury found inadequate evidence to convict.

The shocking death of Jennie Cramer wreaked havoc on her family. Her father killed himself before the trial. Her mother, who became mentally unstable after the trial, followed suit and committed suicide in 1891.

Blanche Douglass would make headlines in the years after the trial a couple of times. Once she was accused of trying to blackmail the Malleys with incriminating letters Walter had written to her. She would later create a scandal by announcing that she and Walter had married, a story he immediately denied.

This story about Jennie Cramer was updated in 2023.

Image of Malley logo: By Self-made scan of vintage box., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24225778. Savin Rock PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10134715.

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Franklin Roosevelt Celebrates Franksgiving, er, Thanksgiving

On Aug. 14, 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt invented a new holiday: Franksgiving. He did it by declaring Thanksgiving would be celebrated on the fourth instead of the last Thursday of November.

There was nothing sacred about the last Thursday, Roosevelt told reporters.

The change infuriated Republicans, football coaches, college students, turkey growers, calendar makers and the Town of Plymouth, Mass.

One political opponent went so far as to compare Roosevelt to Hitler.

Franklin Roosevelt celebrates Franksgiving. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Why Franksgiving

Roosevelt had a good reason for declaring Franksgiving on the fourth rather than the last Thursday in November. The country still suffered from the Great Depression, and there were five Thursday that November.

Roosevelt wanted to extend a short, 20-day Christmas shopping season to help retail merchants sell more products. Back then, stores didn’t put out Christmas merchandise until after Thanksgiving.

Increasing profits and spending during this period, Roosevelt hoped, would help bring the country out of the Depression.

Fred Lazarus, Jr., founder of Federated Department Stores (later Macy’s), gets the credit for persuading Roosevelt to push Thanksgiving back a week to stretch the Christmas shopping season.

It was the first time the last-Thursday tradition established by Abraham Lincoln in 1863 was broken.

Republicans called Roosevelt’s declaration an affront to the memory of Lincoln. And in the spirit of partisanship still with us today, people began referring to the ‘Republican Thanksgiving’ (last Thursday) and the ‘Democratic Thanksgiving’ (fourth Thursday) as ‘Franksgiving.’

Never mind that New England had celebrated Thanksgiving at various times since the 17^th century. The Continental Congress, for example, had in 1777 declared the first national Thanksgiving in December following the patriot victory at Saratoga.

Howls of Protest

Fast and furious came the backlash. The pastor of Plymouth’s Church of the Pilgrimage called Franksgiving ‘a calloused attack on a religious tradition.’ The chairman of the town’s board of selectmen ‘heartily disapproved.’

Alf Landon, who Roosevelt defeated in 1936, took his denunciation further: The president, he said, had changed the date ‘to an unprepared country with the omnipotence of a Hitler.’

Football coaches abhorred Franksgiving. Colleges had long ago scheduled the last football game of the season on Thanksgiving Day. Deans complained they had to change the entire academic schedule.

An Ohio printer wrote one of the many thousands of letters protesting the change. Calendar makers, he wrote, would go bankrupt.

The president of the National Poultry, Butter and Egg Association sent a telegram to the White House denouncing Franksgiving, saying it would injure turkey farmers and disrupt marketing plans of processors and distributors.

A House Divided

Roosevelt’s declaration would have thrown a monkey wrench into many Thanksgiving plans. Many simply chose to ignore it. A presidential declaration wasn’t legally binding in the states, and 22 chose to ignore it. So half the country celebrated Thanksgiving on the fifth Thursday, and half on the fourth.

All six New England states, which had elected Republican governors, held Thanksgiving on the last Friday. Texas couldn’t decide and declared both the fourth and fifth Thursdays government holidays.

Roosevelt repeated Franksgiving in 1940 and 1941, declaring Nov. 21, 1940 and Nov. 20, 1941 the days to celebrate.

Again, half the country ignored him. George Gallup took a poll and found 62 percent of Americans disapproved of Franksgiving. The survey showed a majority, especially Republicans, ‘are in favor of letting the nation’s turkeys live a week longer,’ Gallup said.

Most damning of all, Franksgiving gave no boost to retail sales.

Finally, Roosevelt formally admitted his mistake and in 1941 signed a bill into law officially making Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday in November.

This story about Franksgiving was updated in 2021.

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