Macy's is a U.S. chain of mid rangedepartment stores. In addition to its internationally renowned flagshipHerald Square location in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, the company operates over 850 other stores in the United States as of September 12, 2012.[2] It also has eSpotZoomShops kiosks in over 300 store locations selling consumer electronics.
 

Famed equally for its niche in popular culture and the diversity of its merchandise, the chain competes with Belk, Bon-Ton, Dillard's, Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue.

 

It has produced the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City since 1924, and sponsored the City's annual Fourth of July fireworks display since 1976.

 

Macy's flagship was, and is still being advertised as, the largest in the world, and draws shoppers from well beyond the New York City Metropolitan Area. The venue resides in close proximity to other Manhattan landmarks, including the Empire State Building, Koreatown, Pennsylvania Station, and Madison Square Garden. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, however, it has been superseded by Shinsegae's store in Centum City, located in Busan, South Korea; its area of 5,487,595 square feet is stated to be over twice that of Macy's.

 

History

Macy's was founded by Rowland Hussey Macy, who between 1843 and 1855 opened four retail dry goods stores, including the original Macy's store in downtown Haverhill, Massachusetts, established in 1851 to serve the mill industry employees of the area. They all failed, but he learned from his mistakes. Macy moved to New York City in 1858 and established a new store named "R.H Macy Dry Goods" on Sixth Avenue between 13th and 14th Streets, which was far north of where other dry goods stores were at the time.[4] On the company's first day of business on October 28, 1858 sales totaled US$11.08, equal to $297.09 today. From the very beginning, Macy's logo has included a star in one form or another, which comes from a tattoo that Macy got as a teenager when he worked on a Nantucket whaling ship, the Emily Morgan.

 

As the business grew, Macy's expanded into neighboring buildings, opening more and more departments, and used publicity devices such as a store Santa Claus, themed exhibits, and illuminated window displays to draw in customers. It also offered a money back guarantee, although it only accepted cash into the 1950s. The store also produced its own made-to-measure clothing for both men and women, assembled in an on-site factory.The store later moved to 18th Street and Broadway, on the "Ladies' Mile", the elite shopping district of the time, where it remained for nearly forty years.

 

In 1875, Macy took on two partners, Robert M. Valentine (1850–1879), a nephew; and Abiel T. La Forge (1842–1878) of Wisconsin, who was the husband of a cousin.

 

Macy died just two years later in 1877 from Bright's disease The following year La Forge died, and Valentine died in 1879. Ownership of the company was passed down through the Macy family until 1895, when the company, now called "R. H. Macy & Co.", was acquired by Isidor Straus and his brother Nathan Straus, who had previously held a license to sell china and other goods in the Macy's store.

 

In 1902, the flagship store moved uptown to Herald Square at 34th Street and Broadway, so far north of the other main dry goods emporia that it had to offer a steam wagonette to transport customers from 14th Street to 34th Street. Although the Herald Square store initially consisted of just one building, it expanded through new construction, eventually occupying almost the entire block bounded by Seventh Avenue on the west, Broadway on the east, 34th Street on the south and 35th Street on the north, with the exception of a small pre-existing building on the corner of 35th Street and Seventh Avenue and another on the corner of 34th Street and Broadway. This latter 5-story building was purchased by Robert H. Smith in 1900 for $375,000 – an incredible sum at the time – with the idea of getting in the way of Macy's becoming the largest store in the world: it is largely supposed that Smith, who was a neighbor of the Macy's store on 14th Street, was acting on behalf of Siegel-Cooper, which had built what they thought was the world's largest store on Sixth Avenue in 1896. Macy's ignored the tactic, and simply built around the building, which now carries Macy's "shopping bag" sign by lease arrangement.

 

The original Broadway store, designed by architects De Lemos & Cordes was built in 1901–02 by the Fuller Company. It has a Palladian facade, but has been updated in many details. Other additions to the west were added in 1924 and 1928, and the Seventh Avenue building in 1931, all designed by architect Robert D. Kohn, the newer buildings becoming increasingly Art Deco in style.In 2012, Macy’s began the first full renovation of the iconic Herald Square flagship store at a reported cost of $400 million. STUDIO V Architecture, a New York based firm, was the overall Master Plan architect of the project. STUDIO V’s fresh design of the department store raised controversy over the nature of contemporary design and authentic restoration. 

 

The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark in 1978. The store has several wooden escalators still in operation.

 

Expansion

The problem of pre-existing buildings also presented itself when Macy's built a store on Queens Boulevard in Elmhurst, in the New York City borough of Queens. This resulted in an architecturally unique round department store on 90 percent of the lot, with a small privately owned house on the corner. Macy's no longer fully occupies this building, which now contains the Queens Place Mall, with Macy's Furniture Gallery as a tenant; instead it moved its full outlet to the nearby Queens Center.

 

Acquisitions were also made outside of the New York City region. Department stores in Toledo (Lasalle& Koch 1924), Atlanta (Davison-Paxon-Stokes 1929), Newark (L. Bamberger & Co.) 1929, San Francisco (O'Connor Moffat & Company 1945), and Kansas City (John Taylor Dry Goods Co. 1947) were purchased during this time. O'Connor Moffat was renamed Macy's San Francisco in 1947, later becoming Macy's California, and John Taylor was renamed Macy's Missouri-Kansas in 1949. Stores in Toledo retained the Lasalle's name until 1981, joining the Missouri-Kansas stores to become Macy's Midwest. The Toledo stores were sold to Elder-Beermen in 1986.

 

Macy's New York began opening stores outside of its historic New York City–Long Island trade area in 1983 with a location at Aventura Mall in Aventura, Florida (a suburb of Miami), followed by several locations in Plantation, Florida (now relocated from the Fashion Mall to the Broward Mall since the Burdine's acquisition), Houston, New Orleans, and Dallas. Davison's in Atlanta was renamed Macy's Atlanta in early 1985 with the consolidation of an early incarnation of Macy's Midwest (former Taylor and LaSalle's stores in Kansas City and Toledo, respectively), but late in 1985, Macy's turned around and sold the former Midwest locations. Bamberger's, which had aggressively expanded throughout New Jersey, into the Greater Philadelphia Metropolitan area in the 1960s and 1970s as well as into Nanuet, New York(southern Rockland County), and into the Baltimore Metropolitan area in the early 1980s, was renamed Macy's New Jersey in 1986.