Francais | English | Espanõl

Gimbel's

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
The references in this article would be clearer with a different and/or consistent style of citation, footnoting or external linking. Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page for further details.

Gimbel's, now defunct, was for many years a well-known U.S. department store.

Contents

[edit] History

The company, founded by a young Bavarian immigrant, Adam Gimbel, began as a general store in Vincennes, Indiana. After a brief stay in Danville, Illinois, Gimbel relocated in 1887 to the then-boom-town of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. While the new store was an immense success, quickly becoming the leading department store in Milwaukee, Adam Gimbel, with seven sons (and another adopted), saw that one store, no matter how successful, would not accommodate his family's future.

With, as a joke of the time put it, "a surplus of capital and a surplus of Gimbels," in 1894 he acquired the Granville Haines store in Philadelphia, and in 1910 opened another branch in New York City. With its arrival in New York, Gimbel's prospered, and soon became the primary rival to the leading Herald Square retailer, Macy's. This rivalry entered into the popular argot: "Would Macy's tell Gimbel's?" To distinguish itself from its Herald Square neighbors, Gimbel's advertising promised more: "Select, don't settle."

This was so successful that in 1922 the chain went "public," offering shares on the New York Stock Exchange (though the family retained control.) This provided the capital for expansion, starting with the 1923 purchase of across-the-street rival, Saks & Co., which operated under the name "Saks Thirty-Fourth Street"; with ownership of Saks came a new, about-to-open uptown branch, Saks Fifth Avenue. In 1925 Gimbel's entered the Pittsburgh market with its purchase of Kaufmanm & Baer's. Also acquired in this transaction was Gimbel's third radio outlet: WCAE. The company already owned WGBS in New York and WIP in Philadelphia. This expansion spurred talk of the stores becoming a nation-wide chain, such hopes were ended by the Great Depression. The more-upscale (and enormously profitable) Saks Fifth Avenue stores did continue to expand in the 1930s, opening branches in Chicago, Boston and San Francisco.

Despite its limited presence, Gimbel's was well known nation-wide, in part due to the carefully-cultivated rivalry with Macy's, but also thanks to an endless stream of publicity. The New York store got considerable attention as the site of the 1939-40 sale of art and antiquities from the William Randolph Hearst collection. Gimbel's also got an abundance of publicity from the 1947 film Miracle on 34th Street. (An homage to the film was paid in the 2003 comedy film Elf which offered "Gimbel's" as the fictional setting of the title-character's workplace.)

Gimbel's New York flagship was located in the cluster of large department stores that surrounded Herald Square. Designed by architect Daniel Burnham, the structure, which once offered 27 acres of selling space, has since been severely modernized and now houses the Manhattan Mall. When this building opened in 1910, a major selling point was its many doors leading to the Herald Square subway station; thanks to such easy access, by the time Gimbel's closed in 1987 this store had the highest rate of "shrinkage," or shoplifting losses, in the world. After conversion to the Manhattan Mall, parts of the former store were occupied by a mid-town branch of Brooklyn's Abraham & Straus and still later by Stern's. The building that housed a Gimbel's branch at 86th Street and Lexington Avenue remains, but has been converted to luxury apartments.

Gimbel's was acquired in the 1970s by BATUS, the American retailing arm of British-American Tobacco, which eventually owned Marshall Field's, Frederick & Nelson, The Crescent stores, and Kohl's.

BATUS organized the Gimbel's chain into four autonomous divisions: Gimbel's New York, Gimbel's Philadelphia, Gimbel's Pittsburgh, and Gimbel's Milwaukee. Each division operated independently of each other in terms of advertising and buying. Each division offered their own credit card which could only be used at another Gimbel's store in that same division. In the early 1980s, Gimbel's New York and Gimbel's Philadelphia were combined into a single entity, Gimbel's East.

Unable to create a strong identity for this collection, BATUS in 1986 sold the Kohl's stores to A&P and, unable to find a buyer, closed down the unprofitable Gimbel chain. Some of the more attractive branches were taken over by Stern's, Pomeroy's (Allied Stores), Kaufmann's (May Department Stores), or Boston Store (P.A. Bergner & Co.) The "cornerstone" of the chain, the downtown Milwaukee store where Adam Gimbel had first found success, (and alleged to be the most profitable Gimbel store), was handed to former BATUS sister-division Marshall Field's. After a few uncomfortable years trying to be a mass-market retailer, Fields gave up in 1997, closing the Milwaukee store and selling off the remaining Gimbel's branches it held, except for the Hilldale store in Madison, Wisconsin, which became Macy's in September 2006.

The "Gimbel's" trademark is currently owned by siblings Mark and Beth Gimbel; Mark Gimbel is owner of the Smiling Cow and Gimbel's Country Store in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. They acquired the trademark in 1999 after Gimbel's department stores went out of business and the trademark was abandoned. (Boothbay Register 2003)

[edit] Partial list of former Gimbel's locations

[edit] Gimbel's New York

[edit] Connecticut

Ridgeway Center, Summer Street, Stamford

[edit] New Jersey

[edit] New York

[edit] Gimbel's Philadelphia

[edit] New Jersey

[edit] Pennsylvania

[edit] Gimbel's Pittsburgh

[edit] Pennsylvania

  • Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area
    • Eastland Mall, East McKeesport (entire mall now closed)
    • Beaver Valley Mall, Monaca (became Kaufmann's, now Macy's)
    • Monroeville Mall, Monroeville (became Kaufmann's, closed March 2006 by Federated as there is already a Macy's in this mall. The space was then leased to Boscov's beginning in the fall of 2006)
    • Smithfield Street and Sixth Avenue (flagship), Downtown Pittsburgh, (now being put to many uses, including Barnes and Noble, Eckerd, and Burlington Coat Factory. This is now home to H.J.Heinz corporate offices and is called the Heinz 57 Center.
    • North Hills Village, Ross Township (became Hill's, then Ames, now Burlington Coat Factory)
    • Ross Park Mall, Ross Township - This was the very last Gimbel's store to be built in the Pittsburgh division. Gimbel's had not yet opened this store when the chain was put up for sale. (it was purchased by Associated Dry Goods for their Pittsburgh based Joseph Horne division. When the May Department Stores purchased Associated Dry Goods, the Joseph Horne Company was sold to a group of local investors. After several years, the Joseph Horne chain was dismantled and sold with the Ohio stores going to Dillard's, and the Pennsylvania stores going to Federated. This location became a Lazarus, now Macy's, closed on March 31, 2006 and Macy's relocated into the larger Kaufmann's location in the mall.) In April 2006, it was announced that this former Gimbels/Joseph Horne/Lazarus/Macy's location would be demolished and replaced by a newly built Nordstrom - their first Pittsburgh location.
    • South Hills Village, Upper St. Clair (became Kaufmann's, closed March 2006 by Federated as there is already a Macy's in this mall - this space was then leased to Boscov's beginning in the fall of 2006)
    • Century III Mall, West Mifflin - (interestingly enough this location was operated as a Gimbels AFTER the chain was sold off. A Ohio retailer, who specialized in close-out retailing, bought this one location, and attempted to operate it as a Gimbels. However; the owners of the mall filed suit, saying that the current owners of this particular Gimbel's store were operating it as a close-out store, and NOT as a department store which was what was specified in the lease agreement. The suit was dismissed when the store eventually closed - about a year and a half AFTER all of the other Gimbel's stores were shuttered. So, officially, this location was the very last Gimbels store in the country to be closed).

[edit] Gimbel's Milwaukee

[edit] Wisconsin

  • Madison Metropolitan Statistical Area
    • East Towne Mall, Madison (sold to P.A. Bergner's Boston Store 1986, closed 2003, store demolished during mall redevelopment)
    • Hilldale Shopping Center, Madison (opened 1962, converted to Marshall Field's 1986, converted to Macy's 2006)
  • Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis Metropolitan Statistical Area
    • Packard Plaza, Cudahy (close 1986, partitioned into several smaller stores)
    • Southridge Mall, Greendale (converted to Marshall Field's 1986, sold to Prange's 1989, Prange's sold to Younkers 1992, closed 2000; divided into Linens 'n Things and Steve & Barry's University Sportswear)
    • Capitol Court, Milwaukee (opened as Schuster's 1956, converted to Target, closed and redeveloped)
    • Grand Avenue, Downtown Milwaukee converted to Marshall Field's 1986, closed 1997; now partitioned into offices, apartments, and a Borders)
    • Mitchell Street, Milwaukee (opened as Schuster's 1914, closed 1984 and subdivided into stores)
    • Northridge Mall, Milwaukee (converted to Marshall Field's 1986, sold to Prange's 1989, Prange's sold to Younkers 1992, closed 2000; mall closed and being redeveloped)
    • Third Street (King Drive), Milwaukee (opened as Schuster's 1884, closed 1967
    • 12th & Vliet, Milwaukee (opened as Schuster's Flagship Store)
    • Southgate Mall, Milwaukee (sold to P.A. Bergner's Boston Store 1986, closed 1993)
    • Mayfair Mall, Wauwatosa (sold to P.A. Bergner's Boston Store 1986, as Marshall Field's already had a store there)
  • Appleton Metropolitan Statistical Area
    • Downtown Appleton, Appleton (opened 1971, converted to Marshall Field's 1986, closed in 1991 with opening of Dayton's Fox River Mall)

In Popular Culture -in the 2003 Christmas movie Elf Buddy the elf works at Gimbel's in New York City

[edit] References

  • Harris, Leon. Merchant Princes. New York: Harper & Row, 1979.
  • Mahoney, Tom, and Leonard Sloane. The Great Merchants: America's Foremost Retail Institutions and the People Who Made Them Great. New York: Harper & Row, 1974.
  • Ferry, John William. A History of the Department Store. New York: The MacMillian Company, 1960.
  • ^  Clark, Sara. "Gimbel's of Maine Goes Hollywood", Boothbay Register, December 4, 2003.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikivisual.com/index.php/Gimbel%27s"
Personal tools