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This article is about a department store chain. For other uses of the name see, see Marshall Field's (disambiguation).
Marshall Field and Company
Company typeDepartment store
IndustryRetail
Founded1852 Chicago, Illinois
HeadquartersChicago, Illinois
ProductsClothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, and housewares.
Websitewww.fields.com

Marshall Field's is an iconic Chicago, Illinois department store that grew to become a major chain most recently acquired by Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores on August 30, 2005, with its headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The flagship Marshall Field's store is on State Street in The Loop of downtown Chicago, which will be renamed "Macy's on State Street" on September 9, 2006.

Early History

Marshall Field's State Street store interior around 1910.

Marshall Field & Company traces its antecedents to a dry goods store opened at 137 Lake Street[1] in Chicago in 1852 by Potter Palmer, eponymously named P. Palmer & Co.. Four years later, in 1856, 21-year-old Marshall Field moved to Chicago from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, finding work at the city's then largest dry goods firm, Cooley, Wadsworth & Co. Just prior to the Civil War, in 1860, Field and bookkeeper Levi Leiter became junior partners in the firm, then know as Cooley, Farwell & Co. In 1864 the firm, then led by senior partner John V. Farwell, was renamed Farwell, Field & Co.[2], only for Field and Leiter to soon withdraw from the partnership when presented with the opportunity of a lifetime.[3]

Potter Palmer, plagued by ailing health, was looking to dispose of his thriving business, so on January 4, 1865 Field and Leiter entered into partnership with him and his brother Milton Palmer. P. Palmer & Co. became Field, Palmer, Leiter & Co., with Palmer financing much of their initial capital as well as his own contribution. After Field and Leiter's success enabled them to pay him back, Palmer withdrew from the partnership in 1867 to focus on his growing real-estate interests on State Street. His brother Milton left at this time as well. The store was renamed Field, Leiter & Co., sometimes referred to as "Field & Leiter".

The buyout, however, did not bring an end to Potter Palmer's association with the firm. In 1868, Palmer convinced Field and Leiter to lease a new, six-story edifice[4] he had built at the northeast corner of State and Washington Streets. The store was soon referred to as the "Marble Palace" due to its costly marble face. The store burned to the ground during the Great Chicago Fire in October 1871, but Field showed his resilience first by organizing a hurried rescue of some of its best merchandise, and second by establishing a temporary store within weeks in an old street railway barn at 20th and State Streets. In April 1872 Field and Leiter reopened in an unburned building at Madison and Market Streets (today's West Wacker Drive).

After the Great Fire

In October 1873 Field and Leiter returned to State Street, opening in a new five-story store at their old location they leased from Singer Sewing Machine Company, Palmer having sold the site to finance his own rebuilding activities. This store was expanded in 1876, only to be destroyed by fire again in November 1877. Ever tenacious, Field and Leiter had a new temporary store opened by the end of the month at a lakefront exposition hall they leased from the city, located at what is now the site of the Art Institute of Chicago. Meanwhile the Singer company had speculatively built a new, even larger, six-story building on the ruins of their old store, which after some contention, was personally bought by Field and Leiter. Field, Leiter & Co. reclamed their traditional location at the northwest corner at State and Washington for the last time in April 1879.

In January 1881 Field, with the support of his junior partners, bought Levi Leiter out, renaming the business Marshall Field & Co.. As Palmer had before, Leiter retired to tend his significant real estate investments, which included commissioning a department store building at State Street and Van Buren to house Siegel, Cooper & Co. In 1932 this building was leased to mail-order firm Sears, Roebuck & Co..

In 1887 the landmark seven-story Henry Hobson Richardson-designed Marshall Field's Wholesale Store opened at Franklin between Quincy and Adams. Though little remembered today, the wholesale division sold merchandise in bulk to smaller merchants throughout the central and western United States and at this time did six times the sales volume of the retail store. Chicago's juncture at the center of the country's railroads and Great Lakes shipping made it the center of the dry goods wholesaling business by the 1870s, with Field's former partner John V. Farwell being his largest rival. It was the scale of the profits generated by the John G. Shedd-led[4] wholesale division during this time that made Marshall Field the richest man in Chicago and one of the richest in country.

State Street store

Following the departure of Leiter, the retail store began to grow in importance. Though it continued to remain a fraction of the size of the wholesale division, its opulent building and luxurious merchandise helped differentiate Marshall Field's from the other wholesale dry goods merchants in town. In 1887, Harry Gordon Selfridge was appointed to lead the retail store and headed it as it evolved into a modern department store. That same year Field personally obtained Leiter's remaining interest in the 1879 Singer building and in 1888 started buying the buildings adjoining his for additional floor space.

The clock at Marshall Field's State Street store.

In 1892 the structures between the 1879 building and Wabash Avenue to the east were demolished and D.H. Burnham & Company was commissioned to erect a new building in anticipation of the influx of visitor's from the World's Columbian Exposition. The nine-story "Annex" at the northwest corner of Wabash and Washington was opened under the direction of Burnham associate Charles B. Atwood[5] in August 1893, towards the end of the exposition. In 1897, the old 1879 store was rebuilt and had two additional floors added, while the the first of Marshall Field's Great Clocks was installed at the corner of Washington and State Streets on November 26.[6]

Spurred on by Selfridge, in 1901 Marshall Field razed the three buildings north of it which had been occupied since 1888, as well as the Louis Sullivan-designed 1879 Central Music Mall at the southeast corner of State and Randolph. In their place rose a massive, twelve-story building fronting on State Street in 1902, including a grand new entranceway. In 1906 a third new building opened in the center of Wabash Avenue.

In the midst of all this work to build its State Street retail store, Selfridge resigned abruptly from the company in 1904, buying rival Schlesinger & Mayer, before selling it only three months later. Interestingly enough Schlesinger & Mayer in 1899 had commissioned the Louis Sullivan-designed building now known as the Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building, which is the firm to which Selfridge sold the business. After trying retirement he went on to establish Selfridges in London.

Shedd Era

Marshall Field died on January 16, 1906 in New York City. On the day of his funeral, all the stores along State Street, big and small, closed and the Chicago Board of Trade suspended afternoon trading in his honor.[4] The board of Marshall Field and Company appointed John Shedd, whom Field had once called "the greatest merchant in the United States," to serve as the company's new president.[4] Shedd became president of a company that employed 12,000 people in Chicago (two-thirds of them in retail) and was doing about $25 million in yearly retail sales in addition to nearly $50 million wholesale.[3]

Under Shedd's leadership Marshall Field & Co. continued the rebuilding of its store, fulfilling plans approved by Marshall Field to pull down the 1879 structure later in 1906. In its sted rose a new south State Street building, a continuation of the 1902 facade. Opened in September 1907 it included a Tiffany Ceiling that is both the first and largest ceiling ever built in favrile iridescent glass, containing over 1.6 million pieces. With completion of the 1907 building, Field's now momentarily claimed the title of "largest department store" over John Wanamaker & Co. in Philadelphia and R.H. Macy & Co. in New York.

In 1912 the 16-story Trude Building at the southwest corner of Wabash and Randolph, was acquired and demolished, an act that was considered to be one of the first if not the first demolition of a high-rise. [7]. In its place rose the 1914 building by Graham, Burnham & Co., completing the present-day store and encompassing the entire city block bounded by Washington, State, Wabash, and Randolph Streets.

Also in 1914 Graham, Burnham supervised the opening of a new twenty-story Marshall Field Annex across the street at 25 East Washington Store, which housed "Marshall Field's Store for Men" on its first six floors. These buildings recaptured its status as the world's largest department store, its many restaurants and separate men's and women's lounges becoming an important social destination for Chicago.

Shedd continued to expand Field's wholesale business and grew its manufacturing business, buying textile mills in the South in 1911, as well as overseeing the purchase of most of the Field family's stake in the business in 1917. They retained only a ten percent stake. He retired late in 1922.

First Branch stores and Frango

James Simpson was appointed president following Shedd's retiremen. Though considered to have favored the wholesale division, he did expand its retail operations, first buying A. M. Rothschild & Co. at State Street and Jackson Boulevard in December 1923, which Field's operated as a discount store call "The Davis Store". Additionally, the first branch of Marshall Field's itself opened at Market Square in Lake Forest, Illinois in May 1928.[4] In September 1928 its first branch in Evanston, Illinois followed, before relocating to a French Renaissance-style building at Sherman Avenue and Church Street in November 1929.[8] And finally the Oak Park, Illinois store opened in September 1929 in a building similar to the Evanston store. [9]

Frederick & Nelson, a department store founded in Seattle, Washington in 1890 was also acquired in 1929, bringing with it the Frango chocolate brand that became so identified with Field's as well its own 1914 building at Pike Street and Fifth Avenue. Frederick & Nelson retained its name, though their logo was soon rewritten in Field's iconic scrip.

In 1930 in an effort to revive its flagging wholesale division, the company opened the immense Merchandise Mart, which still claims to be the largest commercial building in the world. The 1887 Warehouse Store was closed and demolished at this time. But the new building, faced with a change in retail distribution and wholesale patterns, along with the Great Depression, could not save the division. Simpson left the company and James O. McKinsey, founder of the consulting firm was brought in to clean up the company. The wholesale division, one the core of the company was liquidated by 1936 and the Mart building was sold to Joseph P. Kennedy in 1945. The Davis Store was closed in 1936 as well, and its building sold to Goldblatts.

Suburban expansion

Faced with the post-World War II suburban boom, Marshall Field's followed its customers to their new homes. A store at pioneering developer Philip M. Klutznick's Park Forest Plaza opened in 1950, followed in 1956 by a store at Old Orchard Shopping Center in Skokie, Illinois, a center Klutznick developed on land Field's-owned land. Mayfair Mall in suburban Milwaukee, Wisconsin was opened in 1959, and stores at further Klutnick-led centers came at Oakbrook Center in Oak Brook, Illinois in 1962, and River Oaks Center in Calumet City, Illinois in 1966.

In 1962 Field's acquired The Crescent department store in Spokane, Washington, and in 1970 the Halle Brothers Co., a leading department store in Cleveland, Ohio, but continued to focus on building its hometown base, with a store at Woodfield Center in Schaumburg in 1971.

CherryVale Mall in Rockford and Hawthorn Center in Vernon Hills followed in 1973, and stores at Water Tower Place in Chicago and Fox Valley Center in Aurora in 1975. The suburban expansion continued in 1976 with a location at Orland Square in Orland Park and then came the Louis Joliet Mall store in Joliet in 1978. In 1979, Marshall Field's expanded into Texas with a store at The Galleria in Houston.

The year 1980 saw the acquisition of J.B. Ivey Co., a department store chain with roots in Charlotte, North Carolina and Jacksonville, Florida, The Union Co. in Columbus, Ohio, the Lipmans stores in Portland, Oregon and several Liberty House stores in Washington state. Field's existing Frederick & Nelson unit in Seattle absorbed the Lipmans and Liberty House stores, but after initially merging The Union with its Halle's unit, Field's decided to sell the combined chain in November 1981, the new owners quickly liquidating it.

The early 1980s was a slower growth period for building stores, with just two locations added, one in October 1980 at Spring Hill Mall in West Dundee and in 1981 at Stratford Square Mall in Bloomingdale. Another Texas store came at the Dallas Galleria, in Dallas, Texas in 1982.

BATUS

In 1982 Marshall Field & Co. ceased to be a public company, being acquired by B.A.T. British-American Tobacco. As part of BATUS Retail Group, the American retailing arm of B.A.T., Field's and its Frederick & Nelson, Ivey's and The Crescent department stores and John Brueners home furnishings stores joined Gimbels, Saks Fifth Avenue and Kohls. Field's continued to expand under BATUS, adding stores at Houston's Town & Country Mall in 1983, and at North Star Mall in San Antonio in 1986.

Only four years after buying Marshall Field's, BATUS scaled back its retail operations in 1986, selling Field's former subsidaries Frederick & Nelson and The Crescent to a local investor group. Frederick & Nelson quickly deteriorated, and it became defunct in 1992. Its 1914 building, the one acquired by Field's in 1929 was eventually bought by Nordstrom and renovated and reopened as a replacement for their own Seattle parent store in 1998.

Gimbels was wound down at this time, and Field's used this as an opportunity to add five former Gimbels locations in Wisconsin: downtown Milwaukee, Northridge Mall and Southridge Mall in suburban Milwaukee, Hilldale Shopping Center in Madison and in downtown Appleton. The former Gimbels Northridge and Southridge locations were retained only 3 years before being sold to H.C. Prange Co. of Sheyboygan after poor performance in 1989.

The 1929 Evanston and Oak Park stores were closed as well in 1986, deemed out of date and too costly to operate. But in 1987 a major restoration and renovation of the State Street falship commenced.

BATUS initially retained Saks Fifth Avenue, Marshall Field's and Ivey's, but subsequently sold all of its remaining U.S. retail assets in 1990 with Saks being acquired by Bahrain-based Investcorp, Ivey's being sold to Dillard's and Marshall Field's being sold to Dayton Hudson Corporation.

The name plaque at the State Street store in Chicago.

Dayton Hudson/Target and May

As part of Dayton Hudson, later renamed Target Corporation, Marshall Field's retained its nameplate, but its buying operations and Chicago headquarters merged with the Dayton's stores and the Hudson's stores under the Dayton Hudson Department Store Company, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Dayton Hudson did complete the magnificent restoration of the State Street store, including the creation of the south atrium and Daniel Burnham designed "lost fountain" originally designed but never implemented back in 1902-1907. A new store opened at Columbus City Center at Columbus, Ohio in 1991, a mall built on the site of the once Field's owned The Union Co./Halle's. Also in 1991 the the former Gimbels in downtown Appleton was closed when new sister-division Dayton's opened a mall-based store there.

A new store at Northbrook Court in Northbrook, Illinois came in 1995, the first Chicagoland store in 14 years. 1996 saw the building of a new full-line store at The Mall at Tuttle Crossing in suburban Dublin, Ohio as well as two stand-alone furniture galleries near its Oak Brook and Schaumburg stores. The closure of the first "modern" Field's suburban branch at Park Forest Plaza came in 1996.

In 1997 Marshall Field's pulled out of the Texas market selling its four locations at The Galleria and Town & Country Mall in Houston, Galleria Dallas and San Antonio's North Star Mall. The Houston and Dallas stores were sold to Saks Fifth Avenue and the San Antonio location to Macy's. Field's also shuttered the former Gimbels flagship in Milwaukee after negotiations to rehabilitate it collapsed.

Dayton's and Hudson's stores were renamed Marshall Field's in early 2001, an event that was received with mixed emotion in Dayton's hometown of Minneapolis and Hudson's hometown of Detroit, expanding the Field's name to 64 stores in eight states. In 2003 Marshall Field's sold its two Columbus, Ohio, locations to May Department Stores Company, which reopened them as Kaufmann's.

On July 30, 2004, the Marshall Field division (along with property from nine shuttered Minneapolis-area locations from Mervyn's, another unit of Target Corporation) was sold to the May Department Stores Company. The then 62 Marshall Fields stores went for US$3.25 billion, a price that financial analysts considered high.

Prior to its acquisition by May Department Stores Co., Marshall Field's had about 25,000 employees in 62 stores. It operated in the states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. May Company closed former Dayton's stores at Kirkwood Mall in Bismarck, North Dakota and Glenbrook Square in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Federated

Federated Department Stores acquired May Department Stores on August 30, 2005, consolidating the last two major traditional department store holding companies. Though they intially refrained from announcing plans for Field's when they announced their Macy's nationwide branding initiative, they eventually decided that the historic Marshall Field's name would be retired.

On February 1, 2006, the Marshall Field's corporate division was renamed the Macy's North Division of Federated Department Stores. On September 9, 2006 all its operating store will adopt the Macy's name.

The Former Dolce & Gabbana Collection Space
August 2006 dissassembly of the Dolce & Gabbana Collection at State Street.
August 2006 dissassembly of the Dolce & Gabbana Collection at State Street.

The re-branding decision was greeted with largely negative reactions, particularly in Field's hometown of Chicago. Newspaper articles and editorials reported concerns of many customers that particular traditions, services, and products unique to a store or region would be lost. More than 59,000 signed an online petition [3] to retain the Marshall Field name. Following the 2005 Christmas shopping season, WLS-TV in Chicago reported particularly strong sales at the chain's State Street flagship, as people wanted to spend one last Christmas at the Chicago institution.

Marshall Field's continues to be a purveyor of Marshall Field's brand name apparel, Field's Marketplace foods and Frango confections. With landmark status, the State Street flagship store is known for its opulent architecture, bronze plaque signage and its trademark clocks. The merger remains controversial among Chicagoans. Many are merely nostalgic while others note that Macy's focus on house-brand merchandise will eliminate the more upscale brands carried by Marshall Field's. In clothing, Armani, Prada, Jimmy Choo, and Dolce & Gabbana are among the vendors that supplied Marshall Field's, but do not supply Macy's. In some departments the conversion will upgrade the inventory of suppliers — housewares says that they will carry all brands formerly carried and stock many brands such as All-Clad more extensively, as well as Macy's house-brand merchandise. Also, these decisions are made on a department by department basis. Although Prada's clothing will no longer be carried, Prada recently released a fragrance line at the Chicago Flagship location.

Although it was announced that the conversion would officially occur in September 2006, it was implemented, as a practical matter, by the first week of August, as signified by the removal of exterior signs at Field's suburban locations, an advertisement for a "Marshall Field's Macy's One Day Sale" on August 12, placing Macy's shopping bags in Marshall Field's State Street display windows, entering Macy's cars in the Bud Billiken Day Parade,[4] and a notice on fields.com: "We're moving to macys.com," with an active link.

Landmark store today

The Marshall Field and Company store at State and Washington Streets in Chicago was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 and is part of the Loop Retail National Historic District. Between 1987 and 1992, the store underwent an extensive, $115 million renovation that installed new basement-level shops, removed steel grates from the upper portions of the store's historic light wells, and added an eleven-story atrium in what had been an alley and mid-store light shaft. With approximately two million square feet of available floor space, the building is the second-largest department store in the United States after the Herald Square Macy's store in New York City.[4]

The State Street flagship was renovated in 2003, with the store opening 10% of its floor space to outside vendors in a manner similar to Selfridge's in London, the store founded by a former Field's executive whose building was based on the architecture of the Marshall Field's store.

Due to the strong 2005 holiday sales in the division, as well as the strong negative reaction to the name change, Federated examined the possibility of retaining some active use of the Field's name, including retaining the Marshall Field name on the Flagship, State Street store.[5]

On April 27, 2006, Macy's announced that the Marshall Field name would not be retained on the State Street store [6], instead renaming it as Macy's on State Street, a highly specialized divisional flagship store with many features unique to this single location, including celebration of the Marshall Field's legacy. Extensive exterior and interior restorations are planned over the next several years.

In spite of the rebranding, Federated will be required to keep the iconic Marshall Field nameplate and the famous Field's clocks, due to the landmark status of the building. [7] Among the attractions promised at the State Street location, Federated announced that limited demonstration production of Frango Mints would resume at the State Street store. The supermajority of the production would remain in non-unionized facilities outside of Illinois.

"Firsts" and other noted events at Field's

Among the "firsts" by Marshall Field's was the concept of the department store tea room. In the 19th century, ladies shopping downtown returned home for lunch; having lunch at a downtown restaurant unescorted by a gentleman was considered unlady-like. But after a Marshall Field's clerk shared her lunch with a tired shopper (a chicken pot pie), Field's hit on the idea of opening a department store tea room, so that women shoppers would not feel the need to make two trips to complete their shopping. To this day, the Walnut Room serves the traditional Mrs. Herring's chicken pot pie.

That is just one among many innovations by Marshall Field's. Field's had the first European buying office, which was located in Manchester, England and the first bridal registry. It was the first store to offer revolving credit. Marshall Field's book department was legendary; it pioneered the concept of the "book signing." Every year at Christmas Marshall Field's downtown store windows are filled with animated displays as part of the downtown shopping district display.

Marshall Field's was famous for his slogan "Give the lady what she wants."

Locations as of December 31, 2005

Illinois

Indiana

  • South Bend-Mishawaka, IN-MI Metropolitan Statistical Area

Michigan

  • Ann Arbor, MI Metropolitan Statistical Area
  • Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI Metropolitan Statistical Area
  • Battle Creek, MI Metropolitan Statistical Area
  • Flint, MI Metropolitan Statistical Area
  • Grand Rapids-Wyoming, MI Metropolitan Statistical Area
    • Grandville - RiverTown Crossings (opened 1999 as Hudson's, became Marshall Field's 2001, converting to Macy's 9/9/2006)
    • Kentwood - Woodland Shopping Center (opened 1975 as Hudson's, became Marshall Field's 2001, converting to Macy's 9/9/2006)
  • Kalamazoo-Portage, MI Metropolitan Statistical Area
    • Portage - The Crossroads (opened 1980 as Hudson's, became Marshall Field's 2001, converting to Macy's 9/9/2006)
  • Lansing-East Lansing, MI Metropolitan Statistical Area
    • Lansing - Lansing Mall (opened 1979 as Hudson's, became Marshall Field's 2001, converting to Macy's 9/9/2006)
    • Okemos - Meridian Mall (opened 1982 as Hudson's, became Marshall Field's 2001, converting to Macy's 9/9/2006)
  • Saginaw-Saginaw Township North, MI Metropolitan Statistical Area
  • Traverse City, MI Micropolitan Statistical Area

Minnesota

North Dakota

  • Fargo, ND-MN Metropolitan Statistical Area
  • Grand Forks, ND-MN Metropolitan Statistical Area

Ohio

  • Toledo, OH Metropolitan Statistical Area

South Dakota

  • Sioux Falls, SD Metropolitan Statistical Area
    • Sioux Falls - Empire Mall (opened 1971 as Dayton's, became Marshall Field's 2001, converting to Macy's 9/9/2006)

Wisconsin

  • Appleton, WI Metropolitan Statistical Area
    • Appleton - Fox River Mall (opened 1991 as Dayton's, became Marshall Field's 2001, converting to Macy's 9/9/2006)
  • Eau Claire, WI Metropolitan Statistical Area
    • Eau Claire - Oakwood Mall (opened 1991 as Dayton's, became Marshall Field's 2001, converting to Macy's 9/9/2006)
  • La Crosse, WI-MN Metropolitan Statistical Area
  • Madison, WI Metropolitan Statistical Area
  • Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI Metropolitan Statistical Area

References

  1. ^ PDX History of Marshall Field's, accessed August 20, 2006
  2. ^ Encyclopedia of Chicago History - John V. Farwell & Co., accessed August 19, 2006
  3. ^ a b Encyclopedia of Chicago History - Marshall Field & Co., accessed August 20, 2006
  4. ^ a b c d e f Jazz Age Chicago, accessed August 20, 2006
  5. ^ [1], accessed August 20, 2006
  6. ^ [2], accessed August 20, 2006
  7. ^ - Emporis/Trude Building, accessed August 20, 2006
  8. ^ Evanston Galleria, accessed August 20, 2006
  9. ^ - Jazz Age Chicago - Field's Branches, accessed August 20, 2006
  • Pridmore, Jay. Marshall Field's, a building from the Chicago Architecture Foundation. 2002
  • Wendt, Lloyd. Give the Lady what she Wants... the story of Marshall Field & Company, 1952.
  • Tebbel, John. The Marshall Fields, A study in wealth. 1948.
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