John Wanamaker

Feb 16, 20213 min read

As a young man, John Wanamaker (1838-1922) worked in a dry goods store and later for Tower Hall, a Philadelphia clothing store. He started his first business, a men's store, with his brother-in-law, Nathan Brown. The store, called Oak Hall (1st photo), opened in Philadelphia in 1861 on the eve of the Civil War at Sixth and Market Streets. Brown died in 1868 but by 1871 Oak Hall was the largest men's store in the country.

Seeing opportunities in the 1876 Centennial Exhibition, Wanamaker purchased and refurbished an old freight depot just southeast of Centre Square. The idea was to turn the terminal into a "Grand Depot" similar to London's Royal Exchange or Paris's Les Halles—two central markets, and forerunners of the modern department store.

Wanamaker's Grand Depot (2nd, 3rd, 4th photos) opened in time for the Centennial and in fact resembled a pavilion at that world's fair because of its Moorish facade. An estimated 70,000 customers visited the store on its first day. In 1877 the interior was refurbished and expanded to include not only men's clothing, but women's clothing and dry goods as well. This was Philadelphia's first modern-day department store, and one of the earliest in America.

Wanamaker, a devout Presbyterian, represented many of the conflicts between commerce and piety produced by the new consumer culture. His advertising – he is credited with the first full-page newspaper ad – emphasized the goods on sale but often contained moral aphorisms he wrote himself. With other businessmen of the day, he founded the Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission, which still provides services to the homeless today.

Wanamaker guaranteed the quality of his merchandise in print, allowed his customers to return purchases for a cash refund and offered the first restaurant to be located inside a department store. Wanamaker also invented the price tag, at a time when haggling over prices was the norm and "your" price was subject to the whims of the salespeople.

Wanamaker offered his employees access to free medical care, recreational facilities, profit sharing plans and pensions—long before these types of benefits were considered standard. These efforts weren't strictly philanthropic - he was strongly anti-union and wanted to keep his workers happy, but unorganized.

In the early twentieth century, he commissioned Daniel H. Burnham, architect of the Chicago Columbian Exposition, to design a new twelve-story store (with 9 floors of retail space) on the site of his Grand Depot. Work progressed in three parts, allowing the store to remain open even as the construction went on to replace the original building (5th photo). The building was opened in 1911 with an address from President William H. Taft, making it the only department store to be dedicated by a sitting president.

Wanamaker installed a 10,000-pipe Grand Organ from the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, and added numerous additional pipes over the years, many constructed in a private organ factory in the store attic. The "Wanamaker Organ" is the largest fully operational pipe organ in the world, with some 28,500 pipes and weighs 287 tons. Wanamaker's Christmas Light Show, introduced in 1955, still packs the Grand Court with children and parents watching the antics of Frosty, the Sugar Plum Fairy, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer – a character created by department store chain Montgomery Ward & Co. in the 1930s.

In 1932, Wanamaker's had a new 28 story building constructed. Designed by John Windrim, and located at Broad and Chestnut St, Wanamaker's Men's Store opened in the first seven floors of the building. The rest of the building was rented out as office space, though the 24th and 25th floors originally featured a luxurious penthouse designed for Rodman Wanamaker and his wife. The tower houses the 17-ton Founder's Bell, one of the largest in the world, a tribute to John Wanamaker by his son Rodman. In 1952, the men's store returned to the main building and Philadelphia National Bank bought the building. Today the building is known as One South Broad and it's main tenant is Wells Fargo Bank.

For many generations, it was a tradition to "meet at the Eagle” – a statue brought back to Philadelphia from the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair by Wanamaker. Each part of the 2,500 pound Eagle was hand-assembled and each feather individually attached.

In 2006, Macy's became the occupant of the former Wanamaker's Department Store, which was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1978.