Gimbels Dept. Store -- 6th Avenue and 33rd Street

As the building neared completion, Daniel Burnham released a sketch  Real Estate Record & Guide, July 10, 1909 (copyright expired)

At the turn of the 20^th century, the main shopping district in Manhattan stretched from 14^th Street to 23^rd Street along 6^th Avenue and along Broadway—the area known as The Ladies’ Mile.  Rowland Hussey Macy ran his successful department store at 14^th Street, just below 6^th Avenue where palatial emporiums filled entire blocks.

But in 1902 Macy took a brave gamble.   He leap-frogged the district and built the largest store of them all ten blocks north at 34^th Street.   Near the mansions of Fifth Avenue, the new Macy’s was set so far apart from the other dry goods stores that a steam-powered omnibus was provided to shuttle shoppers back and forth.

Macy no doubt felt secure with his competitors located far to the south.  But his greatest rival was not yet in New York City; but in Philadelphia.

Sixty years earlier Bavarian immigrant Adam Gimbel opened a lace shop in Vincennes, Indiana.  In 1886 the first “Gimbels” store opened in Milwaukee, followed seven years later by a large department store in Philadelphia.

Following the turn of the century, construction began on the mammoth Pennsylvania Station near Macy’s.  The increased potential of the area was not lost on Benjamin Gimbel and, despite his five brothers’ reluctance, he convinced them to open a Manhattan store.  The Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide would later recall “In those days the site of the present Gimbel Building and the Pennsylvania station were occupied by dwellings and old-fashioned flats and tenements typical of the period.”

The Gimbel brothers leased land atop the “McAdoo tunnel system” for a term of 105 years.  The New York Times announced on January 30, 1909 that the “massive store” would “be the terminal of the McAdoo tunnel system, or Manhattan tunnels, which, by the time the store building is completed, will connect with the Pennsylvania Railroad, Central Railroad of New Jersey, the Erie system, and the Lackawanna & Western Railroad, handling, it is estimated, 1,000,000 persons daily.”

The department store site covered the entire blockfront from 31^st to 32^nd Street facing Sixth Avenue and across from Greeley Square.  Gimbels chose Chicago-based Daniel Hudson Burnham as its architect—possibly influenced by his design of other department stores including Marshall Field & Co. in Chicago and the McCreery Department Store in Pittsburgh.  Burnham filed plans for a 10-story structure above ground, with more floors below street level.

The understated Renaissance-inspired design belied the list of superlatives used by the press.  Newspapers and journals made note of the 2,406 support columns, the 12 “vast entrances with seventy-two doors,” 27 acres of floor space and the 45 show windows.

On July 10, 1909 The Record & Guide reported on “A mile and a half of banister” that would run along the stairways, the 8,000 automatic sprinklers and the 50 electric elevators.  The journal estimated that the construction of the mammoth store gave “directly and indirectly, employment to thousands of operatives.”

Armies of workmen scrambled to complete the store in record time -- photograph from the collection of the New York Public Library

A copper box containing a history of the Gimbel operation and “other data which will be of curious interest to some future generation,” according to The Record & Guide, was placed in the corner stone on December 8, 1909.  The excavation of the foundation had taken five months alone and strikes slowed construction.  Nevertheless on June 11, 1910 the $12 million store, including land, was completed ahead of schedule.

Gimbel Brothers immediately capitalized on the convenience of sitting directly above the subway.  A double-height “Subway Store” was designed to make subterranean shopping as chic as the upper floors.  Advertisements boasted of the easy accessibility for shoppers even in remote areas.  Adding to Gimbels’ accessibility to mass transit was the 6^th Avenue Elevated train.  A station stop was created directly outside the store at 33^rd Street.

The Subway Store was a retail innovation -- The Sun, October 5, 1910 (copyright expired)

Macy’s greatest threat had arrived and a decades-long competition for patrons was on.

 

Shortly after opening Gimbels advertised black beaver hats for $5.75 and ostrich plumed hats for $15 -- The Evening World, December 6, 1910 (copyright expired)

While Gimbels did offer high priced goods, it mostly targeted the middle-class woman.  Gimbels advertisements repeated the word “plain” – “Plain as a butter tub” and “Plain old Gimbels,” for instance.  It gained a loyal customer base of women who knew they were getting quality items at affordable prices.

The Gimbels New York department store was so successful that in July 1919 the brothers broke the 105-year lease by purchasing the property for $7 million.

The Bernard Gimbel, who oversaw the New York store, was a brilliant marketer, staging fashion shows, carnivals and other gimmicks to draw customers.  In March 1920 wealthy socialites worked as saleswomen, donating their 10 per cent commissions to Bellevue Hospital.   On March 13 The New York Times commented, “Miss Fay Bainter sold a hat almost the moment she arrived, but selling became difficult, for customers increased so swiftly that the floor space was congested.  Mrs. George Baker, Jr., has been on duty for three days and Mrs. Charles Dana Gibson worked hard all Thursday afternoon.  Mrs. F. N. Watriss and Mrs. Mary Hoyt Wiborg are among the more recent workers.”

The 6th Avenue Elevated station was directly outside of Gimbels -- Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=24UAYWV0O7FN&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894

Among the conveniences offered was the nursery where mothers could drop off their children while they shopped.  On September 10, 1921 at 2:30 a young woman in a black silk dress dropped her one-month old baby girl with Stella Ellis, saying she would pick up the infant later.  When the store was closed, the baby was still there.

A policeman was called who took the child to Bellevue Hospital.  The nursery, it appeared, was an easy way for the mother to abandon her infant with the knowledge it would be cared for.

A model strikes a post during a fashion show around the time of the store's opening -- from the collection of the New York Public Library

Sitting between Macy’s and Gimbels was the nine-story Saks & Co. department store, engulfing the 6^th Avenue blockfront between 33^rd and 34^th Streets.  In 1922 the firm began construction of its new building on Fifth Avenue at 50^th Street.  Although the project would take two years to complete, Gimbels was quick to react. The Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide reported on June 15 that Gimbels had leased the structure for 21 years at an annual rental of “between $400,000 and $500,000 net.”  It was, no doubt, no coincidence that the move followed closely on the heels of R. H. Macy & Co.’s announcement to erect an addition to its store.

In reporting on the lease, The New York Times mentioned “It was said that it was too early yet to make any definite announcement of plans for the actual physical linking together of the two structures, but two ways of joining them may be used.”  One idea was a tunnel, connecting to the various passenger tunnels already in place.  “There is also the possibility of building an overhead bridge,” said the newspaper.

But before any of this could take place, less than a year later, on April 25, 1923, The New York Times reported that Gimbels and Saks had merged.  “When Saks & Co. move to their new store at 617 Fifth Avenue, Gimbels, [which] already had acquired the present Saks building just across Thirty-third Street from the Gimbel store, will open there a special store similar to that now conducted by Saks.”

When Gimbels opened in the former Saks building in 1924, a platform from the 6^th Avenue El was extended down 33^rd Street and a connecting bridge built between the two structures at the second floor.  Now customers could easily alight from the elevated and enter either store.  The bridge had its drawbacks, however.  It became a favorite escape route for shoplifters who would dash from Gimbels into the former Saks building, or vice-versa.

A postcard captured the bridge between Gimbels and the former Saks Building after the demolition of the El.

Gimbels’ long list of innovative marketing perhaps reached its apex in September 1924 when it opened a radio station on the 8^th Floor.  “The entire station, including the studio in which the artists perform, the transmitting room and power room, will be in a glass enclosure, so that the public can see how broadcasting is done and how the apparatus functions,” reported The Times.  Shoppers were allowed into the studio during program were being aired; and a special “receiving room” was available for people to gather to hear important news events.

Louis Gimbel described the family-friendly programs, including “debates and concerts by school children and music students recommended by teachers of music.  A feature of the opening program will be Uncle Wip, the bedtime story teller of station WIP, Philadelphia, who has organized a club of 35,000 children by his broadcasts.”

Gimbels’ phenomenal growth was evidenced not only by its sales exceeding $100 million that year; but by the purchase the following year of the 18-story Cuyler Building at Nos. 120 through 126 West 32^nd Street.  When Gimbel Brothers announced the $2.5 purchase in October 1925, it said the acquisition “was made necessary by the great growth of the company’s business.”  To connect the Gimbels store with the Cuyler Building, architects Richard H. Shreve and William F. Lamb were commissioned to design another sky bridge—this one a three-story copper-clad Art Deco beauty.

An ambitious 3-story bridge connected Gimbels with the Cuyler Building.

The Gimbel store’s gimmicks to attract customers became more creative during the Depression years and in November 1935 the 6^th Floor was turned into a replica of the 19th century Barnum Museum on Broadway.  Adults paid 15 cents and children a dime to see the legendary museum’s attractions.

“It is really a complete Barnum,” said The Times.  “Joice Heth, wizened and witch-like, is there to remind you that she lived when George Washington was too young to chop down trees.  The Cardiff Giant looms coldly from his erect coffin in a corner.  The white whale, with an undulant tail and heaving sides, spouts regularly—at least as often as some one pushes a button hidden by the rail.”

Among the 60 life-sized models were Tom Thumb, the Fejee Mermaid, Jumbo the Elephant and Jenny Lind.  “Barnum himself stands at the side of his nightingale,” said The Times, “and when the electricians in the rear room see to it, he makes a speech of introduction.  Then Jenny sings, although her papier-mâché lips do not coordinate with the melody very well.”

On April 24, 1937 Amelia Earhart addressed a group of 500 in the department store’s restaurant.  The New York Times made special note of her announcement that “she purposed to attempt the ‘round the world at the Equator’ flight again ‘some time around the middle of May.’”

Although the old 6^th Avenue El was demolished in 1939, the second story bridge remained to link the Gimbels and Saks buildings. 

In August 1941, just months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the government instituted curbs on the manufacture of silk stockings.  Silk was necessary in the manufacture of parachutes.  The announcement sparked a near riot among female New Yorkers.  On August 5 a New York Times headline read “Women Stampede for Stockings As Result of Government Silk Ban.”

“Ropes controlled the crowds at Gimbel’s, where nineteen extra [employees] confronted the women who were lured there by a special sale of nylon and silk hosiery that disappeared early in the morning.  Even though salesgirls were summoned from near-by counters to assist with the stocking sale, there arose a plea from the buyer, ‘Get me some more girls, please,’ as the noon customers bunched in the store.”

Gimbels pitched into the war cause by selling Victory Bonds and, in 1943, installing a vegetable garden inside the store “to prove that two persons can grow all the vegetables they need for three months on a tiny plot,” said The Times.   It went even further, at the war’s end, by helping the Government sell off surplus property on the selling floor.

The rivalry between Macy’s and Gimbels was legendary; and never more so than during the Christmas selling season.  But in December 1955 an unexpected truce was called.  On December 9 The New York Times wrote “Bernard F. Gimbel, who has long been devoted to a department store that bears his name, did something extraordinary yesterday.  He went to Macy’s.”

Gimbel visited the office of Jack I. Straus, President of R. H. Macy & Co., with an surprising marketing strategy.  Soon “throngs of happy, rosy-cheeked shoppers, eagerly crowding one another off the sidewalks, were becoming aware of two huge signs on Macy’s and Gimbels.  The Macy sign read ‘This Way to Gimbels’ and ‘When Macy’s Tells Gimbels, It’s the Miracle on 34^th Street.’  The Gimbels sign was similar, except that it pointed to Macy’s.”

The competition was evident three years later when the motion picture Auntie Mame was released.  Rosalind Russell, in the role of Mame, walked off her job at Macy’s during the Christmas rush.  Infuriated customers wanted to know how they were to get the items they wanted.  “Go to Gimbels,” Mame responded.

Things were changing for Gimbels Greeley Square by the 1960s.  On December 29, 1965 E. J. Korvette, Inc. announced plans to take possession of the former Saks Building.  Four months later, on April 23, 1966, The Times reported on the removal of the second story bridge.  “After 42 years, the two-level bridge is being demolished.  In about a week, it will pass into oblivion—a fate that has overcome many other New York landmarks.”

Two years later Gimbels announced plans for a new store on the corner of Lexington Avenue and East 86^th Street.  The 14-story white marble and black slate building opened in February 1972, and the old 6^th Avenue building became known as “Gimbels downtown.”  But unlike its Upper East Side counterpart, the 1910 store sat in what was now an increasingly seedy neighborhood.

On June 6, 1986 the Associated Press reported “Macy’s no longer has to keep its secrets from Gimbels.  After 76 years of a fierce but friendly rivalry, Gimbels at Herald Square is going out of business.”   Within a year the Brooklyn-based department store Abraham & Straus announced it would take over the old 6^th Avenue building.  The intended gut renovation was part of an attempt to revive the Herald Square shopping district.  Earlier the old Saks-then-Korvettes building had become a vertical mall, Herald Center; however to date its reception among shoppers was tepid at best.

Burnham’s Edwardian façade remained—more or less—while the interiors were junked and replaced by the A&S Plaza that featured an enormous central atrium.  Walls of glass and a sleek two-story base retained the old structure's bones while giving it a decidedly modern feel.  And yet still clinging on high above 33^rd Street was the wonderful Art Deco sky bridge which had somehow survived.

The plan failed.  By 2002 when advertising agency Foote, Cone & Belding leased the 270,000 square foot building, Times reporter John Holusha remarked “The building once housed Gimbels, then Abraham & Straus and then Stern’s department store and along the way became known as the Manhattan Mall.”

Foote, Cone & Belding decided on another direction for the property--a mixture of business offices, showrooms and stores.  In 2006 the building was sold once again, this time to Vornado Realty Trust for about $689 million.

Little remains to remind New Yorkers that a massive department store one engulfed three buildings here.  Except a fantastic copper sky bridge, long ago sealed up, high above 33^rd Street.

current photographs by the author
many thanks to reader Karina Romero for requesting this post

The 1902 Flatiron Building -- 23rd Street between Broadway and 5th Avenue

The Fuller Building shortly after completion with its "cowcatcher" retail space at the front -- photo NYPL Collection

It was not the soaring height of the Fuller Building that caught New Yorkers’ attention in 1902.  And it was not the masterful, almost sculptural, design.  It was the wind.

The pie-shaped plot of land bounded by East 22^nd Street, Broadway and Fifth Avenue – with its nose poking against 23^rd Street – held a hodge-podge of small commercial buildings prior to 1902.  But its visible location at the confluence of the major arteries coupled with its location across from Madison Square Park gave it an untapped and inestimable value.  This despite the neighborhood’s recent slide from carriage-trade emporiums to mostly loft spaces with small manufacturing.

The site was owned by Amos Eno and after his death in 1899 his son William purchased it from the estate for $690,000; a staggering sum at the turn of the century.  Within a month he sold the property to Samuel and Mort Newhouse for $801,000.  Although the Newhouses had lofty plans for the site initially, they eventually sold it to Harry S. Black two years later.

Black ran the Fuller Company, a general contracting company whose specialty was the construction of skyscrapers.  Fuller was, actually, the first actual “general contractor” – a firm that handled all phases of construction other than its architecture.

Harry S. Black envisioned an impressive new headquarters for his firm – one that would establish not only its reputation as a serious player in the building game, but which would advertise its construction capabilities.  Rather than tap the talents of local architects like McKim, Mead & White or Carrere & Hastings, Black turned to Chicago-based Daniel Burnham.

Burnham designed a 21-floor show-stopper, mixing Renaissance Revival with Beaux Arts styles.  The facade was slathered with carvings and molded terra cotta – barely a square foot could be found without ornamentation.  The building rose from a limestone base to the ornate terra cotta above; the detailing designed by Frederick P. Dinkelberg who worked in Burnham’s office.

The Fuller Building went up like a skyrocket.  The foundation was completed on March 3, 1902 and exactly four months later the roof was placed in position.  On August 1, only nine months after ground was broken, it was completed.

The Fuller Building rises with astonishing speed in 1902 -- photo NYPL Collection

Rising 300 feet, the Fuller Building was a marvel of architecture, appearing to part the avenues like a great ship.  The 23^rd Street exposure was a mere 6.5 feet wide, broadening southward to fill the 22^nd Street block between Fifth Avenue and Broadway.

The tiny point on the sidewalk level was essentially useless so Black had a retail space built out which was not on Burnham’s original plans.  The “cowcatcher” store, Black felt, would take advantage of the busy site and produce income.  Because of its triangular shape, it quickly gained the nickname the “Flatiron Building” – although other similarly-shaped buildings were also given that tag at the time.

Turn of the century laundresses were intimately familiar with the heavy metal flat irons, the shape of which lent their name to the Flatiron Building

The steel skeleton, said to be the heaviest in New York at the time at 4,000 tons, allowed the structure to attain its full 20 stories plus attic.  New Yorkers by now were accustomed to higher and higher buildings.  But they were not quite so sure about the effects that the great wedge of masonry would have on air currents.

At its completion the Municipal Journal & Public Works said “New York’s latest freak in the shape of sky scrapers has already been nicknamed the ‘Flat-Iron,’ although it is otherwise known as the Fuller Building. “  Almost immediately rumors began circulating about the building’s effects on the wind.

In 1903 the America Druggist and Pharmaceutical Record reported that “the erection of this building is said to have had a curious effect in regard to air currents and a case is at present pending in the New York courts, one man suing the owners of the building for a large sum as compensation for the blowing in of his windows, which has happened several times since the building was erected.”

The article continued “Then the street passengers are knocked about in all sorts of rude and unkindly fashions, so that it appears as if the Flat Iron Building may not be an unmixed blessing to the locality.”

On February 6, 1903 The New York Times blamed increased wind gusts the day before on the Flatiron Building, saying the storm “took up its headquarters in the Flatiron Building…Conservative guessers who drifted past the building during the afternoon estimated the velocity at 1,000 miles an hour…A $500 plate glass window, twelve by eight feet, adorned the café of the Hotel Bartholdi, directly opposite the Flatiron Building, was the first victim of the wind.”  The reporter continued, “Later in the day a recoil gust of wind smashed in one of the three windows of the extension which forms the northern corner of the Flatiron Building.”

Fourteen year old John McTaggart’s death that day was blamed on the building.  The messenger boy was attempting to round the 23^rd Street point of the building against the wind.  After attempting three times, he was reportedly blown into 5^th Avenue and fatally injured by an automobile.

Then, on September 17, 1903, The New York Times reported on another wind storm.  “When the storm was at its height, Madison Square for an area of 200 yards from the Flatiron Building was swept clear of all traffic.  Anything less heavy than a street car that came within the zone dominated by the triangular structure was blown away.”

A concerned citizen from Newport, Rhode Island, J. A. Swan wrote to the newspaper suggesting a solution:

In regard to the trouble at the Flatiron Building, which we read about every time we have a high wind, has it been suggested by anybody that it could be all remedied, without spoiling the looks of the building, by putting a balcony about four feet wide around the building just below the windows at every story, or every other story?  I have been convinced in my own mind from the first that this would prevent the wind from sweeping down after it strikes the building.

The building seemed to float up the avenues like a great ship -- NYPL Collection

Not everyone was concerned about the wind effects.  Policemen were kept busy shooing away the young men who loitered at the 23^rd Street point of the building, hoping an errant gust of wind would lift the hems of passing ladies, exposing a tantalizing glimpse of ankle.

Wind worries eventually subsided and in March of 1915 plans were filed with the Building Department to increase the height of the skyscraper.  A “draughting room” was charted as an additional story “ten feet high with several skylights.”  The estimated cost of the addition, which would bring the building to a full 22 stories, was $10,000.

Four years later the effectiveness of the water pressure in the soaring building—so thoroughly tested in 1902--would be put to the test again when a fire raged on the 21^st floor.  Firefighters were required to wrestle high-pressure hoses from the lower floors up the stairs in a five-hour battle with the flames.  

Although the structure was little damaged, the heat dislodged one of the large ornamental blocks—about four feet wide and a foot thick--from the facade.  The block fell 21 floors to Fifth Avenue, missing a policeman by a few feet.  The concussion of the masonry onto the pavement broke a plate glass window in the Stein Doblin Company at Broadway and 22^nd Street.

Throughout its existence the Flatiron Building has remained an icon of New York City.  In their Beaux Arts Architecture in New York, Edmund Vincent Gillon and Henry Hope Reed said “Of all the skyscrapers built in the first decades of this century, the Flatiron Building was the one that captured the public imagination–even more than did the Woolworth Building.”

It has been the focus of esteemed photographers like Berenice Abbott, Alfred Stieglitz, and Edward Steichen; the subject of paintings by Albert Gleizes, Paul Cornoyer and other American artists; appeared in the writings of O’Henry and scores of television shows and motion pictures.  Even before its completion, the Flatiron Building was one of the most recognizable and most reproduced architectural images in the United States.

Edward Steichen's haunting photograph of the Flatiron Building at night

The beloved Flatiron Building has given its name to the entire geographical area around it: The Flatiron District.  And today it still functions as an office building, housing some of the nation’s most prestigious publishing companies.