The Lost Jane Engel Buildilng - 1025 Madison Avenue

 

photo by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the New York Public Library.

Like thousands of workers in the wake of the 1929 Wall Street Crash, 22-year-old secretary Jane Engel lost her job.  The New York Times, one decade later, would write, "Fifteen-dollar-a-week jobs were offered, but scorned by the jobless Jane, who rates her own time as worth more than that."  Instead, she invested her life savings--$400--into renting a vacant store and opening a dress shop near Madison Avenue and 80th Street in the neighborhood in which she had grown up.

Engel recalled to The New York Times on November 19, 1939 that she comprised the entire original workforce.  She was "buyer, saleslady, stock girl, cashier and bundle wrapper."  One seamstress would come in to make alterations when needed.

The chance of success for a start-up dress shop in the first months of the Great Depression was nearly non-existent.  But Jane Engel would later realize that at the time, "She was too young to know she couldn't do the things she did."  Within the first month of her opening, she added three employees.  The following month she rented the vacant shop next door and broke through the wall to enlarge the space.

Jane Engel had an innate grasp of operating a retail dress business during hard economic times.  She said she would buy, "only a comparatively few styles, but in wide ranges of colors and sizes."  She said, "Of course, credit was far looser in 1929...But those who wouldn't give me credit soon found I paid promptly, and began to trust me gradually, as my business grew."

On May 5, 1933, The New York Times reported that Jane Engel had expanded upward, leasing the second floor of the building.  Before long, she moved the business into into a one-story building at 1025 Madison Avenue between 78th and 79th Streets.  Three years later, her landlord, Sagamore Land Corp., demolished that building and commissioned architect Roy C. Morris to design a two-and-a-half story building for Engel.  Completed within the year, the construction cost $80,000--or about $1.8 million today.

The Jane Engel Building included shops on the northern half of the ground floor, wrapping around the 79th Street side.  The Jane Engel store's vast show windows filled the southern half and around 78th Street.  In between was the centered, stepped entrance.  The second floor of Morris's Art Moderne design was more glass brick than masonry, filling the interior with soft, diffused light.  Streamlined banding ran below the roofline, interrupted by a centered third-floor section that fronted the penthouse offices.

This ad appeared shortly after the shop moved into the new building, teasing the 1937 spring line.  

Shortly after moving in, Jane Engel's window dressers received high honors.  On October 9, 1936, the New York Post reported that the judges of Madison Avenue Week had awarded Jane Engel, "the best window display along Madison Avenue."  The article said the windows, "illustrated the progress of the Avenue since horse car days, with figures garbed in the costumes of the periods represented."  The article also noted Jane Engel's phenomenal growth, saying that "today [she] has thirty establishments in different cities."

Jane Engel told Kathleen McLaughlin of The New York Times in 1939, "every salesgirl is taught to ask as few questions as possible and to show as many dresses as possible."  Among the young women so trained was Jessica Mitford, who would go on to become a noted author and activist. In her autobiography, Hons and Rebels, she writes that she was the first of her sisters to have a job.

Having shamelessly invented a long background in the fashion industry in London and Paris, I was hired as a salesgirl at Jane Engel's Dress Shop on Madison Avenue, at twenty dollars a week.

After her first day, she told her sisters:

You should have seen me, starting at the bottoms and working up.  Getting the customers' clothes on and off, I mean.  Really, it's frightfully difficult, I had no idea.  Either the dress gets caught halfway, and the poor thing stands there struggling and protesting with muffled screams, or else everything comes off and she's all bare and shivering.  I suppose I'll get on to it after a while.

In 1942, Jane Engel diversified, now offering more than dresses.  She expanded into the second floor, and on August 18 held a fashion show.  "Some of the suits, coats, furs and sportswear that will occupy the new quarters were included," said The New York Times.

The Jane Engel fashion shows would be an annual event, becoming too large for the Madison Avenue building.  On February 16, 1944, for instance, The New York Times reported, "A collection of spring fashions for all ages from babies to grandmothers was presented by Jane Engel during luncheon yesterday at the Ritz-Carlton." 

Life magazine captured a "normal day" in the Jane Engel bridal department.  June 22, 1942 (copyright expired)

In an announcement that must have shocked many readers, on June 24, 1955 the Daily News reported, "Jane Engel, 25-year-old women's and children's apparel shop at Madison Avenue and 79th Street, will close its doors today because 'we did not have enough capital.'"  The newspaper said, "Gimbel's New York has purchased the merchandise of the recently closed Jane Engel shop and plans a basement store promotion."

Two years later, on March 7, 1957, The New York Times reported that Fisher Brothers purchased the Jane Engel Building and two houses at 54 and 56 East 79th Street.  The developer announced that the three buildings, "will be demolished immediately."  After standing only 21 years, the Jane Engel Building was replaced with a 20-story apartment structure.

image via cityrealty.com