What Chicago department store had monkeys in the basement?

Answer 1

From the website: Urbanites Cathedrals This, regarding, the Siegel-Cooper store in New York..... New York the Siegel-Cooper store opened at 18th Street and Sixth Avenue in 1896, with financing arranged by Goldman, Sachs. A steel-framed stone building six stories high, elaborately embellished in glazed terra cotta, it was topped by a huge green house and a roof-garden restaurant. A marble stair case rose through the atrium, and in the center of the main floor a marble fountain lit with colored lights was the setting for sculptor Daniel Chester French's monumental female figure The Republic. Crowds 150,000 strong jammed Sixth Avenue from curb to curb for the Saturday night opening of what the New York Times called "a shopping resort" and other newspapers described under such headlines as THE MOST STUPENDOUS ACHIEVEMENT IN THE ANNALS OF GREATER NEW YORK'S COMMERCIAL GRANDEUR. When the store opened for business the following Monday, ambulances had to be called for those who had fainted in the excitement or who had been wounded in the press of the crowds. Eight thousand clerks and 1,000 drivers and packers worked for "The Big Store: A City in Itself." It housed an epicurean food department selling pate de foie gras in bulk, a post office that mailed purchases to anywhere in the world, a telegraph office for more urgent communications, a foreign-currency exchange for any overseas shopper suddenly caught short of dollars, stock-trading services for those who might feel the need to increase their earnings to keep up with their expenditures, and