The Lost Bloomingdale Bros. Store -- No. 938 Third Avenue

For more than a century historians have mistaken the rooftop ornament as a "beehive."  The store featured the new and innovative "arcade" type storefront.   from the collection of the New-York Historical Society Museum

 

In the early decades of the 19th century, women’s straight-gowned Empire styles gave way to more voluminous skirts. Then around 1860 the hoop skirt took hold. To be truly in fashion women needed the new-fangled contraption that supported yards of fabric spilling in a great circle from their waist to the floor.

Lyman G. Bloomingdale and his brother, Joseph, were quick to recognize the potential of the new fad. In 1861 they opened the Ladies Notion Shop on the Lower East Side of New York. The brothers sold just one item: the hoop skirt.

Following the end of the Civil War development exploded on Upper East Side.  In April 1872 the brothers made an unexpected move, relocating their business to No. 938 Third Avenue near 56th Street, a four-story brick structure with a commodious store on the ground floor.  The upper stories were rented as flats.

The store space had been home to Schuyler A. White's bakery.  He and his wife, Elizabeth, had lived upstairs with other tenants whose blue collar occupations included conductor, ostler, driver and carpenter.  Now Lyman Bloomingdale moved his family into one of the apartments.  A year later on June 17, 1873 Samuel J. Bloomingdale was born there.

What had been the Ladies Notion Shop was now touted as Bloomingdale Brothers, the "Great East Side Bazaar."  Building-wide signage was plastered in Victorian fashion across the facade at each story.  Modern historians often refer to the "beehive" shaped ornament on the roof, saying it referred to the savings available inside--the beehive being the symbol of thrift.  But in fact, it was not a beehive at all, but an example of the Bloomingdale brothers' amazing marketing ploys.

Bloomingdale's Illustrated 1886 Catalog explained that the mysterious item was "a hoop-skirt attached to the flagpole."  The brothers used the item that had provided them with success as their symbol.

But the merchants no longer sold a single item.  Valentine's Manual of Old New York noted they gave "precedence to skirts, corsets and fancy goods, as announced on one of the signs, and their windows were dressed with samples of the goods."  The Yorkville neighborhood, "far from the Grand Street [shopping] section,"  was populated by working class families and Lyman and Joseph Bloomingdale responded by offering "the kind and quality of goods that were in demand by a population of thrifty and prosperous working people."

On opening day sales totaled $3.68--about $75 in 2016 terms.  But what might have been a discouraging first day soon improved.  In its 1902 Round-About New York, Bloomingdale Brothers admitted "It had a very modest beginning [but] very soon people began to know Bloomingdales as a store where they could find just what they wanted at the right price."

The success was also advanced by brilliant marketing.  An advertisement in The New York Herald on October 31, 1875 grabbed readers' attention with the headline "MURDER!"  The ad explained "Bloomingdale Bros. are accused of murdering prices, because they are willing to accept a small profit on their goods."  

from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The brothers had an advertisement for their jewelry and clock department stenciled onto the glass doors of eight-day clocks.  They then offered the $30 clocks to business owners at just $10 "provided you permit our name to remain on it."  By taking a near-loss on the clocks, Bloomingdale Bros. got years of free advertisement in other shops.

Round-About New York wrote "Soon the business began to outgrow the store and a move was inevitable.  In 1875 Bloomingdales moved into larger quarters a quarter of a block away."

In 1879 the former Bloomingdale store was occupied by Masterson & Rorke, owned by Henry Masterson and Thomas Rorke.  By 1893 it was home to Freithal, Elting & Co. "clothiers and hatters."  The haberdashery took a page from the Bloomingdale brothers' book when it offered an eight-day mantel clock free to customers purchasing $15 worth of clothing.

The World, Friday October 13, 1893 (copyright expired)

At the turn of the century owner George Dededimos shared the ground floor space with his tenant.  Bennett & Co. ran a soda fountain here by 1901, while Dededimos operated his candy store.  Meanwhile at least one of the upper floor apartments was being rented to a commercial tenant.   The New York Painless Dental Co. advertised "Teeth extracted without pain.  Also one filling free."  A full set of false teeth would cost the patient $5 in 1901--a reasonable $145 in 2016.  (That the tooth-pulling was "without pain" is doubtful.)

The location of the dentist office above the candy store and soda shop was well considered.  Sweet-toothed Yorkville residents could get their sugar fix here for years.  In 1906 the Washington Confectionery Co., run by John Petroutes and Panagiote Christophides, had moved in and would remain in the store space until, at least, 1915.  George Dedidimos had rented the other half of the ground floor to the National Cash Register Company in 1905.

The blue collar tenants upstairs came and went, drawing little attention to themselves.  That changed in 1919 when 30-year old resident Kenneth Adams was sent to the workhouse on Riker's Island in June.  He served his six-month sentence and was released on November 28.  His freedom was short-lived, however.  That same day he was arrested for selling heroin.  The New-York Tribune reported "Magistrate Robert C. Ten Eyck held him in $500 bail for Special Sessions after Adams had pleaded guilty to the charge."

In the 1940s the ground floor had become a Grand Union grocery store.  But the building would not last much longer.

On December 9, 1959 Samuel J. Bloomingdale was back on the site of the building where he had been born 85 years earlier.  The new $2 million marble-fronted, eight-story building was headquarters to the Institute of Human Relations, described by The New York Times as "devoted to combating bigotry."  Coincidentally, Samuel Bloomingdale was a member of the agency.

That afternoon he unveiled a bronze and ceramic plaque affixed to the new building.  It depicted the old brick structure and noted that on April 17, 1872 "Bloomingdale's started here."

 

photo via Google Street View

The Victorian Remnants at Nos. 162-170 E 60th Street

The remnants of five handsome homes somehow survive amid the Bloomingdale's Department Store complex.

In the early decades of the 19th century, women’s straight-gowned Empire styles gave way to more voluminous skirts. Then around 1860 the hoop skirt took hold. To be truly in fashion women needed the new-fangled contraption that supported yards of fabric spilling in a great circle from their waist to the floor.

Lyman G. Bloomingdale and his brother, Joseph, were quick to recognize the potential of the new fad. In 1861 they opened the Ladies Notion Shop on what was then the fashionable Lower East Side of New York. The brothers sold one item: the hoop skirt.

While the Bloomingdale brothers busily sold hoop skirts, the Upper East Side was developing.  Real estate speculation erupted in the form of row houses; and in 1868 construction began on six harmonious homes in the French Second Empire style—the latest in architectural fashion—stretching from No. 160 to 170 East 60^th Street.  The four men who invested in the project most likely had a hand in the construction.  At least three of them were in the building trade—Nicholas Seger was a carpenter, George Herdtfelder was a mason, and Conrad Thiele was a stone supplier.  The forth partner, George Rothman, appears to have been a real estate operator as his name appeared repeatedly in real estate transactions at the time.

The brownstone-fronted homes, completed in 1869, were described by the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide as “four-story high stoop brown stone houses.”  Three bays wide, they featured the up-to-date obligatory mansard roofs of the French style and carved window enframements.  Merchant class families moved in.   Attorney Philip Smith purchased No. 170 in 1869; outspoken journalist and editor James McMaster bought No. 166; iron merchant Lewis Snow took No. 162 and wholesale butcher Philip Ottmann’s family was at No. 164. 

Fish scale tiles and delicate detailing survive above the industrial loading docks below.

The tranquil residential apple cart was about to be upset by Lyman and Joseph Bloomingdale, however.  By now the hoop skirt was out of fashion.  In its place came elaborate dresses with bustles and flounces. There were suddenly different gowns for different occasions – tea gowns for entertaining at home, the “seaside dress,” day dresses with high necklines and evening gowns with plunging necklines and off-the-shoulder sleeves.

The brothers reacted, renaming the business The East Side Bazaar in 1872 and selling a variety of European apparel, including undergarments and corsets, gentlemen’s furnishings and ladies’ dresses.

In 1885, while the grand emporiums were clustering together along 6th Avenue’s “Ladies’ Mile,” the Bloomingdale brothers made a daring move. They began construction of a new store at the corner of 59th Street and Lexington Avenue, far apart from the shopping district and directly behind the 60^th Street homes.  By now the original owners had mostly moved on.  No. 170 was owned by Bernard S. Levy; No. 168 was sold in 1882 by William Smith to Meyer Katzenberg; and prominent clothing merchant Jonas Rosenberg lived at No. 164.

The Bloomingdale Brothers store, designed by Schwartzmann & Buchman, was six stories tall and an immediate success.  It catered mostly to the middle class and was a true department store—selling clothing, books, household items and even pianos.  Within a year of opening, the brothers bought up the three houses at Nos. 166 to 170 and converted them to an annex “not quite next door to the existing store,” as reported in newspapers.

The store continued to expand—taking over the surrounding real estate like kudzu.  On December 28, 1889 Jonas Rosenberg died in his house at No. 164 East 60^th Street and within months Bloomingdale Brothers had acquired that house and the one next door at No. 162. 

No. 168 was, perhaps, the most impressive of the homes.

For years the retailer maintained No. 170 as Bloomingdale Hall.  The Olympic Lodge used it as its headquarters and through the 1920s meetings were still held at that address.  In the meantime, in 1893, the store commissioned the architectural firm of Buchman & Deisler to design the large addition on 59^th Street.  Bloomingdale Brothers was rapidly engulfing the block—but No. 160 stubbornly held out.  And when the new store addition was built the owners of No. 160 went to court.

Joseph McGuire purchased the house in 1890 and set about adding a 35-foot extension and altering the interiors as a boarding house.  Court papers noted that while the Bloomindales owned Nos. 162 and 164; the buildings “still retain the outward appearance of four-story private brownstone dwellings.”  Not long after McGuire bought No. 160 construction began on extensions to those two houses as well as the new addition.  The noise and vibrations caused constant upheaval in the McGuire house.

The court case took five days, during which 61 witnesses testified. “One of the tenants, a Mrs. Reiger, testified that No. 160 East Sixtieth street rocked and vibrated just as a boat does when water is rough, and one Schaefer, who lived at 156 East Sixtieth street, two doors from the plaintiff’s premises, declared that the sound resembled a small-sized earthquake,” reported The New York Supplement.

McGuire lost his case and the family gave up.  In 1903 the house was purchased by the Goelet estate from the Gross estate and was soon headquarters of the East Side Taxpayers’ Association—still stubbornly refusing to be gobbled up. By 1909 it was the clubhouse of the Irish-American Athletic Club which stayed on at least through 1913.

Eventually, however, the powerful store would get its way.  In 1902 the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide noted that “Bloomingdale Brothers have purchased from Henry Silberborn No. 749 Lexington av., a 4-sty dwelling…They already own No. 751, adjoining, and Nos. 137 and 139 East 59^th St., which abuts the Lexington av. parcel…In addition to that previously mentioned they own all the property in the block, with the exception of Nos. 743 to 747 Lexington av…and Nos. 152 to 160 East 60^th st.”

One by one those holdout properties fell and in 1927 Bloomingdales purchased the last remaining property in the block, on Lexington Avenue.  Architects Starrett & Van Vleck received the commission to design the striking Art Deco addition that engulfs the Lexington Avenue blockfront.

While No. 160 was lost in the process, somehow its five 1869 neighbors survived—at least from the waist up.  A loading dock replaces the English basement and parlor levels; but a glance upward reveals the picturesque Victorian houses nearly untouched under a coat of paint.

Above the loading docks, carved out of the houses' former English basements and parlor floors, a cast metal sign announces the store's name.

photos by the author