“I want you to notice this corner very carefully. Florence. A
half-century hence the business of New York will be centred between
34th and 42nd Streets. Here is to be the future business of this
wonderful city.”So, in 1870, said Captain Rowland H. Macy,
onetime whaling skipper, then a storekeeper, to his daughter.
Thirty-two years later the R. H. Macy & Co. store was located on
the corner which the Captain had pointed out. Last
week Macy’s climaxed more than 70 years of steady growth with the purchase
of L. Bamberger & Co., potent Newark department store.
Macy’s 1928 sales* were $90,251,396; Bamberger’s were $35,001,214.
The 1929 sales of the two stores are expected to reach $140,000,000.
The 1928 net income of the combination was approximately $10,000,000,
of which Macy’s contributed $7,566,194 and Bamberger’s $2,915,375.
The two stores will each continue its present staff and policies—Bamberger’s, for example, will continue to give charge accounts;
Macy’s will hold to its 71-year-old cash-only system.Sale of
Bamberger’s to Macy’s resulted largely
from Louis Bamberger’s desire to retire from active direction of his
business. Said he: “I am getting old [74] and want to be
relieved of active management of the business which I founded. It is a
big business. . . .”In addition to its department store business,
L. Bamberger & Co. operates Station WOR, over which it has
long broadcast itself as “one of America’s great stores.” Bamberger’s also publishes Charm, elaborate house organ with 100,000
Bamberger readers.R.H. Macy & Co., Inc., controls La Salle & Koch
Co. of Toledo and the Davison-Paxton Co. of Atlanta. Rowland Hussey Macy, Nantucket Quaker, Gold Rush Forty-Niner, whaling
captain and grocery store owner, founded Macy’s in 1858. The original
Macy store embodied present Macy policies
of a cash business and “odd” prices . In 1874 Lazarus Straus, who had come to the U. S. as a
refugee after the German revolution of 1848, leased part of Macy’s
basement and opened a crockery store. Captain Macy died in 1877, and
until 1888 junior partners carried on the business. In 1888 control
passed to Nathan and Isidor Straus, sons of Lazarus Straus, and in 1902
Macy’s moved to its present Herald Square location. Mr. and Mrs.
Isidor Straus went down with the Titanic . Their sons, Jesse L,
Percy S., and Herbert N., purchased the Nathan Straus interest and
are now in sole control of the Macy business.Present head of Macy’s is
Jesse Isidor Straus, who always wishes to have his middle name written
in full out of respect to the memory of his father. Purchasing
Bamberger’s was a logical step because, situated on the west side of
Manhattan, many a Macy customer is a New Jerseyite and the two great
stores were competing ever more keenly. Friends of Mr. Straus
twittingly asked whether he bought Bamberger’s with the discount at
which Macy’s aims to sell all merchandise.Mr. Straus, in addition to
managing Macy’s, is also an Overseer of Harvard University, where he is
particularly interested in the Graduate School of Business. At
Harvard the memory of Isidor Straus is perpetuated in the Straus Dormitory.
