|
Inside the Macy’s in Philadelphia, underneath one of the largest pipe organs in the world, which just a few months ago was blasting “Deck the Halls” for a holiday light show, stands a small yellow sign announcing the close-out sale of this iconic department store.
It’s one of hundreds of signs posted around the vast sales floor, giving the Renaissance-inspired shopping palace the feeling of a much less glamorous retailer, closer to a discount chain than the ritzy department stores of old.
Macy’s last month announced plans to close the store in March, ending more than a century of department stores continuously occupying the ground floor of the Wanamaker Building. The 12-story, granite-walled structure was the brainchild of retail pioneer John Wanamaker, who opened the first department store in the US at the location in 1911. Eventually, it would become one of several stores along Market Street known as the “Big Six,” of which Macy’s is the last remaining inheritor.
“It was just nice,” Brenda Hill, 79, said about the old Wanamaker’s, which closed in 1995. “Mr. Wanamaker had class. Everything he did, even the ladies’ bathrooms, you used to go in and feel like you were in another world.”
Madeleine Rose, 29, is too young to remember Wanamaker’s, but she feels similarly about Macy’s. “I like coming here because it’s beautiful,” she said. “I love the architecture, and I like window shopping.”
Luckily for them, certain of the store’s grander elements are likely to remain. The interior is protected under the city’s historical commission, and commercial property owner TF Cornerstone, which purchased the first three stories in 2019, has confirmed that the organ will stay.
As for what other changes might be coming to the building, that’s still an open question.
Keep reading here.—AV
|
