The Magificent 1913 Woolworth Building -- Broadway at Park Place

print from the Library of Congress

Frank Winfield Woolworth worked on his parents’ farm in Great Bend, New York until he was 21 years old.  During his last two winters on the farm, when chores were fewer, he worked in a grocery store in town for free, telling the owner he simply wanted the experience.

When he finally left home he ventured off to Watertown, New York, where he convinced the owner of the dry goods store Augsbury & Moore to allow him to work free for three months, after which he received $3.50 a week; the exact amount he was paying for his room at a boarding house.   By 1878 the 26-year old was earning $10 a week.

It was that year that the store in Watertown where he was working installed a revolutionary marketing concept:  a five-cent counter.  Woolworth took the idea farther.

A year later he opened his first store in Utica, New York with $350 worth of goods purchased on a note endorsed by his father.  The store failed, but Woolworth was undaunted.  By 1911 there were 596 F. W. Woolworth stores and Woolworth had become an extremely wealthy man by selling goods priced at five or ten cents.

In 1910 Woolworth began planning a new headquarters building.   His initial thoughts of a typical 12- to 16-story office building gradually changed until it would become the tallest building in the world.    In the summer of 1911, for about $2.5 million, Woolworth acquired the corner lot at Broadway and Park Place and commissioned Cass Gilbert – known for monumental public buildings like the Minnesota State Capitol building—to design his new headquarters. 

Initial plans called for a 55-story building.  Even before the addition of five more stories, not everyone was pleased.  One reader of The New York Times who signed his letter simply H. P wrote “But is it wise, or even safe, for the city to longer neglect the subject of limiting the height of buildings?  Fifty-five stories now—what next?  And yet, it seems I have already heard mention of a ‘next.’”

Woolworth was fond of the London’s Gothic Houses of Parliament and this admiration probably played an important part in the style of the new skyscraper.   Referring to Woolworth’s input, Gilbert later said “Mr. Woolworth loved beautiful architecture and earnestly desired that his building should be noted for its beauty as well as for its practical convenience and substantial construction.”

Mr. Woolworth would get from Cass Gilbert both beautiful architecture and substantial construction.

To support the immense structure, estimated to weigh 136,000 tons, 69 concrete piers extended 100 feet down to bedrock.  The construction of the foundation alone cost $1.2 million.

A billboard announces the coming skyscraper as caissons are driven deep into the earth for the foundation in 1911.

On the night of April 24, 1913 President Wilson pressed a button in the White House and 80,000 electric lights in the Woolworth Building flashed on.  The building was completed.   In the 27^th-floor dining room Woolworth hosted a banquet for journalists, business moguls and politicians.   Outside, the tower was bathed in light; an early example of architectural illumination.

The six-story tower had dozens of gargoyles -- photo "The Cathedral of Commerce" 1913

The 60-story skyscraper, which cost Woolworth $13 million, was a marvel.  It was clad in gleaming white terra cotta, cast in elaborate Gothic shapes – finials, gargoyles, spires and intricate tracery.   Two decades later the WPA’s “New York City Guide” would say “Crisp and delicate terra-cotta surface ornament drops over the building like a veil.  All the details are Gothic, even to the tourelles that surround the peak, the finial that surmounts it, and the flying buttresses.”

The main entrance doors on Broadway are dwarfed within the enormous Gothic arch -- photo "The Cathedral of Commerce" 1913

The architectural details of the tower, 792 feet and one inch above the sidewalk, were over-sized so as to be visible from the street and to maintain proportions.  Edwin Cochran noted later that year “the proportions have been executed with such studious care and fidelity to detail that its enormous height is not realized from the street.”

Not all of Gilbert's details were traditionally Gothic.  Here he gives a nod to American history -- photo Library of Congress

Inside, Gilbert lavished the lobby with creamy marble quarried on the Isle of Skyros in Greece.  The Gothic curves and arches of the grand corridor rose to the glass-mosaic domed ceiling.  The glass was illuminated by concealed lights in the lacy carved marble cornice.  Gilbert playfully represented real people in the grotesques below the cornice—the architect himself was represented holding a model of the building, Woolworth has a bag of nickels, engineer Aus holds a steel beam, and rental agent Frank Hogan, building Louis Horowitz and banker Lewis Pierson were also portrayed.

The architect portrayed himself holding a model of the building in a marble grotesque -- photo Library of Congress

 Woolworth leased out much of the building, where 12,000 workers would come and go every day.  The Irving National Bank and the Broadway Trust Company occupied the first floor.  In the basement were the “Postkeller,” a restaurant with frescoed, vaulted ceilings; an enormous barber shop; a Turkish bath and swimming pool.  

In the basement was The Postkeller, where patrons dined beneath frescoed ceilings -- "The Cathedral of Commerce" 1913

But the Woolworth offices were dazzling.

Frank Woolworth’s private office was decorated in the Renaissance period.  A Flemish Renaissance tapestry woven around 1650 hung over a velvet-covered bench raised on a platform a step higher than the floor.  A carved stone Italian Renaissance mantelpiece filled the height of the room at one end and an elaborate coffered ceiling hung over Woolworth’s centuries-old desk.

Frank Woolworth's private office is still intact today -- photo "The Cathedral of Commerce" 1913

The President’s office was referred to as “The Empire Room.”  The walls were executed in various colors of marble.  Period French furniture was complemented by an enormous portrait of Napoleon.

The walls of the office of the President of the firm were of several types of marble -- "The Cathedral of Commerce" 1913

The Otis Elevator Company quickly used the building in its marketing scheme.  Ads boasted of “The marvelous vertical railways in the new Woolworth Building that are to ‘whiz’ the army of workers up with lightning speed 726 feet in the sky in absolute safety and comfort.”  In fact, safety was a major consideration of Woolworth when planning the elevators and he was personally involved.  Two of the elevators, which ran from the lobby to the 54^th floor, were the fastest elevators in the world, traveling at 700 feet per minute.

Astonishing detail went into the facade -- photo NYC-Architecture.com

A messy law suit was filed two months after the building opened.  The building managers, Broadway-Park Place Company, had given a monopoly to the Virginia Bear Water Company to supply drinking water to the tenants.  When some tenants like the Friesdedt Underpinning Company chose to buy from the Pine Hill Crystal Spring Company instead they were forbidden to use the elevators to transport the five-gallon bottles.   Office workers were forced to carry the bottles from two to thirty-seven flights of stairs.

F. W. Woolworth died on April 8, 1919, one of the wealthiest men in the country.  His obituary stated “The Woolworth fortune, which was built out of nickels and dimes, is estimated at $65,000,000.”

Because Woolworth owned the building outright, his heirs were assessed inheritance tax of $3 million on the property.  In June 1920 they obtained a mortgage in that amount—the first mortgage carried on the building—from the Prudential Life Insurance Company of Newark.  Four years later the F. W. Woolworth Company obtained ownership.

It was not until January 16, 1931 that Cass Gilbert received the gold medal of the Society of Arts and Sciences for designing the Woolworth Building.  During the awards dinner, he was recognized as “the prophet of a new and great movement in architecture.”  President of the society, artist Walter Russell said “He forever destroyed the groveling power of the horizontal line and replaced it with the spiritual uplift of the perpendicular…He was the forerunner of the new space-time, air-conscious age in which architecture took the lead.”

The WPA “New York City Guide” in 1939 would echo the sentiment.  “The Woolworth Building was a genuine contribution to the development of the American skyscraper style.  It represents one of the earliest attempts to express the steel-frame structure—a departure from the ‘immobility of mass and weight of masonry’ that characterized the classic type of building.”

Thomas E. Dewey established his offices here and, when he began his investigation into racketeering and organized crime in Manhattan, things got lively.   Dewey’s offices housed extensive files on mobsters as well as the identities of informants and witnesses.   Other office workers on the floor became accustomed to seeing police officers assigned to the hallway outside Dewey’s offices 24 hours a day.

In April 1970 the Landmarks Preservation Commission held a hearing in an attempt to designate the Woolworth Building a landmark.   The Woolworth Company’s attorney, Kenneth W. Greenawait, attacked the proposed designation saying that the landmark law was “onerous and discriminatory.”   The owner, he said, is “discriminated against, effectively deprived of rights of possession without compensation, and thus denied equal protection of the law.”

Still, in 1977 the Woolworth Company initiated a restoration program to repair the badly weathered and deteriorating terra cotta.  A detailed inspection revealed that there were no structural problems and that only the cladding needed attention.    In the course of restoration, all 4,400 windows were replaced with aluminum, energy efficient ones. 

Terra cotta elements were duplicated in cast stone and fiberglass; upwards of one-third of the original material.

A stained glass ceiling panel can be seen in the corridor just past the masterful glass mosaic dome in the lobby -- photo by PAT M IN NYC

The magnificent Woolworth Building was finally designated a New York City landmark in April 1983.  Seventy years earlier, upon the building’s completion, Edwin Cochran said of it “The Woolworth Building has been called ‘A Cathedral of Commerce’—a monument to small things, but it is even more—it is the colossal and enduring gift to civilization of a true-born, patriotic American, Frank W. Woolworth, and it stands unique in the history of great buildings through the world.”

Queen Anne Sisters at Nos. 251-255 W. 70th Street

In the last two decades of the 19^th century, developers on the Upper West Side grabbed up long rows of property and erected speculative rowhouses.  Quite often their architects created enclaves of harmonious structures that flowed together almost as a unit—each standing on its own merit; but architecturally similar to its neighbors.  In 1885 architect W. H. W. Youngs would go a step further.

Developer E. Stanton Riker commissioned Youngs to design three rowhouses on West 70^th Street, Nos. 251 through 255.  The playful Queen Anne style had caught on among those daring enough to step out of the more formal residential box; and Youngs turned to this style for the houses.  His design resulted in the three residences pretending to be one grand home.

Completed in 1886 the brick, brownstone and terra cotta houses rather surprisingly rejected the asymmetry associated with Queen Anne.  Youngs liberally splashed Romanesque Revival into the design in the form of hefty arches at the parlor floor (including the great span that served as the entrance for No. 253) and a gaping arch below the central, terra cotta-filled gable.  He successfully created the illusion of a single, imposing mansion.

The three houses became home to upscale, respectable families.  By 1895 when Michael Giblin sold No. 251 to John Noble Golding, the Rev. Claudius M. Roome and his wife lived next door and Harvard graduate John O. Powers lived in No. 255.

John Noble Golding was a highly respected real estate broker with an office at No. 9 Pine Street far downtown.  Educated at Trinity School, he was a member of the Lawyers’, Army and Navy, Colonial, New York Yacht and the New York Athletic Clubs.  Golding was also a member of the American Geographical and Numismatic Societies.

Not only was Golding responsible for massive real estate deals like the Equitable Company’s purchase of its Nassau and Liberty Street site; the sale of the Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue for $125 million, and the New York Yacht Club’s property; he sold sites to some of Manhattan’s wealthiest citizens for their mansions.  Included in his client list were Edward Berwin, Charles T. Yerkes, Howard Gould, Stuyvesant Fish, Perry Belmont, George Baker, Joseph Pulitzer and Thoams F. Ryan to name just a few.

As was the case with all the wives of moneyed businessmen, Mabel Golding busied herself with charities.  One of her favorites was the House of Refuge for Women, at Hudson, New York.  The children of these impoverished women were often overlooked and in 1898 Mabel sent off eight bibs, books, wagons and other toys to the House of Refuge.

The year before her donation, Claudius M. Roome, living next door, had been appointed the new curate of Christ Church, then standing at the corner of the Boulevard (later renamed Broadway) and 71^stStreet.  Born into a prominent old Dutch family, he graduated from Columbia College and Columbia Law School.  Having practiced law for a few years, he gave it up to enter the General Theological Seminary.

Roome’s father had been an important businessman and it was most likely the family's wealth rather than his church salary that enabled him to live in the upscale home.

The outwardly-serene home life of the Goldings, with their daughter Mabel, was shattered in 1904 when John Golding moved out.  Finally, in 1910, Mabel filed a separation suit to ensure her financial survival.  The New-York Tribune published the scandalous headline “Wife Sues J. N. Golding.  Manager of Astor Estate Defendant in Separation Suit.”

Millionaire real estate man John N. Golding would tire of his wife.  The Successful American, January 1903 (copyright expired)

Unexpectedly at the time, the title of the 70^thStreet home was in John’s name, not his wife’s.  Mabel, with no legal expectations of income, testified that John Golding had $3 million in real and personal property.  The terms of the separation required him to convey the title to Mable and to continue paying off the $15,000 mortgage.

The unsuspecting Mabel Golding was no doubt shocked and humiliated when, in 1918, the house was sold at auction for $14,000—less than the mortgage which her husband had decided not to pay.  She took her husband to court again, suing for the $15,000 (about $220,000 today).

Her millionaire husband apparently came through and Mabel and her daughter retained possession of the house.  She would remain in the house another two years before selling it in April 1920.  Although the new owner, Taylor Holmes, promised he “would occupy,” he resold it a month later.

Hiding under the vines that crawl up the facade, the pressed metal bay can be seen in autumn.  http://www.luxurynewyorkcondominium.com/condo/251-west-70th-street-new-york

By now Rev. Roome had moved on and F. K. Kraetzer, Jr. owned No. 253.  Mrs. R. A. Du Foureq was leasing it at the time that Mabel Golding moved away.  A year earlier No. 255 had fallen victim to a trend that was sweeping over the Upper West Side.  In 1919 real estate operators Houghton Company announced that the house was “being altered into small suites.”

That year The Cornell Alumni News reported that Ensign William F. Tufts had been released from active service in the Naval Reserve and “is now with the McCandless plant of the Westinghouse Lamp Company.”  He was among the first tenants in the newly-converted house.   Another resident held a related job.  M. H. Naigles, XV worked in the installation department of Western Electric Co. “on the automatic phones.”

Nos. 251 and 253 held out as single family homes for a few more years.  In 1937 the former Golding house was home to Mr. and Mrs. Frank Seitz.  The couple had met a colorful acquaintance through a mutual friend around 1930.  Mrs. Muriel Du Pont Bergman told them she was the illegitimate daughter of Delaware Senator T. Coleman Du Pont. 

Now, following the senator’s death, Mrs. Bergman appeared with a letter showing that she had inherited about $40 million from the estate.  Happy and excited, she asked the Seitz couple if they would loan her $15,000.  If so, she would generously repay them with $1 million from the inheritance.

The couple turned over their entire life’s savings to Muriel Bergman.  On August 28, 1937 the 50-year old con artist was arrested in Portland, Oregon on charges of forging the inheritance letter.

Two years later the Seitzes were gone and the house was sold at auction.  It was won by Gus Trachtenburg for $5,700—a fraction of the $17,000 assessed value.  It was converted in 1941 to two apartments in the basement, three furnished rooms on the first floor, and four furnished rooms on each floor above.  In 1945 No. 253 was divided into apartments; two per floor except the third floor which had four furnished rooms.

At least one relic of Mabel Golding's house survives.  http://olshan.com/property.php?id=6557

By the 21^st century Youngs’s brilliant design had been viciously abused.  Only a few of the stained glass panels survive, a regrettable picture window was installed on the third floor of No. 255, and the stoops of the end houses were removed.  Nos. 251 and 253, still apartment buildings, were joined internally in 1978.

Despite it all, W. H. W. Youngs’s arresting triple residence still manages to catch the eye.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

The 1928 Birns Building -- 111 Second Avenue

In 1915 Saul Birnzweig was in trouble.  

The somewhat shady entrepreneur had gotten in on the wildly popular phonograph or “talking machine” craze.  Starting out selling the machines at No. 117 Second Avenue, he later had moved down the block to No. 111.  Somewhat suspiciously, he changed the name of his business several times—operating as the Atlantic Talking Machine Company, the Metropolitan Talking Machine Company, and as Saul Birns.

While his business was successful, he cooked up a scheme to make more money.  He ran newspaper advertisements in foreign languages targeting immigrants. They promised a high-quality phonograph plus records of songs in their native tongues on a 30-day free trial.  If the recipient liked the machine, it could be purchased on an easy installment plan.

But Assistant District Attorney Content protested “Birnzweig never sent any of the advertised machines or records on free trial…but when intended purchasers communicated with him, demanded a deposit of $5 to $8 in advance.”  After he received the deposits, “Birnzweig sent a cheap phonograph C.O.D. for about 70 percent of the purchase price and stated that the remainder of the purchase money could be paid in installments.”

Birnzweig, who soon went by the name Saul Birn,shipped phonographs that “were of foreign make and inferior to the standard ones made here,” said the Assistant D.A.  Birn was arrested on July 13, 1915.  The charges alleged “that foreigners living in all parts of the country were being swindled by means of a mail order scheme,” reported The New York Times.

Although caught, Birns profited hugely from his plan.  Later that year the Annual Report of the Industrial Commissionstated that Birn was making about $125,000 per year on the ads, “and that he had provided an emergency deposit of $30,000 to be used for legal services should he be arrested.”

Birns was indicted and convicted but the Report was less than pleased with the results.  “He was fined $750, an absurdly inadequate punishment for a man whose swindling operations extended from ocean to ocean, and who for years had unscrupulously robbed ignorant and hardworking foreigners to the amount of over $100,000 per year.”  Birns’s profits from the scheme would amount to about $2.25 million a year today.

A year later Birns was still running the offers; but presumably was backing them up. The Evening World, October 23, 1916 (copyright expired)  

In the years after World War I Birns was investing in real estate, constructing modern apartment houses in the Lower East Side.  He told reporters he wanted to improve housing for the mostly Jewish families living there.  Given his record, his purely altruistic motives might be questioned.

Then, on May 19, 1923 The Music Trade Review announced that Birns intended to demolish his Second Avenue building and erect a skyscraper.  “What is without question one of the most ambitious building projects undertaken recently by any music merchant is the plan of Saul Birns, well known throughout the metropolitan talking machine trade as a live wire, to construct a twelve to fifteen-story building on the site of the property, which houses his headquarters at 111 Second avenue.”  The trade journal said “Mr. Birns stated that provision will be made for the display of his line of talking machines, musical instruments and pianos on an elaborate scale.  There will also be a large auditorium where musical events will be staged, and in addition, if present plans go through, there will be a radio broadcasting station.”

As it turned out, plans did not go through.  Instead, the ambitious project was scaled back to a five-story store and office building.  Begun in 1928 it was completed the following year.  Birns’s plan for an auditorium did materialize, however, on the fifth floor.  It featured extra-high ceilings and a row of arched windows on the avenue.  The multi-purpose space would be leased out for meetings, weddings and bar mitzvahs, dances and other social events.

Designed by architect Ralph Segal, the terra-cotta clad structure cost Birn $300,000; nearly $4 million in today’s dollars.  The handsome Art Deco palazzo design would have been equally appropriate for a department store.  Pseudo-balconies and Art Deco motifs smacked of the lavish movie palace architecture of the time.  The phonograph dealer-real estate developer emblazoned the parapet with his name: Saul Birns Building.

As the building neared completion, The Bank of the United States was granted authorization to open a branch here.  It would share the ground floor retail space with Saul Birns’s phonograph store, taking the southern end at Nos. 107 through 109.  The rather hefty rent, starting on November 1, 1928, was $15,000 per year, increasing to $22,000 by the expiration of the 21-year lease.

Unfortunately, it was a bad time to open a new bank branch.  In October 1929 the stock market crashed, sending the nation into the Great Depression.  The Bank of the United States did not survive and closed its doors the following year.  Twenty-three banks of the New York Clearing House Association arranged that depositors could receive loans up to 50 percent of their balances.  On December 22, 1930 those depositors thronged the sidewalks outside the Birns Building.

“Many of the depositors arrived far in advance of the opening house,” reported The New York Times the following day.  “About 500 were on hand when the branch at 107 Second Avenue opened, some of them having been there, according to the police, since 4 o’clock in the morning.”

Meanwhile, the auditorium upstairs, known as the Central Plaza Hall, was the scene of labor meetings and strike plans of various union organizations through the 1930s.  One especially interesting meeting was that of the National Labor Committee for the Jewish Workers in Palestine, held on April1, 1934.  That night Albert Einstein was the guest of honor and principal speaker.  “The proceeds of the affair, which will also include music and drama, will go to the Arlosoroff Memorial Fund to aid Jewish colonists in Palestine,” reported The Times.

Lieutenant Governor Charles Poletti addressed an all-day meeting of the Hias Council of Organizations here on December 14, 1941, one week to the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  Poletti was frank in predicting a long fight and warned that “we must accept our individual responsibilities and sacrifices.”

The attendees that day, 2,900 delegates representing 1,157 national Jewish benevolent and labor organizations, had another enemy in mind:  Adolph Hitler.  Poletti told the audience “It may be a long fight, but we are confident that the forces of barbarism will ultimately be crushed.  Our  burdens will be heavy, but we will bear them courageously and cheerfully.”

The Acting Mayor, Newbold Morris, added his thoughts, saying that all Americans would “rather be dead than slaves of Adolph Hitler.”

The terra cotta facade features a wealth of Art Deco details.

Throughout the 1940s and ‘50s, the Central Plaza Dance Hall was famous for its jazz concerts.  The room was alive with the sounds of the nation’s best-known jazz ensembles while patrons danced through the night.

In 1958 the Birns Building took on another role—that of television rehearsal studios.  On November 8 The New York Times said “This squat, five-story building on the lower East Side is normally used for weddings, dances and lodge meetings.”  But now, wrote Richard F. Shepard, “Some of the most able talent in show business rehearsed for some of television’s most expensive and promising productions yesterday in the Central Plaza.”

Frederic March and cast were rehearsing on the second floor for Columbia Broadcasting System’s production of “The Winslow Boy.”  On the two top floors, dozens of dancers were “whipping into shape ‘Kiss Me Kate’ for the National Broadcasting Company on Nov. 20.”  On other floors, daytime soap operas were in rehearsal.  “Although the building housed at the moment the hopes of television programs that cost, altogether, at least half a million dollars, it was just another day at the Central Plaza,” wrote Shepard.

Meanwhile, for decades the former Birns phonograph salesrooms downstairs had been home to Ratner’s kosher restaurant.  Shepard said “On the main floor, oblivious of the artistic endeavors above, waiters rattled their dishes and made the customers feel like equals in Ratner’s a vegetarian restaurant that has become a sort of downtown ‘Sardi’s’ in its own way at 111 Second Avenue.”

The original Ratner’s opened in 1905 on Pitt Street, founded by brothers Jacob and Harry L. Harmatz and their brother-in-law, Alex Ratner.  Austria-Hungarian immigrants, their restaurant specialized in Eastern European Jewish fare cooked by their wives.  Eventually the brothers went their separate ways, opening their own restaurants.

By now the Second Avenue Ratner’s was run by Abraham Harmatz.  The New York Times called it in 1974 “a gastronomic diadem in the crown of what years ago was called the Jewish Rialto.  Its blinzes and onion rolls, its pirogen and fish, its caloric pastries were adrenalin for the emotionally drained audiences issuing from performances of the many Yiddish theaters along Second Avenue.” 

The neighborhood around the Birns Building (still owned by the Birns family and managed by Bernard Birns) had drastically changed by the 1970s.  The New York Times explained on May 30, 1974 “With the disappearance of the once large resident Jewish population, much of Ratner’s business is in its last years came by taxi and automobile.  It was one of the last preserves of the Jewish waiter, a breed that was usually Jewish but could be Puerto Rican or Iranian, too, and was distinguished by frantically efficient service and a democratic air.”

Finally, after decades of doing business here, Ratner’s closed its doors on May 28, 1974.  The following day, Abraham Harmatz died, one day before his 66^th birthday.  He had participated in the management of the restaurant for 45 years.

Following Ratner's, a grocery chain leased the store space.  photo by Edmund V. Gillon from the collectino of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/Collection/%5b105-107-Second-Avenue.%5d-24UAKVM55NN.html

In place of the famous landmark restaurant, a grocery store moved in.  New York University’s School of the Arts took over the top floor for its arts theater.  Eventually the school purchased the entire Birns Building and in 2012 did a major renovation.

Today Saul Birns’s ambitious building with its colorful past gleams again-a handsome survivor of a time when Second Avenue was lined with Yiddish theaters.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

The 1906 John Wanamaker Annex -- No. 770 Broadway

photo by Alice Lum

Having started business in 1823 as an Irish immigrant with a small lace and linens shop, Alexander Turney Stewart was among the wealthiest men in the United States by 1848.   That year he built a magnificent emporium dubbed the Marble Palace at the corner of Broadway and Chambers Street.  His was the largest such store in the world and he was not done yet.

In 1862 Stewart spent an astronomical $2.5 million dollars—about $45 million today—to erect an uptown branch on Broadway extending back to Fourth Avenue along 10^th Street.  His 6-story cast iron structure, designed by John Kellum, was built to be fireproof and the new technology allowed larger window area and, therefore, increased daylight inside.

The gargantuan store became known as the Iron Palace and The New York Tribune called the two buildings “the proudest monuments of commercial enterprise in the country.”  In 1870 the store was enlarged, now filling the entire block from 10^th to 9^thStreet.

The original, extended building covered the entire block in 1870 -- NYPL Collection

 Stewart died in 1876 but the A. T. Stewart & Co. store on Broadway and 10^th Street continued on for six years.   Hilton, Hughes & Co. took over the operation in 1882 but failed four years later.  In November 1896 Philadelphia retailer John Wanamaker opened his New York operation in the building.    And if Alexander Stewart thought big, John Wanamaker thought bigger.

Almost immediately Wanamaker began buying up lots on the block south of the store.  By the end of 1902 he had successfully obtained the entire block from 8^th to 9^thStreet, Broadway through 4^th Avenue.  The New York Times announced on December 21 “The entire site…is now in Mr. Wanamaker’s control and it is assumed that the erection of the new building will not be deferred for any length of time.”

The newspaper noted that the proposed, block-encompassing structure, would require the demolition of multiple buildings, including the Germania Theatre on 8^th Street.  “Some of these buildings are modern, substantially built structures, notably the one at the northeast corner of Broadway and Eighth Street.”

The Annex doubled the height of the original Stewart store in the foreground -- Wanamaker's The Store of New York, 1916 - copyright expired

A year later construction started on the immense 12-story emporium designed by the Chicago architectural firm D. H. Burnham & Co.  It would take three years for the structure to be completed.   The stately Italian Renaissance building clad in terra cotta cost $3.5 million. It was the product of three years of research into department store design throughout the United States and Europe.  The old Stewart building was connected to the “Annex” by an enclosed bridge, called The Bridge of Progress, and a tunnel under 9^th Street. 

The Bridge of Progress linked the two stores -- Wanamaker's The Store of New York, 1916 - copyright expired

The original building was now used for women’s merchandise only; the new building sold menswear, and furnishings and decorations for the home.  The New-York Tribune on April 22, 1906 called the new structure “one of the most elaborately fitted up and furnished department stores in the United States, if not in the world.”  It would be a store like no other.

An enormous rotunda rose through the height of the building with a grand “horseshoe stairway” leading up to the second floor.   On this floor pianos and organs were displayed in period-decorated rooms.  “For instance,” reported The Tribune, “the Emerson room is decorated in Louis XIV style, while the Knabe room is in the Flemish style.  All the decorations are in keeping in each room, even including the chandeliers and furniture.  There are rooms decorated in Louis XV, Louis XVI, Moorish, Renaissance and Empire, as well as Old Dutch.”

The sumptuous Rotunda rose through the center of the store.  The carpeted Horseshoe Stairway accessed the second floor.  Wanamaker's The Store of New York, 1916 - copyright expired

The combined old and new buildings now offered the shopper a full thirty-two acres of floor space.  The store required a staff of 5,000 to 8,000 employees depending on the season.  But the additional conveniences, not necessarily related to shopping, were even more impressive.   There was a Guides’ Office where confused shoppers could procure a personal guide to “conduct visitors about the store and to serve the shopper in every possible way,” as pointed out in Wanamaker's 1916 New York, Metropolis of the World, brochure.   The booklet added that “The entire Wanamaker store is dotted with quiet places for the comfort and convenience of guests.  Writing desks, rest rooms and retiring rooms are conveniently distributed, and are welcome place for rest when one slightly tires of shopping.”

The restaurant could feed 1,000 tired shoppers -- Wanamaker's The Store of New York, 1916 - copyright expired

For those “slightly tired of shopping,” there was also the auditorium.  With a seating capacity of 1,300 and rising three stories it was one of the largest theaters in New York.   Murals were painted by Frederick K.Frieseke, of the Societe Nationale des Beaux Arts of Paris.  Here the Austin organ not only had 64 stops, but two chimes of bells, a snare drum, kettle drums, cymbals and triangle.  Free, nearly daily concerts were offered for shoppers.

There were also a golf school, a restaurant capable of serving over 1,000, a telegraph service, a post office, theater ticket office, railroad ticket office, Red Cross Headquarters, and hair salon.  To give homeowners ideas on decorating, a two-story house was incorporated into the store.  The Wanamaker booklet described The House Palatial as “containing twenty-four rooms designed in correct period or modern style, and every room in the house obviously different in character, although all help to make up a harmonious whole.  It represents the best of the house designing, furnishing and decorative arts.”  More than a million people every year visited The House Palatial.

A room in The House Palatial in 1916 -- Wanamaker's The Store of New York, 1916 - copyright expired

In the basement was a subway station—a supreme convenience for shoppers.  The Meridien Morning Record said “…the Subway train sets you down in Wanamaker’s.  You may come in a driving rainstorm and not get a drop of water at any point—no need to carry an umbrella or wear a raincoat…It has revolutionized the convenience of shopping.”

The up-to-date features of the building proved themselves when a small fire broke out near the pipe organ in the auditorium on March 16, 1918.  The automatic alarm and sprinkler system were set off and The Times reported that “the fire was out before fire apparatus arrived.”

Three stories high, the Auditorium was decorated with frescoes -- Wanamaker's The Store of New York, 1916 - copyright expired

On April 24, 1928 the section of 9^th Street between Broadway and 4^th Avenue that separated the old and new Wanamaker buildings was renamed by the Board of Aldermen to Wanamaker Place.   The gesture was in honor of the public services of the late Rodman Wanamaker; however it also paid tribute to the gargantuan retail establishment that straddled the street.

By the middle of the 20^th century the shopping district had moved northward.   Rather than move with it, Wanamaker decided in 1954 to simply close the business.  Although 1,500 unionized employees voted unanimously to try to purchase the business as a partnership with the help of investment bankers, the venture did not materialize.

photo by Alice Lum

On closing day, December 18, 1954, a writer for The New York Times reminisced.  “But to some of us at least it seemed more than a store.  It had an air of sober respectability, of gentility, of courtesy, of the leisure of time passed, of spaciousness appropriate to the carriage trade…One did not go down there, in later years, expecting to shop around in other stores also.  It was a trip to Wanamaker’s and nowhere else…The lady of the house never wondered whether anything wrong would be made right at Wanamaker’s…For the customers, for the employes—and today is, of course, a particularly sad day for them—a chapter closes, and with regret.”

The upper floors were lavished with elaborate terra cotta detailing -- photo by Alice Lum

Nine days later crowds of people lined the sidewalks along Union Square as S. Klein’s department store began selling off the Wanamaker goods.   The firm had purchased $2.5 million worth of stock and offered it to the public at discounted prices.  In the meantime, a real estate syndicate purchased the once-proud Wanamaker buildings.  No. 770 Broadway, the Annex, was converted to an office building and quickly filled with occupants.  In 1956 Chase Manhattan Bank leased three full floors and the Atlantic Mutual Insurance Company took the 7^th and half of the 6^th Floor.

As for Alexander Stewarts magnificent Iron Palace of a century earlier, plans were set to demolish it.   But before the wreckers could start, a fire broke out.  John Kellum’s fireproof structure proved to be that.  The flames raged out of control for a full 24-hours before firefighters were able to extinguish it.   Afterwards, surrounding the gutted remains, the noble cast iron façade still stood. 

After the ruins were removed an uninspiring white-brick apartment building was constructed in its place in 1960.   The 21-story structure was named with a nod to the original store—the Stewart House.

The terra cotta-clad annex survives as an office building -- photo by Alice Lum

The Wanamaker “Annex” survives today as 770 Broadway.   The subway station that unloaded shoppers into one of the nation’s most renowned retail establishments now deposits them into a K-Mart.   Among its many tenants are the corporate headquarters of AOL, Vornado and J. Crew.

Today all the thoughts of organ concerts in a splendid auditorium, an Oriental Shop that sold “mandarin embroideries and fascinating bronzes,” and the Burlington Arcade that reproduced the arcade in Piccadilly, London are gone.  The lone reminder of the once-magnificent department store is the green-and-white street sign on the corner:  Wanamaker Place.