The Magic of Macy's. The history of the store.Part 2

Macy’s is more than 150 years old and has probably been mentioned (or seen) in more movies and television shows. In many ways, Macy’s is a pop culture icon. I told about Macy's in 19th  century  in my previous  post.

Original escalators ( Nov 2013)

By the early 20th century, the vicinity of Union Square, Ladies’ Mile, and 14th Street, where Macy's store was located  changed greatly as the theaters and retail trade, like Macy’s, moved into midtown. The owner of Macys Isidor Strauss  move his store to the current Broadway building designed by architects De Lemos & Cordes  in 1902.  
It was so far north of the other main dry goods stores that it had to offer a steam wagonette to transport customers from 14th Street to 34th Street.  In 1902, Macy’s Herald Square was among the very first American retail stores with escalators. Original wooden escalators remain in operation today and will be preserved in the 2012-2015 remodeling project.

Macy's owner  Isidor Straus and his wife  Ida perished on the  Titanic in 1912. Ida insisted her newly hired English maid, Ellen Bird, get into lifeboat.   She gave Ellen her fur coat stating she would not be needing it.  Ida is reported to have said, "I will not be separated from my husband. As we have lived, so will we die, together."   Isidor and Ida were last seen on deck arm in arm.    Isidor Straus  was born in  Bavaria in . In 1854 he emigrated to the United  States with his family. Although Isidor's body was recovered, Ida's body was not. 

A cenotaph at the Straus Mausoleum

 A cenotaph at the Straus Mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx is dedicated to Isidor and Ida together. Its inscription(the quote from the Song of Solomon) reads: "Many waters cannot quench love - neither can the floods drown it."  The couple were depicted in James Cameron’s famous “Titanic” film (1997).  

Near the end of the movie  we see an old couple embracing in bed as water pours into their cabin. But in the real life there were last seen in the chairs on the deck.

Straus Memorial, West 106

Isidor Straus and his wife Ida memorial is located in Straus Park, at the intersection of Broadway and West End Avenue at W. 106th Street , one block from 105th St. and West End Avenue, where they resided .

About 5,000 employees of Macy’s department store contributed  to create a memorial plaque for their boss, Isidor Straus, and his wife, Ida
.

The plaque inside Macy's 

 “Their lives were beautiful and their deaths glorious,” read the inscription on the bronze plaque that for almost 100 years graced a wall inside Macy’s Memorial Entrance, on 34th Street in New York.

In 1924, when the last expansion section was completed, Macy's became the largest department store in the world and retained that designation for 85 years

Macy’s Herald Square introduced the first colored bath towels to America in 1932. In 1939, Macy’s offered installment credit to customers for the first time. Previously, it was known as a cash-only retailer.

Macy's was the first retailer to promote a women to an executive position, making business history.Macy's was the first to introduce such products as the tea bag, the Idaho baked potato and colored bath towels. Macy's also was the first retailer to hold a New York City liquor license.

It helped popularize the board game “Scrabble” in the early 1950s. The chairman of Macy's placed a large order in 1952 and popularity shot through the roof.

There are about 800 stores Macy's stores now in  every major geographic market in the United States.

Macy's Thanksgiving parade started  in 1924  and was originally called the Macy’s Christmas day parade. I wrote about parade in one of my old posts.

The classic holiday film, Miracle On 34th Street opens in 1947. and is set in Macy's Herald Square, proving that Macy's has the one and only true Santa Claus.

The Magic of Macy's. The history of the store. Part 1

No visit to New York City would be complete without a visit to Macy's -one of the most famous department stores in the world. Macy's has appeared in more than 50 movies and television shows. 

DVD with bio( from Amazon) 

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is one of the largest and most popular parades in the United States. The parade kicks off the holiday season - my favorite time on New York!  You can read about parade in my older post.
  
Rowland  Macy,  born to a Quaker family in Nantucket, Massachusetts, left home at the age of 15 to sail the Atlantic with whale hunters. He worked  as  a seaman and later as a ship’s captain. The red star in the Macy's logo was his  idea, inspired by a red-star tattoo on his forearm from his whaling days. 
Macy  took only one voyage on a whale-ship  before entering dry goods  business. He briefly worked in his brother-in-law's Boston shop, then in California in the 1849 gold rush and after a sets of failure opened a small store of his own in a low-rent neighborhood in New York City on 6th avenue between 13 and 14 streets. 


This time, the business was highly successful, and brought in more than  $90,000 the first year. By 1877, Macy's store had grown to a tangle of eleven connected buildings on New York's 13th and 14th Streets.  

56 West 14 (Old Macy's)

The first elevated train line "Ninth Avenue El" opened in 1868 in New York City. In 1880, most Manhattan residents lived within a 10 minute walk to an "el".

55 West 13 street( Old Macy's)

 The increased foot traffic created the  business boom. A publication in 1886 commented that Macy’s had  the largest area of floor space devoted to the retail dry-goods and fancy-goods trades in the city of New York.

Ownership of the company was passed down through the Macy family  after Macy death in 1877 until 1895, when the company, now called "R. H. Macy & Co.", was acquired by Isidor Straus and his brother Nathan Straus.  During the 1890s, the Strauses further expanded the R.H. Macy & Co. Store complex. In 1891-92, they constructed a nine-story, 75,000 square-foot  building   at 55 East 13th Street 13th. The building now belongs to  the New School. Several years later  56 West 14th Street was built.

Siegel-Cooper Store at 18 st (1905) 

The main competitor of Macys at that time was  Siegel-Cooper Company. The Siegel-Cooper Company  started in Chicago in 1887.  Inspired by the   1893  Chicago World’s Fair there,  the owner Henry Siegel had been dreaming about  the largest  store the world had ever seen.   He’d build it in New York, at 18th Street and 6th Avenue, in the heart of the Ladies’ Mile, several blocks to the north of Macys.  The steel-framed building, the first department store in New York, opend In September 1896,  was the largest store in the world at the time, and was designed in Beaux-Arts style by DeLemos & Cordes, who would go on to design the R. H. Macy's store in Herald Square.

Former Siegel "Big Store" at18 st (2013)

There was  a  grocery department, barber shop, theatre, telegraph office, art gallery, photo studio, bank, dental office, a 350-person restaurant, and a conservatory which sold live plants in the same building.

At its peak, the store employed over 3,000 people, mostly girls and women, and offered its employees an infirmary, a parlor and a gymnasium.  The company also published a newspaper for its workers, called Thought and Work.

The owner of Macys Isidor Strauss  decided to  move his store to the north started to secretly to buy the lots on the Broadway, between y 34th and 35th Streets in preparation for his big move. 

Siegel found out  about  of his plan and  outbid Macys company  on the last parcel at the corner of 34th and Broadway.

Macy's Department Store on 1907

But  the owners of Macys    Isidor Straus and his brother Nathan built the new flagship store up and around the little corner lot owned by Spiegel: 9 stories tall and larger than any store ever seen.  It opened in 1901 and swiftly moved the focus of retail shopping north and away from the aging Ladies’ Mile and Siegel-Cooper’s “Big Store.”

Siegel demolished his little corner building and built a 5-story retail building on the site, completely dwarfed by Macy’s shadow.
In 1902 Siegel sold the company to one of his major stockholders   who merged  the “Big Store” with B. Altman across  creating a mega-store which was  unsuccessful.

Macy's department store .November 2013

Macy’s bought Siegel’s corner building  in 1911 for $1,000,000, an enormous sum at the time and    covered   it with advertising.  Siegel-Cooper declared bankruptcy in 1915,  and the New York store closed in 1917.
 Later the building  with the famous Siegel store became a military hospital   and then a warehouse.  I'll tell you the end of the Macy's story in one of my next posts.

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

My favorite   Wiki says that  in  the United States the holiday season "is generally considered to begin with the day after Thanksgiving and end after New Year's Day".  

The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is the official kick-off of the holiday season.

In 1924, the parade,  originally known as the Macy's Christmas Parade and later the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade  was staged by the Macy's department Store. 

 In the 1920s, many of Macy's department store employees were first-generation immigrants from Europe. They wanted  to celebrate the parade of Thanksgiving in New York with the type of festival their parents had loved.  
The employees marched six miles, from Harlem to Herald's Square, dressed as clowns, knights and cowboys.  Marching bands and animals from the Central Park Zoo accompanied the parade's first floats: The Old Lady Who Lived in a Shoe, Miss Muffet and Red Riding Hood.  Little Red Riding Hood, also known as Red Cap  is a French and later European fairy tale about a young girl and a Big Bad Wolf. "There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe" and "Miss Muffet"  are  popular English language nursery rhymes:

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.

She had so many children, she didn't know what to do;

She gave them some broth without any bread;

Then whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.



Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;
Along came a spider,
Who sat down beside her

And frightened Miss Muffet away

Felix the cat - the first balloon on parade

In 1927 Macy's asks theatrical designer and creator of Macy's Christmas windows, Tony Sarg, to design giant balloons which would become the signature pieces of Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.    Felix the Cat, the funny animal cartoon character created in the silent film era, became the first official parade balloon.

In 1928, helium was used to fill the balloons and hold them in the air. Felix was filled with helium and without a plan to deflate the massive balloon, NYC parade organizers simply let Felix fly off into the sky.  

From 1928-1933, the giant balloons were released at the end of the Parade and after the first year of releasing them, the balloons featured a return address label and prizes for the return of the balloons - those who found one could return it to Macy's for a $100 reward. In  1932 parade a  pilot attempted to capture a balloon and nearly crashed.

 Floats were pulled by horses until 1939, when NBC broadcast the parade for the first time. 

The parade was suspended between 1942-1944 when the balloons were recycled into 650 lbs. of rubber and donated to the war effort.
The parade returned in 1945 and was shown on television for the first time. Prior to television, the country listened to the parade on radio.
In 1958 with a helium shortage, the balloons were inflated with air and hoisted up with cranes for the Parade. Now Macy's is the world's second largest consumer of helium. The United States government is the first one.

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 2012 was attended by more than 3 million people and watched by 50 million on TV. Shredded police documents containing Social Security numbers, names of detectives and even a mention of Mitt Romney’s Long Island motorcade rained down on   as part of the confetti used for the Macy’s extravaganza.

Over the past few decades, Macy's Balloon Inflation has become a pretty huge event itself. On Wednesday, Nov. 27, from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m., the balloons are prepped and inflated on the streets around the American Museum of Natural History, at Columbus Avenue and West 77th Street. The entrance to the inflation viewing is on 79th Street, and from here you can walk south along Columbus Avenue, east on 77th Street, and then north on Central Park West. 

Inflation night gets packed, particularly later in the evening, after 6 p.m. - arrive earlier!

There is still one parade tradition that’s relatively crowd-free: the deflation, which takes place right after the parade ends on Nov. 28, usually on and around the side streets near Herald Square.

The annual parade will start from  77th Street and Central Park West at 9 a.m., Thursday 28 November 2013. The route will continue down Central Park West to Columbus Circle before turning onto Central Park South and 6th Avenue.