10 Lost Department Stores in New York City

From Gimbels at Herald Square to Henri Bendel on Fifth Avenue, many now lost department stores once stood at the epicenter of New York City’s shopping culture. Today, what remains of these stores stand as repositories of a bygone era when shopping never took place through a virtual screen. New York City department stores served as more than just symbols of consumerism, forming part of the city’s ethos of aspiration, invention, and reinvention. In the walls of the city’s lost department stores lies the history of generations of New Yorkers — memories that unless acknowledged stand the chance of being forgotten.

1. 280 Broadway (A.T. Stewart Dry Goods Store)

Once located at 280 Broadway between Chambers and Reade Streets in Tribeca was one of the nation’s first department stores. Known as the “Marble Palace,” 280 Broadway was built from 1845 to 1846 for entrepreneur Alexander Turney Stewart’s company on the site of Washington Hall — the former headquarters of the Federalist Party. The building was designed by John B. Snook of Joseph Trench & Company and was New York City’s first commercial building constructed in the Italianate style and the first clad in Tuckahoe marble.

Now one of the city’s lost department stores, A.T. Stewart’s was unique in featuring a series of marketing initiatives intended to increase the volume of turnover and keep up with the increasing capacity of industrial manufacturing. It was also among the first of its kind to set fixed prices for goods. Often drawing female customers through special sales and fashion shows, the department store helped make its section of Broadway famous among the city’s elites for window shopping.

Stewart’s department store eventually moved further uptown in 1862 to a new full-block building between East 9th and 10th Streets. Following the department store’s departure, 280 Broadway was converted into a warehouse before being bought by the New York Sun in 1917, which renamed it the Sun Building. In 1965, the building was declared a National Historic Landmark and designated a New York City landmark in 1986. Though the building was acquired in 1966 by the New York City government to be demolished for the redevelopment of the Civic Center, this plan never came to fruition. Instead from 1995 to 2002, 280 Broadway was rehabilitated, and the city’s Department of Buildings now uses it to house various retail stores.

2. John Wanamaker’s Department Store

Alongside his brother-in-law Nathan Brown, John Wanamaker founded a men’s clothing store in 1861 in Philadelphia called Oak Hall. After Brown’s death in 1868, Wanamaker continued the business, eventually purchasing an abandoned Pennsylvania Railroad station to use for a larger retail location. The terminal would come to be known as the Grand Depot and was meant to emulate London’s Royal Exchange and Les Halles in Paris. In 1877, Wanamaker’s added women’s clothing and dry goods, becoming Philadelphia’s first modern-day department store and the inventor of the price tag. Wanamaker cared deeply about his customers and staff, allowing individuals to return purchases for a cash refund if they were unsatisfied and providing employees with free medical care, recreational facilities, profit-sharing plans, and pensions at a time when these benefits were not standard.

At the height of its success, Wanamaker’s operated a store at Broadway and 9th Street in New York City. In 1919, the company’s Manhattan location was deemed by El Mundo to be like 100 special departments all under one roof. Wanamaker’s slow decline began after its founder’s death in 1922, picking up speed as the company lost customers to other retail chains such as Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s. After being sold in 1986 to Woodward & Lothrop, significant resources were invested into the company’s 15 stores in the hopes of turning around profits, though these efforts failed.

Filing for bankruptcy in 1994, the Wanamaker stores were sold to May Department Stores Company, and Wanamaker Inc. was officially dissolved and absorbed into May’s Hecht division. After 133 years of consecutive business, the Wanamaker name was removed from all stores and replaced with Hecht’s. Wanamaker’s New York store was converted into a Kmart in 1996.

3. B. Altman and Company

Founded in 1865 by Benjamin Altman, known today for donating his art collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art upon his death, B. Altman and Company was a luxury department store and chain. The company began operating out of the East Village at 10th Street and Third Avenue before relocating to 621 Sixth Avenue into a neo-Grec building designed by David and John Jardine. By 1906, B. Altman and Company had opened its flagship location at 34th Street and Fifth Avenue — becoming the first big department store to move from the highly popular “Ladies Mile” shopping district to Fifth Avenue. Designed by Trowbridge & Livingston in an Italian Renaissance style, the new building was created to blend in with surrounding palatial mansions. B. Altman and Company also came to be one of the first American department stores to open out-of-town branches in suburban settings, including Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Ohio.

The downfall of B. Altman began in 1987 when the Australian real estate development company L. J. Hooker and its chief executive officer George Herscu purchased the company’s controlling interest. Herscu then used this interest to build extravagant but poorly located shopping centers across the country, eventually causing B. Altman to file for bankruptcy in August 1989. By the end of 1990, all of the company’s branches were shuttered.

B. Altman’s Manhattan location remained abandoned until 1996, when the exterior was restored by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer and the interior reconfigured by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates. Today, the building’s Fifth Avenue side is used by the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, and the Madison Avenue side was once used by the New York Public Library’s Science, Industry, and Business Library. For fans of the hit television series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, the store is featured when Midge Maisel takes a job on the shop floor.

4. Gimbel Brothers (Gimbels)

For one hundred years from 1887 to 1987, Gimbel Brothers (Gimbels) operated as an American department store corporation. After opening his first store in 1842 in Vincennes, Indiana, Gimbel patriarch Adam moved the company’s operations in 1887 to the Gimbel Brothers Department Store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. From there, Gimbels became a national chain, opening its second store in Philadelphia in 1894 and a Manhattan flagship store surrounding Herald Square in 1910.

Gimbels came to be the primary rival for the leading Herald Square retailer Macy’s, whose flagship store was one block north. This rivalry went on to become famous across the country, inspiring the classic idiom “Does Macy’s Tell Gimbels,” which is used to brush off inquiries on matters the speaker does not wish to divulge. With 27 acres of sales space and doors designed to lead directly to the Herald Square Subway station, Gimbels’ Manhattan location became a frequent target for shoplifting, having the highest rate of “shrinkage” in the world.

Over the years, the Manhattan store has been featured in numerous films including Miracle on 34th Street and Fitzwally, and it was even frequently referenced as a shopping destination for Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz’s on the 1950s television series I Love Lucy. After closing, the structure was converted into a mall in 1989, known today as the Manhattan Mall.

5. Alexander’s

In honor of his deceased father, Brooklyn native George Farkas named his first store Alexander’s. Opened in 1928 on Third Avenue in the Bronx, the store specifically targeted members of the middle class, providing them with discounts on designer clothing and high-quality private-label goods. Alexander’s managed to thrive during the Great Depression, opening a new location on Fordham Road in 1933. During this period, the store was known for its discount bargains and had more sales per square foot than any other store in the United States.

Over the coming years, Farkas opened more stores across New York City, with a shop in Rego Park opening in 1959 and its flagship store on 59th Street in Manhattan debuting in 1963. After the completion of the Mall at the World Trade Center in 1974, Alexander’s also became its anchor store. Occupying 1/6th of the World Trade Center’s 50,000 square foot mall, Alexander’s store was located underneath 4 World Trade Center to the east of the south tower. Alexander’s was most famous for an abstract art mural painted on glass with enamel by the Polish artist Stefan Knapp, which was displayed on the outside of the company’s Garden State Plaza location in Paramus, New Jersey.

At its peak, Alexander’s included 16 stores. However, beginning in the 1970s, customers began flocking to larger competitors such as Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s and to discount stores like Kmart. This downward trend continued into the ’80s, with Alexander’s making its last profit from retail operations in 1987. By 1992, Steven Roth, who had taken over operations of the company, was forced to declare bankruptcy and shut down 11 of its stores.

6. Henri Bendel