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Marshall Field's

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Image:Marshall Field and Company.jpg

This article is about a department store chain. For the White House intruder, see Marshall Fields (White House intruder).

Marshall Field's is a department store chain headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota with its flagship store on State Street in Chicago. Since August 30, 2005, it has been a division of Federated Department Stores. Prior that that, it was a division of May Department Stores. May had acquired Marshall Field's from Target Corporation on July 30, 2004. Once the Federated takeover of May Company is complete in 2006, the Marshall Field's name will be converted in favor of the Macy's nameplate.

Contents

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Early history

Image:Marshall field interior.jpg The founder, Marshall Field, first obtained employment at a dry goods store in Chicago in 1852. Field rose to become a partner in the company. In 1865, Field with partner, Levi Leiter moved to an old store of Potter Palmer's on Lake Street. In 1868, the two partners joined Potter Palmer in his new store on State Street and ran the store known as Field, Palmer, and Leiter. Shortly thereafter, Palmer retired from retailing and the store became known as Field & Leiter. The store burned to the ground during the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, and under Field's leadership a temporary store was re-opened within weeks. In 1879 a new store was built that would grow to cover an entire city block on State Street. In 1881 Field bought out his remaining business partner and changed the store's name to Marshall Field and Company. (Leiter opened his own department store further south along State Street.) The architect of the store, Daniel Burnham (of "make no small plans" fame) was the planner of the Beaux-Arts rebuilding of Chicago and a leading figure in the planning of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and Field's store first reached national prominence at this time. In 1907 a new 12-story building replaced the older store, and in 1914 another new 20-story Store for Men was built across Washington Street. It was the largest department store in the world. The Tiffany Ceiling is the first ceiling ever built in favrile iridescent glass. With its restaurants and separate men's and women's lounges, this store became an important social destination. The company built the Merchandise Mart in 1930, which still claims to be the largest commercial building in the world.

Marshall Field's was the first American department store to open a buying office in Europe, which was located in Manchester, England. It was also the first department store to open a sit-down restaurant and the first to offer a bridal registry. The Great Clock at the corner of State and Washington streets is a common symbol of the company and the area.

Image:Marshall Field Clock.jpg

The store's legendary iconography parallels the company's close relationship to Midwestern identity. The green shopping bags adorned with the company's signature script and the famous clock were the source of controversy following the chain's purchase by the (then) Dayton-Hudson Corporation in 1990 - new bags in (cheaper) brown paper received a storm of protest from the store's notoriously loyal following, leading the parent company to reinstate the green bags in short order. Every year at Christmas Marshall Field's downtown store windows are filled with animated displays as part of the downtown shopping district display.

The State Street flagship was renovated in 2003 to great fanfare, with the store opening 10% of its floor space to outside vendors in a manner similar to Selfridge's in London, a store founded by a former Field's executive whose building was based on the architecture of the Marshall Field's store. It is the second largest department store in the United States. Only Macy's in New York is larger.

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Expansion to 1990

In the 1910s and 1920s Marshall Field & Company built branches in three suburban downtowns: Evanston, Oak Park and Lake Forest (at Market Square). Then the Great Depression and World War II halted expansion until the postwar growth of suburban shopping malls: Park Forest Plaza opened in 1950, Old Orchard Shopping Center in Skokie in 1956, Mayfair Mall in suburban Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1959, Oakbrook Center in Oak Brook, Illinois in 1962, and River Oaks Center in Calumet City, Illinois in 1966. The 1970s saw stores added in Woodfield Center in Schaumburg, Hawthorn Center in Vernon Hills, CherryVale Mall in Rockford, Fox Valley Center in Aurora, Water Tower Place in Chicago, Orland Square in Orland Park and Louis Joliet Mall in Joliet.

The early 1980s was a slower growth period for Chicago area stores, with just two locations added, one in October 1980 at Spring Hill Mall in West Dundee and in 1981 at Stratford Square Mall in Bloomingdale. But the 1980s did see further expansion into Texas with stores opened at The Galleria in Houston (actually opened in 1979; the former facility is the current home of Saks Fifth Avenue), the Dallas Galleria in 1982, Town & Country Mall in Houston in 1983, and North Star Mall in San Antonio in 1986, and the acquisition of five former Gimbels locations in Wisconsin: downtown Milwaukee, Northridge Mall and Southridge Mall in suburban Milwaukee, Hilldale Shopping Center in Madison and in downtown Appleton.

The 1990s saw stores opened at Columbus City Center in Ohio and The Mall at Tuttle Crossing in suburban Dublin, Ohio and the newest Chicagoland store in Northbrook Court. The Evanston and Oak Park stores were closed in 1986, the Northridge and Southridge stores were sold after less than three years of operation in 1989, the Appleton store was closed in 1991, the Park Forest store in 1996, and the downtown Milwaukee store (incorporated into The Grand Avenue shopping Center) was closed in 1997. The 4 Texas stores were sold in 1997 and the Columbus, Ohio stores in 2003.

In 1929, Marshall Field & Co. purchased Frederick & Nelson, a Seattle-based retailer, which brought along the famous Frangos chocolate brand. Along with Frederick's, Field's eventually also owned The Crescent in Spokane, Washington and Halle Brothers in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1980 it acquired J.B. Ivey Co., a department store chain with roots in Charlotte, North Carolina and Jacksonville, Florida. In the early 1980s Field's began to open stores in the Texas market but this initiative faltered with the collapse of oil prices and a stalling Texas economy. In 1981, soon after acquiring The Union Co. in Columbus, Ohio and merging it into Halle's, it sold the enlarged Halle Brothers unit to the Schottenstein family of Columbus, Ohio, which shuttered the operations the following year.

In 1982 ownership of Field's and it subsidiaries passed to BATUS Retail Group, the American retailing arm of B.A.T. British-American Tobacco. BATUS held a number of well-known stores, among them Gimbels, Saks Fifth Avenue and Kohls, but badly hurt in the volatile economy of the 1980s, retrenched its retail operations in 1986, selling Field's former subsidaries Frederick & Nelson and The Crescent to a Washington state investor group which almost immediately ran into difficulties leading to the extinction of that chain by 1992 (the former flagship was renovated and reopened by Nordstrom as a replacement for their own Seattle parent store in 1998). When BATUS Retail closed its mid-range Gimbels chain in 1986, five former Gimbels stores in Wisconsin were purchased by corporate sibling Marshall Field's but by 1989 Field's had sold the former Gimbels Northridge and Southridge locations in Milwaukee to H.C. Prange Co. of Sheyboygan after poor performance under the higher-end Field's division. In 1991 they closed the former Gimbels in downtown Appleton, Wisconsin when its then sister division Dayton's opened a mall-based store there. Finally in 1997 Field's shuttered the former Gimbels flagship in Milwaukee after negotiations to rehabilitate it collapsed. Only the former Gimbels store at Hilldale Shopping Center in Madison, Wisconsin remains from the 1986 Gimbels acquisition.

BATUS initially retained Saks Fifth Avenue, Marshall Field's and Ivey's, but subsequently sold all of its remaining U.S. retail endeavours in 1990 with Saks being acquired by Bahrain-based Investcorp, Ivey's being sold to and absorbed into Dillard Department Stores and Marshall Field's being sold to Dayton Hudson Corporation

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Post-1990 history

In 1990 Marshall Field's was purchased by the Dayton Hudson Corporation (later renamed Target Corporation) which merged its operations with that of its own Dayton's stores based in Minneapolis and the Hudson's stores in Michigan as the Dayton Hudson Department Stores Co., with each retaining their names in their respective markets, but headquartered in Minneapolis. In 1997 Marshall Field's sold its 4 Texas locations to Saks Fifth Avenue and Macy's (with at least one — the Galleria Dallas location — eventually reselling to Nordstrom). In 2001 Dayton's and Hudson's were renamed to Marshall Field's, an event that was received with mixed emotion in Dayton's hometown of Minneapolis and Hudson's hometown of Detroit. In 2003 Marshall Field's sold its 2 Columbus, Ohio locations to May Department Stores Company, which reopened them under its Kaufmann's division. And finally in 2004 the combined stores were sold off by Target to the May Department Stores Company along with nine shuttered Minneapolis-area stores from another unit of Target, Mervyn's. The then 62 Marshall Fields stores went for US$3.25 billion, a price that financial analysts considered very full. Subsequently, in 2005, May was purchased by Federated Department Stores.

In 2004 prior to its acquisition by May Department Stores Co., Marshall Field's had about 25,000 employees in 62 stores. It operated in the states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. May Company subsequently shuttered stores at Kirkwood Mall in Bismarck, North Dakota and Glenbrook Square in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

The end of the brand was apparently heralded on September 20, 2005 when Federated Department Stores announced it would retire the name Marshall Field's by the fall of 2006 and rebrand all Marshall Field's stores as Macy's. The rebranding decision was greeted with largely negative reactions, particularly in the Midwest. Newspaper articles and editorials reported concerns of many customers that particular traditions, services, and products unique to a store or region would be lost. Thousands signed an online petition[1] to retain the old identity.

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Current Locations

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Illinois

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Indiana

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Michigan

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Minnesota

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North Dakota

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Ohio

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South Dakota

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Wisconsin

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External links

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References

Pridmore, Jay. Marshall Field's, a building from the Chicago Architecture Foundation. 2002

Wendt, Lloyd. Give the Lady what she Wants... the story of Marshall Field & Company, 1952.

Tebbel, John. The Marshall Fields, A study in wealth. 1948.

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