Henry Siegel (March 17, 1852 – August 25, 1930) was an American businessman and co-founder of the

Siegel-Cooper Company The Siegel-Cooper Company was a department store that opened in Chicago in 1887 and expanded into New York City in 1896. At the time of its opening, the New York store was the largest in the world. First store in Chicago Siegel-Cooper began a ...

Biography

Siegel was born on March 17, 1852, to a Jewish family in Eubigheim, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. In 1867, he immigrated to the United States where he worked as a clerk by in Washington, D.C.,

Parkersburg, West Virginia Parkersburg is a city in and the county seat of Wood County, West Virginia, Wood County, West Virginia. Located at the confluence of the Ohio River, Ohio and Little Kanawha River, Little Kanawha rivers, it is the state's fourth-largest city and ...

, and Lawrenceburg, Pennsylvania. In 1876, he co-founded Siegel, Hartsfield & Company in Chicago. In 1887, he co-founded the

, also in Chicago, with Frank H. Cooper and Isaac Keim. In 1896, Siegel-Cooper opened a store in New York City in the Ladies' Mile Historic District. In 1902, Henry Siegel sold the company to one of his major stockholders, Captain

Joseph B. Greenhut Joseph Benedict Greenhut (February 28, 1843 – November 17, 1918) was an Austrian-born Jewish-American soldier and merchant. Early life Greenhut was born on February 28, 1843, in Horšovský Týn, Bischofteinitz, Austrian Empire, Austria, the s ...

and his son Benedict J. Greenhut, who merged the store with

B. Altman B. Altman and Company was a luxury department store and chain, founded in 1865 in New York City, New York (state), New York, by Benjamin Altman. Its flagship store, the B. Altman and Company Building at Fifth Avenue (Manhattan), Fifth Avenue ...

across the street in New York City creating a mega-store. In the same year, Siegel bought the Simpson Crawford Company (with one store in New York across the street from Siegel-Cooper) and the Schlesinger and Mayer Company (with one store in Chicago and one store in New York) and moved to New York City. In 1905, Siegel founded The Henry Siegel Company and opened a large store in Boston at 600 Washington Street; he also created a holding company, the Siegel Stores Corporation, as the parent for his retail investments in New York, Chicago, and Boston. In 1913, Siegel-founded banks which had over 15,000 depositors and were operated in conjunction with his stores collapsed. Siegel was convicted and served a short jail sentence for using false financial statements to obtain credit. After he served his sentence, he re-opened a haberdashery with one employee.

Personal life

Siegel married three times. His first wife Julia Rosenbaum died in December 1886; they had one daughter, Julia Florence Siegel Cavendish (1886–1963). In 1898, he married his second wife, Marie Vaughan Wilde; they divorced in 1918. Also in 1918, he married his third wife, Henrietta Struble, a 40-year-old telephone operator from Geneseo, New York. They divorced in 1927. His daughter married, Tyrell William Cavendish (1875–1912), son of Charles Tyrell Cavendish and grandson of Richard Cavendish of the British noble Cavendish family; she survived the sinking of the RMS ''Titanic'' while her husband perished. Henry Siegel died at Paul Kimball Hospital in Lakewood Township, New Jersey, on August 25, 1930.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Siegel, Henry 1852 births 1930 deaths American Jews American company founders American retail chief executives