The Heyday of Luxury Department Stores: Photos

New shopping destinations were architectural marvels that helped define the modern city. In his 1883 novel The Ladies’ Paradise, set in a fictional Parisian department store, Émile Zola famously dubbed the stores “cathedrals of commerce.”

In New York, the first department store was opened in 1853 by Irish entrepreneur A.T. Stewart. Modeled on an Italian Renaissance palace, The New York Herald proclaimed A. T. Stewart’s was “exquisitely chaste, classic and tasteful.” Nicknamed “The Marble Palace” by the press, its four-story interior featured frescos and a 70-foot rotunda adorned with balconies—designed so visitors could see out and be seen.

The oldest operating department store restaurant in America is The Walnut Room in Chicago.

Opened in 1907 inside of Marshall Field’s, diners could gaze up at the Louis Sullivan-designed, Tiffany ceiling—made of over 1.6 million pieces of glass—and enjoy dishes like fruit salad in a lettuce cup with peppermint frosting.

The dining room featured a fountain, luxe walnut paneling (hence the restaurant’s name) and Austrian crystal chandeliers.

Today, it’s inside a Macy’s.

In 1904, The New York Times reported that “small hospital wards are the latest features among the comforts and conveniences of the shops in a big city.”

“You could spend an entire day from breakfast to dinner at a department store,” Satow says. “There were nurseries where you could drop your kids off to eat ice cream sundaes while you shopped. You could get your hair done at the salon, then sit and write letters on complimentary stationery. There were post offices [and] dentists. Almost anything you could think of, they had.”

The 11th floor of Lord & Taylor’s Fifth Avenue store was entirely dedicated to employee perks that included a dedicated hospital, dentist, gym and even a school.

“Department stores were arbiters of culture,” Satow says. As early as 1875, the owners of Le Bon Marché in Paris opened an art gallery featuring artists who had been turned away by traditional art exhibitions.

In 1928, Lord & Taylor’s fashion executive Dorothy Shaver transformed a floor of the New York store into a sensory exhibit about Art Deco design.

Over 300,000 visitors turned out for the exhibition. “It was the first time a lot of consumers had seen the new style of furniture and painting,” Satow says. “She even had Picassos on display.”

Before he wrote The Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum was the brains behind the department store window display. “He used his theater background to launch the concept of window design, seeing it as a stage to draw in consumers,” Satow explains.

Art by Georgia O’Keeffe, Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns hung in luxury department store windows for anyone on the street to see.

The American public wasn’t always appreciative of the art on display.

In 1939, Salvador Dalí created a window based on the Greek myth of Narcissus for luxury store Bonwit Teller. It featured a mostly-nude mannequin covered in blood, stepping into a bath filled with 100 disembodied arms holding up mirrors.

“Passersby were so shocked that the store changed the display while Dalí was sleeping,” Satow says. “He came to see his window, and when he realized it had been changed, he stormed into the store and threw the bathtub through the window.”

In Philadelphia, retailer John Wanamaker sought to endow his store with something bigger and louder than the competition: its very own organ.

In 1911, he purchased the organ from the 1904 World’s Fair—the largest organ in the world at the time—and installed it in the largest department store at the time (his own).

It took 13 freight cars to transport and two years to assemble, but by the 1920s, Wanamaker’s was hosting evening concerts for audiences of over 10,000 guests.

By the 1930s, department stores were locked in intense competition. “They hired spies that would go around and pretend to be customers,” Satow says. Dorothy Shaver headed a “Department of Comparison Shopping” at Lord & Taylor. “She hated it,” Satow adds. “Instead of focusing on competition, she wanted to focus on how best to serve her customers.” So, Shaver hired dedicated staffers to go between siloed departments, helping customers buy a suit, then a pair of shoes and a purse to match. The personal stylist was born and with it the promise of personal transformation.

The craft reached its pinnacle in the 1970s with Betty Halbreich of Bergdorf Goodman, who dressed everyone from former first lady Betty Ford to actor Meryl Streep.

Macy’s started the tradition of decorating display for the holidays in the 1870s, but by the early 20th century, Fifth Avenue’s luxury retailers—including Saks Fifth Avenue, Lord & Taylor and Bergdorf Goodman—had transformed holiday windows into elaborate spectacles.

Saks Fifth Avenue’s holiday windows were especially ambitious, culminating in full-building light shows synchronized to music in the early 2000s.

The rise of discount stores, strip malls and eventually online shopping spelled the end of luxury department stores like Barney’s New York, Bonwit Teller and Lord & Taylor.

Still, department stores helped define modern consumer culture that elevated the shopping experience. What remains is a lasting association between fashion, art and self-expression.