Fred R. Lazarus Jr. (October 29, 1884 – May 27, 1973) was an American founder of
Federated Department Stores
Macy's, Inc. (originally Federated Department Stores, Inc.) is an American conglomerate holding company. Upon its establishment, Federated held ownership of the regional department store chains Abraham & Straus, Lazarus, Filene's, and Shillito ...
, which became
Macy's, Inc
Macy's, Inc. (originally Federated Department Stores, Inc.) is an American Conglomerate (company), conglomerate holding company. Upon its establishment, Federated held ownership of the regional department store chains Abraham & Straus, Lazarus ( ...
.
Early life
Fred Lazarus Jr. was born to a
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
family on October 29, 1884, the son of Rose (née Eichberg) and Fred Lazarus.
He was the second of four brothers, Simon Sr. (August 19, 1882 – December 21, 1947), Robert Sr. (September 20, 1890 – February 4, 1973), and Jeffrey Sr. (June 20, 1894 – 1975). He grew up working in his family's store,
F. & R. Lazarus, founded by his grandfather
Simon Lazarus
Simon Lazarus (1807–1877) was an American clothing retailer and the founder of the predecessor of what was to become Lazarus (department store), The F&R Lazarus & Co., an operation which blossomed into what is today known as Federated Department ...
, an immigrant retailer. He briefly attended
Ohio State University
The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...
, but dropped out at the age of 18 to work full-time in the store.
Businessman career
In 1928, the company purchased The
John Shillito Company
John Shillito & Co. (commonly known as Shillito's) was Cincinnati's first department store.
In 1817 John Shillito (November 1808-September 1879) arrived in Cincinnati (from Greensburg, Pennsylvania). The nine-year-old lad was soon working for th ...
department store in Cincinnati. In the summer of 1929, months before the
Wall Street Crash of 1929
The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Great Crash, was a major American stock market crash that occurred in the autumn of 1929. It started in September and ended late in October, when share prices on the New York Stock Exchange colla ...
, Lazarus met with Walter N. Rothschild from
Abraham & Straus
Abraham & Straus, commonly shortened to A&S, was a major New York City department store, based in Brooklyn. Founded in 1865, it became part of Federated Department Stores in 1929. Shortly after Federated's 1994 acquisition of R.H. Macy & Company ...
of
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
and
Edward Filene
Edward Albert Filene (September 3, 1860 – September 26, 1937) was an American businessman and philanthropist. He is best known for building the Filene's department store chain and for his decisive role in pioneering credit unions across the Un ...
from
Filene's
Filene's (formally William Filene & Sons Co.) was an American department store chain; it was founded by William Filene in 1881. The success of the original full-line store in Boston, Massachusetts, was supplemented by the foundation of its off-p ...
of
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
on Rothschild's yacht in Long Island Sound. The three businessmen agreed to merge their stores and form Federated Department Stores, of which "Mr. Fred" was the chairman.
Bloomingdale's
Bloomingdale's Inc. is an American luxury department store chain; it was founded in New York City by Joseph B. Bloomingdale, Joseph B. and Lyman G. Bloomingdale in 1861. A third brother, Emanuel Watson Bloomingdale, was also involved in the bus ...
of
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
joined in 1930. Under his leadership, Federated eventually became the largest department store company in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
.
Lazarus himself exerted enormous financial, social, and political clout; he is credited with convincing President
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
in 1939 to move
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in the United States, Canada, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Liberia, and unofficially in countries like Brazil and Philippines. It is also observed in the Netherlander town of Leiden and ...
a week earlier, to the fourth Thursday in November instead of the last Thursday in November, in order to make the
Christmas shopping season
The Christmas season or the festive season (also known in some countries as the holiday season or the holidays) is an annually recurring period recognized in many Western and other countries that is generally considered to run from late November ...
longer in those years on which November had 5 Thursdays.
The Lazarus family pioneered many shopping firsts such as the concept of "one low price" (in which no
bargaining
In the social sciences, bargaining or haggling is a type of negotiation in which the buyer and seller of a good or service debate the price or nature of a transaction. If the bargaining produces agreement on terms, the transaction takes plac ...
was required); theirs was also the first department store with
escalator
An escalator is a moving staircase which carries people between floors of a building or structure. It consists of a motor-driven chain of individually linked steps on a track which cycle on a pair of tracks which keep the step tread horizo ...
s and the first
air conditioned
Air conditioning, often abbreviated as A/C or AC, is the process of removing heat from an enclosed space to achieve a more comfortable interior environment (sometimes referred to as 'comfort cooling') and in some cases also strictly controlling ...
store in the country.
Personal life
Lazarus married twice. In 1911, he married Meta Marx; she died in 1932.
They had 4 children: Fred Lazarus III, Ralph Lazarus,
Maurice Lazarus
Maurice "Mogie" Lazarus (June 27, 1915 – May 4, 2004) was an American retailing executive who served as president of Filene's and founded Harvard Pilgrim Health Care.
Biography
Lazarus was born to a American Jews, Jewish family on June 27, 1915 ...
, and Ann Lazarus.
In 1935, he married Celia Kahn Rosenthal.
Fred Lazarus Jr. is interred in the Lazarus Family Mausoleum in
Greenlawn Cemetery, Columbus, Ohio
Green Lawn Cemetery is a historic private rural cemetery located in Columbus, Ohio in the United States. Organized in 1848 and opened in 1849, the cemetery was the city's premier burying ground in the 1800s and beyond. An American Civil War memoria ...
.
References
External links
Federated Department Stores Chronology* Mentions Thanksgiving story.
*
1884 births
1973 deaths
American businesspeople in retailing
American Jews
Businesspeople from Columbus, Ohio
Lazarus, Fred Jr.
American retail chief executives
20th-century American businesspeople
{{US-business-bio-1880s-stub