The Department Store

Once the clothing revolution of ready-made clothes came, there also came a need for an outlet.   In the period between the Civil War and the turn of the century, there arose in the big cities great stores to feed the consumer desire for ready-made clothing.  There was R.H Macys and Lord and Taylor in New York, Wanamaker's in Philadelphia, Jordan Marsh in Boston, Field and Leiter Co. (later Marshall Field) in Chicago, Hudson's in Detroit, and Lazarus in Columbus, Ohio. 

These large retail shops. which came to be called department stores, were centrally located in the downtown section of the cities.  (I remember the large department stores downtown in my childhood before shopping centers came.)  They were called "Department Stores" because they offered a wide range of merchandise departmentalized in one store.  A consumer could find clothing, household goods, dry goods, and furnishings in one place.  Even though the merchandise was departmentalized, the management was not.  One office oversaw the entire store.  There were usually several department managers, but one central office and head of the store. 

These department stores were a symbol of the future of the growing cities.  By the opening of a large department store downtown, it carried the belief in the city's future greatness and ability to support a large consumer store.  To the citizens of that city, the department store gave them a dignity, importance and buying opportunity in upscale settings.  Most of the early stores were quite elegant and spared no expense to make the consumer's experience a memorable one.

So where did this idea come from?  It was certainly not solely American.  London offered Selfridge's and Harrod's early on.  The idea for multiple goods sold in one location in America actually began without a store at all, with just one man's dream...


Next time...the Dream
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On July 8, 1898, Soapy Smith, the most notorious man in the Wild West was killed in Skagway, Alaska.  Soapy was not just a bar soap salesmen (hence his name), but con man par excellence, running con jobs from Texas to the Klondike.  Soapy was killed in a vigilante shoot out, trying to run a con, of course.