The end of Macy’s closes the chapter on the Wanamaker Building. A look back at a Philly landmark

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This weekend, Philadelphia says goodbye to Macy’s department store in the Wanamaker Building.

For all intents and purposes, we are also saying goodbye to the Wanamaker Building itself, a city landmark since John Wanamaker laid the cornerstone in 1909 to great fanfare.

Until a future use of the building is determined, the public will not be able to access it, nor the bronze eagle, the Christmas light show, the pipe organ, or the five-story interior atrium.

“It’s so core to Philadelphia because of its location, but also because of the experience,” said Selena Austin, program coordinator at the Pennsylvania Historical Society.

“So many people still today can relate to going to the Wanamaker’s department store, can go into their storage unit and find a solid oak table that they purchase from Wanamaker’s, can go into the thrift store and find some Bicentennial china branded with the Wanamaker’s logo,” she said.

The Historical Society houses the definitive Wanamaker archive, with over 400 boxes of material measuring 200 linear feet. The collection is so large it has a room named after it. On the eve of the Macy’s shutdown, Austin pulled out dozens of photos from the long history of the store.

Building a landmark

There has been a department store at 13th and Market streets for 149 years. Wanamaker bought an abandoned railroad depot and converted it into a massive, open-plan dry goods store spanning “2 to 3 acres,” according to advertisements at the time. It opened in 1876.

He then tore down the depot to build what we now know as the Wanamaker Building. When Wanamaker’s opened in 1911, it was the largest retail store in the world under one roof, built of steel and granite, holding 45 acres of floor space.

“Of the 12 stories, nine were dedicated to retail space but then he had these additional spaces that were intended for events and for his employees,” Austin said. “There was an auditorium where they would hold all types of assemblies and events, there was a space where tennis matches were held on a tennis court, and there are classrooms where the Wannamaker Institute operated.”

Wanamaker bought the world’s largest pipe organ (depending on how you measure it) from the St. Louis World’s Fair because he wanted to give his store an unmistakable aura of grandeur. The brass eagle (aka “Meet-Me-at-the-Eagle”), also from the St. Louis fair, was acquired as an afterthought. It happened to have been in storage at the same facility and tacked onto the shipment at the last minute.

When the building cornerstone was laid 116 years ago, the Pennsylvania Governor at the time, Edwin Stuart, called Wanamaker “the greatest merchant in America today.”

“He has this vision of being sort of a general store but on a grander scale. He’s going to sell everything under the sun that he can think of to service the people,” said Austin. “He’s also putting price tags on products, which is sort of a new concept to show people what they’re getting, but also assign a certain price that’s not going to fluctuate.”

Center of civic life

The warm feelings Philadelphians have for the Wanamaker Building go well beyond retail. Wanamaker turned his store into a mecca for the holiday season. In the earlier years, the pipe organ regularly played yuletide songs, then in the 1950s, the store developed the Christmas light show in the Grand Court. The designs and blueprints by Fredrick Yost are in the Historical Society archive.

During the holidays the retail floor was extravagantly designed by staff artist John Winters, who gave the Grand Court a highly theatrical dressing for Christmas. Winters’ conceptual drawings from about 1948 to 1973 are held at the Woodmere Museum in Chestnut Hill.

“They’re documents of creative installations that involve music, dance, and visual display,” said Woodmere director and CEO William Valerio, shortly after acquiring them at auction.

“Wanamaker wanted to create an experience inspired by the American Renaissance idea that the spaces of the modern city would be as elegant as the great palaces of Europe of the past,” he said.

Pour one out for Macy’s

Another repository of Philadelphia’s past retail grandeur is a Center City bar. McGillin’s Olde Ale House, the oldest bar in the city, has been snatching up souvenirs of Philly’s retail yesteryear, including signage from department stores Lit Brothers and Gimbels, the Caldwell jewelry store which closed in 2003 after 164 years, and the famed French restaurant Le Bec-Fin which closed in 2013 after 43 years.

McGillin’s already has the 1960s-era John Wanamaker signature sign that was used as the store logo. Co-owner Christopher Mullins said he would like to get a piece of Macy’s, if possible.

“I’m emotionally upset,” he said about the closing of the Wanamaker’s building.

From a business perspective, the economic health of the Wanamaker Building spreads to everyone around it. When Wanamaker’s was full, so was McGillin’s a block away.

“We were the pilot fish, and Macy’s was the whale,” Mullins said. “We will miss the whale.”

One of the granite blocks that is part of the building was inscribed by John Wanamaker during construction in 1910, a photo of which is in the Pennsylvania Historical Society:

Let those who follow me
Continue to build
With the plumb of Honor
The Level of Truth
And the Square of Integrity
Education, Courtesy, and Mutuality.
           — John Wanamaker