The Siegel-Cooper Company was a

department store A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store made a dramatic app ...

that opened in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

in 1887 and expanded into

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

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 as a discount department store on State Street in the

Loop Loop or LOOP may refer to: Brands and enterprises * Loop (mobile), a Bulgarian virtual network operator and co-founder of Loop Live * Loop, clothing, a company founded by Carlos Vasquez in the 1990s and worn by Digable Planets * Loop Mobile, an ...

. It was founded by Henry Siegel, Frank H. Cooper and Isaac Keim in 1887. Four years later, the store moved into the eight-story

Second Leiter Building The Second Leiter Building, also known as the Leiter II Building, the Sears Building, One Congress Center, and Robert Morris Center, is located at the southeast corner of South State Street and East Ida B. Wells Drive in Chicago, Illinois. The b ...

at State and Van Buren Street, designed by

William Le Baron Jenney William Le Baron Jenney (September 25, 1832 – June 14, 1907) was an American architect and engineer who is known for building the first skyscraper in 1884. In 1998, Jenney was ranked number 89 in the book ''1,000 Years, 1,000 People: Ran ...

, where it stayed until 1930, after a 1914-15 reorganization into Associated Dry Goods Corp., but keeping the Siegel-Cooper name in Chicago. The building was then occupied from 1931 to 1986 by

Sears, Roebuck & Company Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began a ...

. It continues in use, most recently in the 21st century as a

college campus A campus is traditionally the land on which a college or university and related institutional buildings are situated. Usually a college campus includes libraries, lecture halls, residence halls, student centers or dining halls, and park-like se ...

Second store in New York City

In September 1896,Abelson, Elaine S. "Siegel-Cooper" in , p.1182 the company opened a store in New York City, a huge emporium in the Ladies' Mile Shopping District, joining the other major department stores in the neighborhood. Their steel-framed building, the first department store in New York to be so constructed, was the largest store in the world at the time, and was designed in

Beaux-Arts style Beaux-Arts architecture ( , ) was the academic architectural style taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, particularly from the 1830s to the end of the 19th century. It drew upon the principles of French neoclassicism, but also incorporat ...

by DeLemos & Cordes, who would go on to design the R. H. Macy's store in

Herald Square Herald Square is a major commercial intersection in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, formed by the intersection of Broadway, Sixth Avenue (officially Avenue of the Americas), and 34th Street. Named for the now-defunct ''New ...

, which then took the title of largest. The six-story Siegel-Cooper store was located at 616-632

Sixth Avenue Sixth Avenue – also known as Avenue of the Americas, although this name is seldom used by New Yorkers, p.24 – is a major thoroughfare in New York City's borough of Manhattan, on which traffic runs northbound, or "uptown". It is commercial ...

between West 18th and 19th Streets, and was built between 1895 and 1897, then expanded in 1899., pp.90-92 The steel-framed construction of the "Big Store", as it was called at the time, enabled the building to have large interior spaces with uninterrupted selling floors, and allowed for skylit courts. Siegel-Cooper took full advantage of the novelty – to New York City – of steel-framing by advertising the building as "the only and absolutely fire-proof and perfectly safe store in New York City." The store offered a wide variety of dry goods in its 18 acres (7 ha.), as well as other amenities such as a grocery department, barber shop, theatre, telegraph office, art gallery, photo studio, bank, dental office, a 350-person restaurant, and a conservatory which sold live plants. The main floor featured a copy of

Daniel Chester French Daniel Chester French (April 20, 1850 – October 7, 1931) was an American sculptor of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, best known for his 1874 sculpture ''The Minute Man'' in Concord, Massachusetts, and his 1920 monume ...

's statue '' The Republic'' inside a marble-enclosed fountain. This was a popular meeting place, giving rise to the phrase "Meet me at the fountain," which the store used as a slogan, along with "A City in Itself" and "Everything Under the Sun". At its peak, the store employed over 3,000 people, mostly girls and women, and offered its employees an infirmary, a parlor and a gymnasium. The company also published a newspaper for its workers, called ''Thought and Work''.

Third store in Boston

In 1905, The Henry Siegel Company opened a large store in Boston, at 600 Washington Street. The Boston store was converted into an office building and a movie theater in 1915. The light court on Washington Street was infilled in the 1970s, and the theater closed in the 1990s. The building was further modified to create a new entrance to the

MBTA Orange Line The Orange Line is a rapid transit line operated by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) as part of the MBTA subway system. The line runs south on the surface from Oak Grove station in Malden, Massachusetts through Malden and Me ...

Chinatown station Chinatown Station may refer to transit stations in: ;United States * Chinatown station (MBTA), a subway station in Boston, Massachusetts * Cermak–Chinatown station, an "L" station in Chicago, Illinois * Chinatown station (HART), a planned ligh ...

in 2004. The building is now home to

Commonwealth of Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...

offices and small retailers. The fate of the disused theater is undecided.

Decline, closing and renewal

In 1902, Henry Siegel sold the company to one of his major stockholders, Captain Joseph B. Greenhut 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 which was ultimately unsuccessful. In 1913–14 J.P. Morgan was involved in combining the company with other retailers as the

Associated Dry Goods Corp. Associated Dry Goods Corporation (ADG) was a chain of department stores that merged with May Department Stores in 1986. It was founded in 1916 as an association of independent stores called American Dry Goods, based in New York City. History T ...

Siegel-Cooper declared bankruptcy in 1915, and the New York store closed in 1917, becoming a military hospital during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, pp.191-192 and then a warehouse. The Chicago store closed around 1930, and that building was taken over by

Sears, Roebuck Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began a ...

as their flagship store in 1931. In the 21st century, it is the Chicago campus of

Robert Morris University Illinois Robert Morris University Illinois, formerly Robert Morris College, was a private university with its main campus in Chicago, Illinois. It was founded in 1965 but its oldest ancestor was the Moser School founded in 1913. It changed its name to ...

. After decades of miscellaneous use as a warehouse, the NBC Television scene shop and the location "The Door", a social services center, the New York building become one of the first of the great dry-goods emporia in the Ladies' Mile to be renovated and re-opened for retail use. Calling itself "The Anchor of the Avenue", the building's retail tenants as of August, 2021 include:

Bed, Bath & Beyond Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. is an American chain of domestic merchandise retail stores. The chain operates many stores in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. Bed Bath & Beyond was founded in 1971. It is counted among the Fortune 5 ...

T.J. Maxx TJ Maxx (stylized as T•J•maxx) is an American department store chain, selling at prices generally lower than other major similar stores. It has more than 1,000 stores in the United States, making it one of the largest clothing retailers in ...

and

Marshall's Marshalls is an American chain of off-price department stores owned by TJX Companies. Marshalls has over 1,000 American stores, including larger stores named Marshalls Mega Store, covering 42 states and Puerto Rico, and 61 stores in Canada. Mar ...

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