Thursday marks 10 years since the iconic nine-story department store at State and Randolph streets was last known as Marshall Field's — a name change that still stings many nostalgic Chicagoans.
But tucked near the store's august Walnut Room, the Field's name still exists on shirts, bags and other merchandise sold by Macy's. It seems the company that jettisoned the Marshall Field's name knows it's still got a popular brand name to sell. Remember then? Field's, named after its founder, was a pioneer in American retail. It was the first to employ women in its stores, the first with a bridal registry, the first with money-back guarantees and the first with in-store dining.
Many of Field's Old World charms, including its big clocks, vaulted Tiffany ceiling and the Walnut Room — as well as green tins full of Frango mints once made in the store — remain. Pedestrians pass Marshall Field's in the s. As these changes were made over the years, the store maintained its emphasis on superior customer service, centered around its mainly female clientele; the store's reputation in this regard was forever enshrined through the motto, "Give the Lady What She Wants," which was said to have been coined by Marshall Field himself in Selfridge's innovations helped the retail side grow rapidly--and at a much faster clip than the wholesale.
This rapid growth created a need for more space, so in construction was completed on a new nine-story building at the corner of Washington and Wabash. In Field ordered the installation of a large clock, visible for blocks, mounted above the corner entrance at State and Washington. It quickly became a famous Chicago landmark and a popular meeting place and was immortalized via a Norman Rockwell drawing that appeared on the cover of the November 3, , Saturday Evening Post.
By the early s, the Marshall Field store was firmly established as the premier department store in Chicago. Its reputation for high quality, status, and fashion particularly grew out of the company's buying decisions--most notably, the goods imported from overseas.
By the business had established a string of buying offices in Britain, Germany, Belgium, France, and Japan. As a further way to supply high-quality goods to its ever-growing retail division, the company in the last two decades of the 19th century created a fairly extensive network of manufacturing operations consisting of large workshops and offsite factories. Most of these goods were produced solely for the store and were marked with the company name, an increasingly famous brand.
During the early years of the new century, Field began giving Shedd more responsibility for running the company. Selfridge grew increasingly unhappy, eventually becoming determined to run his own business. Five years later he landed in London, where he brought American-style department store retailing to the British, establishing the famed Selfridge's emporium. His philanthropic pursuits helped create the Art Institute of Chicago and the original campus of the University of Chicago.
He also donated millions of dollars for the construction of a natural history museum for the Columbian Exposition world's fair. This became the core of the eponymous Field Museum of Natural History. Shedd Aquarium, located adjacent to the Field Museum. In , however, the trustees sold 90 percent of their shares in the company to its officers and managers. The company went public in , with the Field family retaining their 10 percent interest.
Meantime, between and Field or his estate acquired the entire block bounded by State, Wabash, Washington, and Randolph.
New buildings were added gradually during this period, until in the Marshall Field store occupied the entire block. A expansion made it the largest retail store in the world, with more than half a million square feet spread over three buildings.
A six-day "grand opening" that year attracted more than half a million people. A workforce of 7, was needed to man the mammoth store. Another major expansion occurred in , when the built structure at State and Washington was replaced with a more modern building.
The most noteworthy feature of this building was the Tiffany Dome, designed by acclaimed artist Louis Comfort Tiffany. It is the largest glass mosaic of its kind, containing about 1. Another highlight of the building was the inclusion of the Walnut Room, an elegant restaurant that quickly became a Chicago restaurant landmark.
The installation of a giant Christmas tree in the atrium of the Walnut Room during that year's holiday season started an annual tradition.
The company's Store for Men opened on Washington Street across from the main store in One year later, the main store added a book department and began featuring in-store book signings by authors. That same year, it began publishing its own quarterly magazine called "Fashions of the Hours," which continued to be produced until By the mids sales at the retail store exceeded those of every other single department store in the world.
During Shedd's tenure, the company significantly enlarged its manufacturing operations, eventually owning around 30 mills, most of which concentrated on producing or converting textiles. The output from these mills was primarily sold to the firm's wholesale operation, which marketed sheets, towels, bedspreads, and blankets under the Fieldcrest label. This subsidiary also launched the highly successful Karastan line of oriental rugs in In addition to overseeing the vast expansion of the company's main retail store, Shedd also engineered the purchase of the A.
This was renamed the Davis Store and headed by Arthur Davis, a department head in the wholesale division. It was positioned as a low-price store, the impetus for its creation being company officials' increasing concern about losing customers to lower-priced competitors. Shedd retired from active management in , though he served as chairman for three more years.
Taking over as president and CEO was James Simpson, who had started as an office boy and later became Marshall Field's personal secretary. The company expanded its retailing side further under the new leader, opening up three small department store branches in suburban Chicago in the late s, in Evanston, Oak Park, and Lake Forest. Soon after the purchase of the Seattle department store, the candy kitchen at the flagship Marshall Field store on State Street began producing their own line of Frango chocolates with the help of the store's new candy-making colleagues.
While the retail side was expanding, the firm's wholesale operations had entered a period of precipitous decline in the early s. There were numerous reasons for the general fall of the great wholesale houses, most notably the rapid growth of chain stores and the increasing number of merchants and retailers who were buying directly from manufacturers. To stem the mounting wholesale losses, Simpson launched the construction of the mammoth Merchandise Mart, believing that this huge new building could do for the wholesale operations what State Street had done for the retail side.
Construction began in August , while the s boom was still progressing, but was not finished until , when the Great Depression had taken firm hold of the country. The company's wholesale division and the sales headquarters of its manufacturing operations took about half of the space, and Simpson had envisioned other jobbers and manufacturers' representatives taking the remainder.
John McKinlay, yet another executive who had worked his way up through the ranks, took over as president in the inopportune year of The depression and the poorly timed construction of the Mart sent the wholesale and manufacturing operations into the red, where they would stay for eight straight years.
McKinlay tried to turn the tide by cutting the wholesale departments that were showing the largest losses, but the red ink continued to flow. McKinsey, in to make recommendations on turning the firm around.
This marked the first time in the company's history that an outsider had been placed in charge. McKinsey directed the liquidation of the wholesale division in late He also disposed of some of the mills, with the remainder reorganized as part of Marshall Field's manufacturing division, whose headquarters was shifted to New York City. The loss-making Davis Store also was sold. McKinsey, however, clashed with many of the top managers, including McKinlay, who quit in June Frederick D.
Corley was named president, having previously served as vice-president of retail merchandising. Corley's reign proved rather short, but it produced two important developments.
In the company purchased the land on which its downtown Chicago department store rested, having previously bought the buildings themselves in The seller in both cases was the Field estate.
In , a month before Pearl Harbor, the downtown store opened the 28 Shop, an upscale fashion store-within-the-store and one of the first exclusive women's salons to be created within a U.
It was hoped that the shop--named for the store's private elevator entrance at 28 East Washington and for its 28 dressing rooms--could return Field's to its position as the home of feminine elegance.
Other special shops soon were added, including a bridal salon called the Brides' Room. The 28 Shop was the brainchild of Hughston M. McBain, who was in charge of all retail operations in the early s. During the war years, the company's factories produced large quantities of war goods, such as parachute cloth, camouflage netting, wool blankets, and uniforms. The balance sheet improved immensely the following year when the Merchandise Mart was sold to Joseph P.
The subsequent profits earned by the Kennedy family from operating the Mart helped finance John F. Kennedy's successful presidential campaign. The latter was enlarged from six stories to ten stories in It was replaced by a much larger store ten years later. The Marshall Field stores in Chicago made a concerted push into selling hard goods such as refrigerators and other major appliances in the postwar period.
To enhance brand identity, the mills began operating under the name Fieldcrest Mills in Palmer--no relation to the company founder--was promoted from head of retailing to president. Funds from the sale of the mills were slated to be used to fund store expansion, particularly in the emerging suburban landscape of the postwar era. The final chapter of the company's manufacturing side came in when Fieldcrest Mills was sold to Amoskeag Company, a Boston Investment trust.
Fieldcrest Mills would later evolve into the powerful Fieldcrest Cannon, Inc. The latter firm, however, went bankrupt in the early s, another victim of the decline in U. The retail environment in the United States was changing, however, as shopping centers started popping up in the burgeoning suburbs and consumers began a shift in their shopping habits from downtown to the suburbs.
The following year a larger store opened northwest of downtown Chicago in a new shopping center in Skokie. In the firm entered the Milwaukee market by opening a store in the new Mayfair shopping center in Wauwatosa.
Another new shopping center, Oakbrook Center, opened in the western suburbs of Chicago in with a Marshall Field's outlet as one of the anchors. During the s the company acquired the small Crescent department store chain, which operated in Spokane, Washington. As it expanded into suburban malls, Marshall Field lost much that had distinguished it when most of its revenues came from its flagship store in downtown Chicago.
Specialty stores began outdoing Marshall Field in key areas, such as fashions for young women. In general the company gradually gained a reputation as a dowdy retailer--not keeping up with changing tastes and lifestyles, and failing to appeal to younger consumers. At the same time, acquisitive large companies such as Federated Department Stores, Inc. In , however, the company completed an acquisition as a defensive measure. Fearing a possible takeover by Associated Dry Goods, whose holdings included stores in Cleveland, Ohio, and Erie, Pennsylvania, Marshall Field purchased the Cleveland-based Halle's department store chain, which had nine stores in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
The move succeeded in thwarting any takeover attempt by Associated, because it now faced antitrust obstacles. The deal also unfortunately saddled Marshall Field with an operation that consistently lost money throughout the s, mainly because of the poor performance of the ,square-foot Halle's store located in economically depressed downtown Cleveland.
In Joseph A. Burnham became president of Marshall Field, having worked up through the ranks, joining the firm as a staff assistant in Burnham oversaw the completion of Water Tower Place, which was half-owned by the firm's real estate subsidiary.
Completed in early , it included a new Marshall Field's store that was only one-twelfth the size of the State Street store but was easily as opulent--a store that quickly became immensely successful.
The company was now operating a total of 15 Marshall Field's stores. The following year, Angelo R. Sullivan, department chair of history, political science and economics at the college, also is a Road Scholar with the Illinois Humanities group, which together with the Canal Corridor Association, is hosting the presentation. For more than years, Sullivan said, the story of Marshall Field and Company, which was sold to Federated Department Stores in , was entwined with the story of Chicago.
And then there were the everyday retail standards that made shoppers, whether affluent or financially struggling, feel special, she said. Most people have fond memories of that store. Sullivan has been teaching at McHenry County College for about 22 years.
Her presentation looks at the evolution of what would become the largest department store in the world by Marshall Field the man was a poor boy who came to Chicago in and worked with other retailers, including Potter Palmer and Levi Leiter, she said. Field saved his money, even sleeping in the store. The presentation will cover the architecture of the State Street store, designed by Daniel Burnham, she said.
0コメント