Gimbel Brothers (known simply as Gimbels) was an American department store corporation that operated for over a century, from 1842 until 1987. Gimbel patriarch

Adam Gimbel Adam Gimbel (1817–1896) was the founder of the Gimbel Brothers Company. Biography Gimbel was born to a Jewish family in Bavaria in 1817 where he worked in the local baron's vineyard.Vincennes, Indiana, in 1842. In 1887, the company moved its operations to the Gimbel Brothers Department Store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It became a chain when it opened a second, larger store in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1894, moving its headquarters there. At the urging of future company president

Bernard Gimbel Bernard Feustman Gimbel (April 10, 1885 – September 29, 1966) was an American businessman and president of the Gimbels department store. Biography Gimbel was born to Jewish parents, Rachel (née Feustman) and Isaac Gimbel, son of Adam Gimbel ...

, grandson of the founder, the company expanded to New York City in 1910. The company is known for creating the oldest Thanksgiving parade, the Gimbels Thanksgiving Day Parade, originating in 1920 in Philadelphia. Gimbels was also considered the chief rival of

Macy's Macy's (originally R. H. Macy & Co.) is an American chain of high-end department stores founded in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy. It became a division of the Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores in 1994, through which it is affiliated wit ...

with their feud popularized in American culture. As of 1930, Gimbels had grown to 20 stores, whose sales revenue made it the largest department store chain in the world. The company expanded to a peak of 53 stores by 1965, and closed in 1987 with 35 stores in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Wisconsin, and Connecticut.

History

Early history

Milwaukee July 2022 034 (Gimbels Building)

The company was founded by a young

Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...

n Jewish immigrant,

Adam Gimbel Adam Gimbel (1817–1896) was the founder of the Gimbel Brothers Company. Biography Gimbel was born to a Jewish family in Bavaria in 1817 where he worked in the local baron's vineyard.Vincennes, Indiana. After a brief stay in Danville, Illinois, Gimbel relocated in 1887 to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which was then a

boomtown A boomtown is a community that undergoes sudden and rapid population and economic growth, or that is started from scratch. The growth is normally attributed to the nearby discovery of a precious resource such as gold, silver, or oil, although ...

heavily populated by German immigrants. The new store quickly became the leading department store there. However, with seven sons, Adam Gimbel saw the opportunity to expand elsewhere. In 1894, Gimbels—then led by the founder's son, Isaac Gimbel—acquired the Granville Haines store (originally built and operated by Cooper and Conard) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and in 1910, opened another branch in New York City. With its arrival in New York, Gimbels prospered, and soon became the primary rival to the leading Herald Square retailer,

, whose flagship store was located a block north. This rivalry entered into the American popular

argot A cant is the jargon or language of a group, often employed to exclude or mislead people outside the group.McArthur, T. (ed.) ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (1992) Oxford University Press It may also be called a cryptolect, argot ...

as " Does Macy's tell Gimbels?", an idiom used to brush off any query about matters the speaker didn't wish to divulge. To distinguish itself from Herald Square neighbors, Gimbels' advertising promised more: "Select, don't settle." Gimbels became so successful that in 1922 the chain went public, offering shares on the New York Stock Exchange (though the family retained a controlling interest). The stock sales provided capital for expansion, starting with the 1923 purchase of across-the-street rival Saks & Co., which operated under the name

Saks-34th Street Saks Fifth Avenue (originally Saks & Company; colloquially Saks) is an American luxury department store chain headquartered in New York City and founded by Andrew Saks. The original store opened in the F Street shopping district of Washingt ...

; with ownership of Saks, Gimbel created an uptown branch called Saks Fifth Avenue. Moving into radio, Gimbels purchased WGBS in New York and WIP in Philadelphia. In 1925, Gimbels entered the Pittsburgh market with the purchase of Kaufmann & Baer's, acquiring

WCAE WCAE was a PBS member station on channel 50 at St. John, Indiana, owned by the Lake Central School Corporation. It was the first television station to serve Northwest Indiana and the Calumet Region. The station began experiencing financial and ...

in the deal. Although expansion spurred talk of the stores becoming a nationwide chain, the Great Depression ended that prospect. Gimbel did increase the number of more upscale (and enormously profitable) Saks Fifth Avenue stores in the 1930s, opening branches in Chicago, Boston and San Francisco.

Success

By 1930, Gimbels had seven flagship stores throughout the country and sales of $123 million ($ billion today) across 20 stores; this made Gimbel Brothers Inc. the largest department store corporation in the world. By 1953, sales had risen to $300 million ($ billion today). In 1962, Gimbels acquired Milwaukee competitor

Schuster's Schuster's, officially Ed. Schuster & Co., was a department store chain, founded in 1883, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and it is now defunct. Department store in Milwaukee Schuster's opted for several neighborhood stores over a single downtown locat ...

, and in that region operated stores from both chains for a while as Gimbels Schuster's. By 1965, Gimbel Brothers Inc. consisted of 53 stores throughout the country, which included 22 Gimbels, 27 Saks Fifth Avenue stores, and four Saks 34th St.

Gimbels and the middle class

Gimbels' principles and merchandise sought to reflect the ideals of middle class America. Their principles consisted of "courtesy, reliability, good value, and enlightened management". By using middle class values Gimbels attracted shoppers to a store that also could fit their budgets. Keeping the store plain and less extravagant than some of its competitors, Gimbels used the slogan "the customer pays for fancy frills." Gimbels was about the product, not the aesthetics. By offering a wide range of cutting-edge technology in its merchandise, Gimbels reflected the ideals held by the middle class of staying up to date with technologies and carrying new appliances and merchandise at an affordable price.

Merchandise

Gimbels Department Store offered a variety of merchandise and products, including home appliances, outdoor equipment, furniture, clothing, and much more. With multiple floors in its flagship stores, each floor offered a given category of merchandise. The Philadelphia Gimbels specifically offered fine jewelry, men's clothing, women's clothing, children's clothing, furniture, toys, art supplies, and appliances for the house. This store also contained The Gimbel Auditorium, Television Headquarters, a salon, and music center. With a wide variety of options Gimbels was a one stop shop that made shopping easy and accessible.

Publicity

Despite its limited presence, Gimbels was well-known nationwide, in part because of the carefully cultivated rivalry with Macy's, but also thanks to an endless stream of publicity. The New York store received considerable attention as the site of the 1939–1940 sale of art and antiquities from the William Randolph Hearst collection. Gimbels also gained publicity from the 1947 film ''

Miracle on 34th Street ''Miracle on 34th Street'' (initially released as ''The Big Heart'' in the United Kingdom) is a 1947 American List of Christmas films, Christmas comedy-drama film released by 20th Century Fox, written and directed by George Seaton and based on ...

'', the 1967 film '' Fitzwilly'', and was frequently mentioned as a shopping destination of

Lucy Ricardo Lucy is an English feminine given name derived from the Latin masculine given name Lucius with the meaning ''as of light'' (''born at dawn or daylight'', maybe also ''shiny'', or ''of light complexion''). Alternative spellings are Luci, Luce, Luci ...

and

Ethel Mertz Ethel Mae Mertz (née Potter) (alternately Ethel Louise, Ethel May, and Ethel Roberta), played by Vivian Vance, is one of the four main fictional characters in the highly popular 1950s American television sitcom ''I Love Lucy''. Ethel is the middle ...

on the hit 1950s TV series '' I Love Lucy''. The Slinky made its debut at the northeast Philadelphia Gimbels store. Also, the Philadelphia Gimbels was the first department store in the world to move customers from floor to floor via the

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 ...

Gimbels Thanksgiving Day Parade

The idea of a department-store parade originated in 1920 with Gimbels Department Store in Philadelphia with the parade now known as the 6abc Dunkin' Donuts Thanksgiving Day Parade. The Gimbel family saw the parade as a way to promote holiday shopping at its various store locations. Macy's did not start a parade until 1924. When Gimbels ceased operating in 1986, television station

WPVI WPVI-TV (channel 6), branded on-air as 6 ABC, is a television station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, airing programming from the ABC network. Owned and operated by the network's ABC Owned Television Stations division, the station ...

assumed responsibility for the parade, with sponsorship by Reading, Pennsylvania-based

Boscov's Boscov's Inc. is a family-owned department store with forty-nine locations in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Ohio, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Twenty-six of these stores are located in Pennsylvania. Corporate headq ...

. Currently,

Dunkin' Donuts Dunkin' Donuts LLC, also known as Dunkin' and by the initials DD, is an American multinational coffee and doughnut company, as well as a quick service restaurant. It was founded by Bill Rosenberg (1916–2002) in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 19 ...

is the chief sponsor of the parade.

Acquisition and closure

Brown & Williamson, the American subsidiary of British American Tobacco, a diversified conglomerate based in Louisville, Kentucky, acquired Gimbels in 1973. Brown & Williamson also owned Marshall Field's (purchased in 1982),

Frederick & Nelson Frederick & Nelson was a department store chain in the northwestern United States, based in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1891 as a furniture store, it later expanded to sell other types of merchandise. The company was acquired by Marshall Field ...

, The Crescent stores, and Kohl's (purchased in 1972). Brown & Williamson later created the

BATUS Retail Group British American Tobacco US, mostly known for its acronym BATUS, was the US subsidiary of multinational company British American Tobacco (BAT), the world's second largest cigarette manufacturer. BATUS served as the U.S. holding company for BAT. I ...

as a subsidiary company for its retail holdings. BATUS initially left the Gimbels chain in the four autonomous divisions that had been established under Gimbel family ownership: Gimbels New York, Gimbels Philadelphia, Gimbels Pittsburgh, and Gimbels Milwaukee. Each division operated independently of each other in advertising and buying. Each division offered their own charge card which could only be used at Gimbels stores in the same division. In 1983, Gimbels New York and Gimbels Philadelphia were combined into a single entity, Gimbels East, in an attempt to reduce corporate overhead. Deciding that Gimbels was a marginal performer with little potential for increased profitability, BATUS in 1986 decided to close its Gimbels division and sell its store properties. Some of the more attractive branches were taken over by

Stern's Stern's (originally Stern Brothers) was a regional department store chain serving the U.S. states of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The chain was in business for more than 130 years. In 2001, Stern's parent company Federated Depart ...

(

Allied Stores Allied Stores was a department store chain in the United States. It was founded in the 1930s as part of a general consolidation in the retail sector by B. E. Puckett. See also Associated Dry Goods. It was the successor to Hahn's Department Stores ...

), Pomeroy's (

), Kaufmann's ( May Department Stores), or P.A. Bergner & Co.'s Boston Store. The cornerstone of the chain, the downtown Milwaukee store where Adam Gimbel had first found success (and alleged to be the most profitable Gimbel store), was handed to BATUS sister division Marshall Field's, but eventually closed in 1997. The downtown Milwaukee building was remodelled in 1998 and now houses a fitness club (formerly a

Borders A border is a geographical boundary. Border, borders, The Border or The Borders may also refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Film and television * ''Border'' (1997 film), an Indian Hindi-language war film * ''Border'' (2018 Swedish film), ...

), the headquarters of the

American Society for Quality The American Society for Quality (ASQ), formerly the American Society for Quality Control (ASQC), is a society of quality professionals, with nearly 80,000 members. History ASQC was established on 16 February 1946 by 253 members in Milwaukee, ...

along with other offices, and a 131-room extended stay hotel.

Store divisions

Gimbels flagship stores were located in New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, and Detroit.

New York flagship store

19100923 Gimbels - The Realization of an Ideal - The New York Times

The Gimbels New York City

flagship A flagship is a vessel used by the commanding officer of a group of naval ships, characteristically a flag officer entitled by custom to fly a distinguishing flag. Used more loosely, it is the lead ship in a fleet of vessels, typically the ...

store was located in the cluster of large department stores that surrounded Herald Square, in Midtown Manhattan. Designed by architect Daniel Burnham, the structure, which once offered of sales space, has since been modernized and entirely revamped. When this building opened, on September 29, 1910, a major selling point was its many doors leading to the Herald Square New York City Subway station. Due to such easy access, by the time Gimbels closed in 1986, this store had the highest rate of "shrinkage", or shoplifting losses, in the world. Doors also opened to a pedestrian passage under 32nd Street, connecting

Penn Station Pennsylvania Station is a name applied by the Pennsylvania Railroad to several of its grand passenger terminals. Pennsylvania Station or Penn Station may also refer to Current train stations * Baltimore Penn Station * Pennsylvania Station (Cinc ...

to the 34th Street (New York City Subway) and 33rd Street (

PATH A path is a route for physical travel – see Trail. Path or PATH may also refer to: Physical paths of different types * Bicycle path * Bridle path, used by people on horseback * Course (navigation), the intended path of a vehicle * Desire p ...

) stations. This Gimbels Passageway was closed in the 1990s for security reasons during a period of high crime. The structure was converted to a mall in 1989, today known as the

Manhattan Mall Manhattan Mall is an inactive indoor shopping mall at 33rd Street and Sixth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. There are entrances to the New York City Subway's station and the PATH's station on the second basement level. The m ...

. It originally included an anchor department store that was first a midtown branch of Brooklyn's A&S, which became a

in 1995. That anchor store closed in 2001 and the space was subdivided within the mall. A new JCPenney anchor store opened in 2009, in the lower two levels. That anchor store closed in 2020. The building that housed a Gimbels branch at 86th Street and

Lexington Avenue Lexington Avenue, often colloquially abbreviated as "Lex", is an avenue on the East Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City that carries southbound one-way traffic from East 131st Street to Gramercy Park at East 21st Street. Along it ...

remains, but has been converted to apartments.

Philadelphia flagship

The Philadelphia flagship opened in 1893 when the Gimbel brothers bought the bankrupt Haines and Company dry goods store at Ninth and Market Streets. The store gradually expanded eastward to Eighth Street. In 1927 an extension south to Chestnut Street was completed and the store now comprised an entire city block. In 1977 Gimbels moved to a new store across Market Street and the original buildings were demolished except for the 1927 addition which was converted to professional office spaces.

Pittsburgh flagship

In Pittsburgh, Starrett & van Vleck designed the downtown flagship of the Gimbels Department Store, which was built in 1914 at 339 Sixth Avenue. After Gimbels ceased operations in the late 1980s, the building sat vacant for several years and was redeveloped in the 1990s for retail, home to, among other shops, the first Barnes & Noble to open in Pittsburgh. In 2002, another redevelopment changed the building to offices, and is now home to the

Heinz 57 Center The Heinz 57 Center is an office building in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at the corner of Sixth and Smithfield Avenues. The building has approximately , standing 13 stories () tall. It was built in 1914 for the Kaufmann & Baer Co. department store. F ...

. In 1997, it was added to the list of historic landmarks by the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation.

Relationship to Saks

Saks was founded by Horace Saks in New York City. In 1923, Gimbels purchased Saks, which became a subsidiary of Gimbel Brothers, Incorporated, a publicly traded company. Adam Long Gimbel, grandson of the founder of Gimbels,

Adam Gimbel Adam Gimbel (1817–1896) was the founder of the Gimbel Brothers Company. Biography Gimbel was born to a Jewish family in Bavaria in 1817 where he worked in the local baron's vineyard.BATUS Inc. British American Tobacco US, mostly known for its acronym BATUS, was the US subsidiary of multinational company British American Tobacco (BAT), the world's second largest cigarette manufacturer. BATUS served as the U.S. holding company for BAT. In ...

, acquired Gimbel Bros. and the Saks Fifth Avenue brand. BATUS closed Gimbels in 1986, and subsequently sold Saks to Investcorp S.A. in 1990.

In popular culture

Gimbels is featured prominently in '' Fitzwilly'', a 1967 Christmas classic heist film. Although the store had been closed for sixteen years, the New York City location was a primary setting for the 2003 film ''

Elf An elf () is a type of humanoid supernatural being in Germanic mythology and folklore. Elves appear especially in North Germanic mythology. They are subsequently mentioned in Snorri Sturluson's Icelandic Prose Edda. He distinguishes ...

''. Exterior shots were filmed at the Textile Building at 295 Fifth Avenue with visual effects added later, while interior shots were filmed in the 34th Street Macy's flagship store. In '' The Goldbergs'', Erica, played by

Hayley Orrantia Sarah Hayley Orrantia (born February 21, 1994) is an American actress, singer, and songwriter. She is best known for portraying Erica Goldberg on the ABC comedy series '' The Goldbergs''. She was a member of Lakoda Rayne, a country pop girl group ...

, was portrayed working as a cashier in Gimbels' Philadelphia store. The series, set in the 1980s, also depicts the closing of Gimbels. Gimbel Brothers is the department store Number Five breaks into to remove the mannequin Dolores in "Run Boy Run", the second episode of Netflix's ''

The Umbrella Academy ''The Umbrella Academy'' is an American comic book series created and written by Gerard Way and illustrated by Gabriel Bá. The first six-issue limited series, '' The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite,'' was released by Dark Horse Comics betwee ...

''. Gimbels was the main rival to Macy's in ''

'' (1947), and "Mr. Gimbel" even tries to show up Mr. Macy in thanking Kris Kringle for the new policy of referring customers to another store for Christmas shopping. The 2021 remake of '' West Side Story'' has the lead character Maria and her friends working at Gimbels as cleaning ladies.

Gallery

Image:Gimbels with Hearst antique NYWTS.jpg, Adam, Frederic, and Bernard Gimbel Image:Gimbels LOC4a18217v (cropped).jpg, Philadelphia store, c.1910 Image:Gimbels_Interior.jpg, Interior of the New York Gimbels flagship store, 1950, following remodeling by designer Raymond Loewy Image:3126-Greeley Square.JPG, The New York flagship location, now Manhattan Mall, is on the right Image:Manhattan Mall - from 86th floor of the Empire State Building (3810422070).jpg, The New York flagship location, now Manhattan Mall, seen from the Empire State Building Image:New York (6035571938).jpg, The New York flagship location in 2008 Image:Manhattan Mall renovation jeh.jpg, The

now occupies the former Gimbels location in Midtown Manhattan Image:West 32nd Street skybridge.jpg, Historic

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

triple-deck skybridge over 32nd St that once connected the New York Gimbels flagship store with

, also owned by the chain Image:Heinz57Center.jpg, The

, formerly the Gimbel Brothers Department Store, built in 1914, located at 339 Sixth Avenue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Image:Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (8483677416).jpg, The iconic clock outside the Gimbels flagship in Pittsburgh Image:Milwaukee Riverwalk.jpg, The former Milwaukee flagship, the large white building on the left Image:2010 Milwaukee River Iroquois.jpg, Riverboat passing the former Milwaukee flagship location

References

Bibliography

* Ferry, John William. ''A History of the Department Store''. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1960. * Harris, Leon. ''Merchant Princes''. New York: Harper & Row, 1979. * Lisicky, Michael. ''Gimbels Has It!''. Charleston: The History Press, 2011. * Mahoney, Tom, and Sloane, Leonard. ''The Great Merchants: America's Foremost Retail Institutions and the People Who Made Them Great''. New York: Harper & Row, 1974. {{Authority control 1887 establishments in Wisconsin 1987 disestablishments in New York (state) American companies established in 1887 British American Tobacco Defunct companies based in New York City Defunct department stores based in New York City Economy of Milwaukee Economy of New York City Retail companies disestablished in 1987 Retail companies established in 1887 American companies disestablished in 1987