Abraham & Straus

Abraham & Straus

1987-1995 logo
Former type	Corporation
Industry	Retail
Fate	Converted to Macy's
Founded	1881
Defunct	1995
Headquarters	Brooklyn, New York City, U.S.
Products	Clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, and housewares.
Parent	Federated Department Stores, Inc.

Abraham & Straus (or A&S) was a major New York City department store, based in Brooklyn. Founded in 1865, in 1929, it became part of Federated Department Stores, which eliminated the A&S brand shortly after its 1994 acquisition of R.H. Macy & Company. Most A&S stores took the Macy's name, although a few became part of Stern's, another Federated division that offered lower-end goods than did Macy's or A&S.

History

Timeline

• 1865 - Founded in Brooklyn as Wechsler & Abraham by Abraham Abraham and Joseph Wechsler
• 1893 - The Straus family, who acquired a general partnership with Macy's department stores in 1888, buys out Joseph Wechsler's interest in Wechsler & Abraham, changing the store's name to Abraham & Straus. While Abraham & Straus did not become a part of Macy's, the two stores did share an overseas office and maintained close ties.
• 1929 - Federated Department Stores, Inc. is formed as a holding company by several family-owned department stores, including Abraham & Straus and F&R Lazarus & Co. (along with its Cincinnati-based subsidiary, Shillito's) and Filene's of Boston. Corporate offices established in Columbus, Ohio, later moved to Cincinnati.
• 1992 - Federated Department Stores, merges with Allied Stores Corporation. A consolidation of the A&S and Jordan Marsh divisions results in the A&S/Jordan Marsh division, headquartered in Brooklyn, NY. Early in the new year, Macy's files for protection under Chapter 11.
• 1994 - Federated Department Stores acquires the now bankrupt R.H. Macy & Company, and combines Macy's, headquartered in New York City, with A&S/Jordan Marsh.
• 1995 - The name Abraham & Straus is dropped in favor of the more widely known name Macy's, and Macy's East is formed. Other A&S locations were converted to Stern's.
• 2006 - A historic memorial bronze plaque acknowledging Isidor and Ida Straus and their death during the sinking of the Titanic was removed during a 34th Street store renovation and returned to the Straus family.
• 2011 - As of April, Strategic Marks, LLC has obtained "The Broadway" trademark and plans on re-introducing the famous department store name as part of a virtual mall, along with other nostalgic stores such as Bon Marché, Joseph Magnin, Robinsons, Filene's, Abraham and Strauss and many others. Their goal is to bring back the great department stores of the 20th century, with the hope of re-opening the actual brick and mortar stores throughout the United States.

Plaque appearing next to entranceway of Macy's at original Brooklyn site of Abraham & Straus, describing the company's history

Founding and early history

The first Brooklyn store, at 285 Fulton Street, opened in 1865, was 25 feet by 90 feet. Abraham Abraham, age 22, and Joseph Wechsler each contributed $5,000 for the purchase.^[1] In 1883, the firm bought the recently built Second Empire cast-iron Wheeler Building at 422 Fulton Street to be their flagship store.^[2]

On April 1, 1893, Nathan Straus, Isidor Straus^[3] and Simon F. Rothschild as partners – the Straus brothers provided the financing, but Rothschild was the active partner^[4] – bought out Wechsler, and the firm became Abraham & Straus. At the time, the company had 2,000 employees. Simon F. Rothschild, Abraham's son-in-law, Edward Charles Blum, and son, Lawrence Abraham, became partners in the new firm.

1900–1969

By 1900, the company had 4,650 employees. From the 1890s to the 1920s, A&S utilized a system of catalog store agencies across Long Island to serve customers.^[1]

In 1912, Isidor Straus, along with his wife Ida, perished in the sinking of the Titanic.

Around 1915, after Abraham's daughter married Isidor's son Percy Selden Straus, the Straus family divided up the empire with Nathan's family running A&S and Isidor's family running Macy's.^[3]

Beginning in 1928, the company embarked on a $7.8 million expansion of the Fulton Street Store, which included excavating a new basement without disturbing customers above. The renovated store opened October 10, just days before the Wall Street Crash of 1929. In 1929, the company also joined Filene's, Lazarus and Bloomingdale's to form Federated Department Stores. To economize during the Depression, the company began scheduling employees according to hourly sales. In addition, all employees took a 10 percent pay cut. No employees were laid off.^[1]

In 1937, Walter N. Rothschild led the company, and would be president and chairman until 1955. Following Rothschild, Sidney L. Solomon became the company's first non-family president. At the time, the company had 12,000 employees. The company grew after World War II. Its first new branch store opened in 1952 in Hempstead, following the 1950 purchase of Loeser's Garden City store.^[1] In the following decades, the company expanded throughout the New York metropolitan area. Among its expansions was an anchor store at Paramus Park in Paramus, New Jersey, which necessitated the building of an access road that, despite the conversion of the store to Macy's, is still today known as A&S Drive.

1970–1995

In the 1970s, Federated attempted to update the image of A & S, and funded the construction of new, more upscale stores. A & S developed a new logo that once again branded the stores Abraham and Straus. The company opened a central Distribution Center which decreased the amount of non-selling space needed in each store. In 1978 the firm opened the first of its more upscale stores at the Monmouth Mall in Eatontown, NJ. This was followed by stores in White Plains in 1980, Mall at Short Hills in 1981, and a replacement for the chain's Babylon, Long Island store at Westfield Sunrise.

In 1981 and 1982 the chain opened two stores at malls in the suburban Philadelphia market, The Court at King of Prussia, and Willow Grove Park Mall. These new stores struggled to find their niche, and the two Pennsylvania stores were closed in 1987, and 1988 and occupied by Philadelphia based Strawbridge and Clothier. The Short Hills, New Jersey store seemed out of place in the very upscale mall, and customers resisted what were seen to be the store's more rigid policies concerning check acceptance, inter-store transfers, and refunds. Eventually A & S would stock the Short Hills location with merchandise that was more befitting the location.

Fulton Street flagship store

Livingston Street annex

From the beginning, the company had high aspirations. In 1885, the company hired architect George L. Morse to work on the Fulton Street store in Downtown Brooklyn. For their 1928 to 1930 renovations and additions, the company hired architects Starrett & van Vleck to build an Art Deco addition that faces Fulton, Hoyt and Livingston Streets. In 2003, the Brooklyn Heights Association and the Municipal Art Society put the building on a list of 28 historic buildings in downtown Brooklyn that needed to be protected.^[5]

In the mid 1970s, Abraham & Straus Flagship Store made Mannequin Modeling famous. Linda Timmins, head of the division, selected one juvenile and ingénue with "The Editorial Look" from each of the High Schools across the Brooklyn and Manhattan area. The schools and its students were also selected for high academic standing; Manhattan's Performing Arts High School Yvette Post and Metropolitan Opera Juvenile Star Robert Westin and Brooklyn's Abraham Lincoln High School's Alan Jay Kahm and its Head Cheerleader Paula Gallo as well as Maria Russo of Catherine McAuley High School (Brooklyn) were some of the few selected to represent the youth of New York. These "Mannequin Models" would pose for up to an hour at a time in the windows of the store as "Living Mannequins" wearing classic designer clothes and current fashions designed by Nik Nik and Pierre Cardin.

The store had to stop Mannequin Modeling in their store front windows as crowds would stop traffic and became a safety hazard. Abraham & Straus had to move the Living Mannequins to inside the store or face a stiff penalty from the city. The crowds still came. Each season, the young Mannequin Models would be allowed to move in order to do an in-store runway show for the Designer de Jour. Although it was the 1970s, the store did not feature polyester suits or non-designer outfits in these shows.

However, unlike countless numbers of downtown Department Stores that have closed throughout the nation, this historic location continues as a Macy's. At 1,012,000 sq ft (94,000 m²), it is the second-largest Macy's in the New York City area.^[6] Macy's utilizes the Lower level through 5th floor for retail departments, the 6th floor for seasonal merchandise, and a beauty salon, and upper floors for a number of corporate departments. Display windows continued to be maintained along Fulton Street, and the elevator bank in the middle of the street floor continues to evoke hints of this building's elegant past. The passenger elevators at this location were among the last in all of New York City to be converted from manual operator to automatic use. Macy's has continued to reaffirm its commitment to this location, and increased residential building in the downtown area should lead to increased utilization.

References

Notes