#wanamaker's

The splendor that was Wanamaker's during the Christmas season in 1920.

US Vogue March 15, 1963

Wanamaker's. Eva Rosencrans for Ben Reig

"Baby Elephant Welcomed at Department Store", 11/1/1955

"Arriving from India to spend the Christmas season at the John Wanamaker midcity store, a four-month-old elephant receives a warm welcome. Marcia MacDonald, six, of Haverford, feeds carrots to Hannibal while Barbara Mariani, of Lafayette Hills, fits him with a baby bonnet."

George D. McDowell Philadelphia Evening Bulletin Photographs

Today’s #FashionFriday post sees us preparing for tomorrow’s Spring Equinox, the beginning of the beginning of astronomical spring in the Northern Hemisphere.

Opened by marketing pioneer John Wanamaker (1838-1922) at 13th and Market Streets in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in April, 1876, Wanamaker’s department store was one of America’s first modern department stores. His goal was to revolutionize the experience of shopping, turning a mundane activity into a grand event. Wanamaker’s was well-ventilated, decorated with contemporary art, with large rooms that, after 1911, included a 150-foot-high Grand Court featuring attractions like the world's second largest organ and a great eagle from the 1903 St. Louis World's Fair.

The store was the first department store to feature electric lighting (installed in 1878), the first to adopt the telephone (in 1879), and the first to install a pneumatic tube delivery systems for transporting documents and cash deposits throughout the building (installed in 1880). It also relied on innovations in customer service and marketing, including the substitution of of haggling for prices in favor of a set sales price. This decision was partly due to Wanamaker’s desire to make shopping a more pleasurable, less adversarial experience. But it was also informed by Wanamaker’s devout Presbyterian faith, which led him to decide that “if everyone was equal before God, then everyone should be equal before price”.

Unloading a Railway Express car, 1924. Put out by Wanamaker's, the department store, as part of their Christmas sweepstakes of a Packard pedal car for children. I don't know why the kid (?) is wearing a clown mask.

A fire broke out in the former Wanamaker’s department store at 9th St. and Broadway on July 15, 1956. Six hundred firefighters and more than 50 pieces of equipment were needed to control the blaze, which lasted 25 hours. An estimated 50 million gallons of water was used. It flooded the Astor Place subway station and officials feared that Fourth Avenue (on the other side of the building) would collapse, but fortunately that did not happen.

The handsome Renaissance palazzo-style building was gutted, but the cast iron shell remained.

Ad for the John Wanamaker department store at Broadway & 9th St., January 15, 1921, on the back page. The coat was on sale for $39.75--the original price was $59.50. The wrap, at $75, seems to be full price.

"White frocks for graduation," said Wanamaker's. "Be-ruffled frocks of imported organdie at $12.75. Adorable frocks of net--one trimmed with many little pointed bands of organdie at $18.50." They were designed for girls between 12 and 16.

Two news stories. The Tribune is indignant that neither the mayor nor the police commissioner has taken action on its exposure of wiretapping on grand juries (left). At right, a phony Frenchman claiming to be a general and a recipient of the Croix de Guerre is caught by two detectives as he tries to flee down the fire escape of his building on West 37th St.

An ad for the February issue of Vanity Fair, with articles by Walter Lippman, H.L. Mencken, and Hugh Walpole, among others, full-page portraits of celebrities (that sounds like the modern VF), a page of famous Greenwich Villagers, 24 new model cars, 4 pages of clothes "for the well-dressed man," and numerous cartoons and satirical sketches.