The Department Store That Went Holiday Shopping

On Flags, Flagships, and Fa La Las.

It is a truth so obvious that it's almost invisible in New York that one brand more than almost all others just really has its (Santa) boot on the neck of a good chunk of major holidays. 

It's easy to take for granted that the North star of local festivities is a red logo, but it's an interesting path that got us to our current parade route. And it starts in Nantucket.¹

Rowland Hussey Macy was born to a sizable Quaker family in Nantucket in 1822. At fifteen, he set out to make his way in the world and joined the crew of a whaling ship out of Nantucket called The Emily Morgan. It didn't really stick² but he did end up with a souvenir: a tattoo of a red star reportedly on his hand, though possibly on his right forearm³ which is pretty standard nautical iconography but worth underscoring because it's going to come back. Back on land, he tried his (probably tattooed) hand as an apprentice in a printing shop in Boston⁴  With financial support from one of his older brothers, he opened his first dry goods store in 1843. It only lasted a year, but as he got married in 1844, the news wasn't all bad. In 1850, he and another of his brothers tried to plant their flag in the Gold Rush and opened a second attempt at a dry goods store in Marysville, California, following the reasonable idea that the surest way to make money was to sell shovels to prospectors. It didn't pan out⁵ and he went back east to Massachusetts and started a third dry goods store in Haverhill, selling to workers at the local mill. This one is notable as it was the first R.H. Macy Dry Goods, and while this store didn't last either, he did hit on a name that stuck.⁶ So Macy took the name and his family and headed down to New York where in 1858 he sets up R.H. Macy Dry goods on 14th street just east of 6th. It was a respectable enough part of town-- a bit north of most of the other shops, though the explosive growth of the city during the nineteenth century meant that everyone else would catch up to where he was set up.

The original New York R.H. Macy Dry Goods at 56 West 14th Street. A few doors down on the corner is the Titanic exhibit which is going to feel grimly ironic in a few paragraphs.

It's worth saying here that Macy's repeated failing stores and fresh attempts isn't really a question of a white man failing up. He had the rare and important skill of self-assessment, examining what worked and what didn't and continually adjusting and applying his experience forward. When he set up shop on 14th street, he had the advantage of extensive experience but this time around he would also have Margaret Swain Getchell. You know the old line about how behind every great man is a great woman? Welp, here she is, friend.

Margaret Getchell was, like Macy, Nantucket born and bred. She was born in 1841, went to school and got a job teaching in Virginia which abruptly ended when the Civil War started.⁷  She had other gigs in Massachusetts and then New York but during the Civil War, she lost vision in one eye in an accident⁸ and started looking for a new vocation. She applied for a position as a cashier at R.H. Macy Dry Goods, with her background teaching math an asset. She rose through the ranks pretty quickly, first training all the other "cash girls," then becoming a bookkeeper and by 1866, Macy made her Superintendent. That's not really a position we think of in business, but effectively it made her one of if not the first woman executives hired in retail. While history hasn't necessarily been interested in giving her credit for the business ideas she brought to the table,⁹ Macy himself was. She was also, it should be said, a distant cousin of Macy¹⁰ although it's not known if anyone was aware of that when she was first hired. I waited to say that because if I said right off the bat "oh hey, Macy had a nice lady cousin who was good at math" you would probably assume nepotism-hire from the jump (not unreasonably!) and I don't think that would do either of them justice. Anyway, while we're talking family, let's touch on Macy's son. While Margaret is rising through the ranks, Rowland Junior is serving in them. While in the Union army, however, he ended up facing an apparently booze related court martial. He got a reprieve courtesy of a captain named Abiel LaForge.¹¹ Roly¹² served with him in the 106th New York and ended up bringing him home after the war was over. R.H. Macy, by whatever combination of gratitude, friendship, and just liking the cut of his jib, gave him a job as a buyer and maybe helped encourage his getting to know Margaret.¹³ They were married and LaForge was on his way to a junior partnership. When he became half of the "& Co" in the newly rechristened R.H. Macy & Co,¹⁴ Margaret continued working though she no longer received any compensation. 

Phone rings, door chimes, in comes Co.

After all, he was a partner now and why would a married woman need her own money. It's also how so many histories of Macy's mention Abiel LaForge becoming a partner and reduce Margaret Getchell to being an unnamed cousin and wife. So let's get back to business and talk about why that makes me extravagantly cranky. Many of the product suggestions Getchell LaForge made are now departments of Macy's we take for granted: she thought they should sell toys, books, picnic supplies, fresh flowers, soaps, and perfumes… everything but (in her words) “coffins.”¹⁵ She pushed for decorated windows to help attract customers.

Hi, Barbie!

When soda fountains became a popular fad in Europe, she bought the idea to Macy to build one on their ground floor, but in the center, with the path to it flanked by counters that customers would have to pass. Her guiding motto was “Be everywhere, do everything, and never forget to astonish the customer.” These are the kinds of ideas that helped Macy's pull down a million dollars in sales a year¹⁶ and also created a retail culture that sounds pretty familiar to anyone who's fought their way past perfume samples to find a sale on overcoats.¹⁷ It was Macy who apparently built on this strategy and brought in a Santa during the run up to Christmas. There's one other material suggestion Getchell LaForge made: by most accounts, she was the person who suggested to Macy that they put the red star logo not only on letterhead and architectural embellishments but price tags as well, forging an iconic visual brand out of the tattoo fifteen-year old Rowland had gotten in his brief tenure as a sailor.¹⁸

I told you that tattoo would come back! This is endlessly funny to me for reasons I can't explain.

The three-way-plus-Margaret LaForge partnership would not end up lasting very long. Macy died of Bright's disease in 1877 while in Paris. His body was brought back to New York and he was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery.

The Macy monument at Woodlawn.

LaForge died the following year, and Margaret two years after that. They're also buried in Woodlawn, not too far from Dorothy Parker's last final resting place.

Not for Geordi La Forge.

M(argaret) S(wain Getchell) LaForge’s headstone at Woodlawn.

By 1887, Macy's¹⁹ would have new stakeholders who took full control in 1895: two of the Straus brothers, Nathan and Isidor. Lazarus Straus was a German Jew from Bavaria who emigrated to Talbotton, Georgia via Philadelphia in 1852, setting up shop²⁰ and preparing the way for his family to follow in 1854. The store made enough money that the family owned a slave²¹ though they were against secession and inclined towards abolition.²² When the war broke out and the obvious supply issues drove prices up, a grand jury decided that the obvious cause was Jews²³ and their treasonous usury, so the Strauses left Talbotton and when the war ended moved up to New York in 1865. He started L. Straus & Sons with two of his sons, Nathan and Isidor.²⁴ They sold china and tableware in a store in Lower Manhattan before getting a license to sell in the basement of Macy's and serving as a kind of de facto yet independent china department. By the 1880s, both businesses were looking towards a future without the first generation and Isidor and Nathan Straus took on a partial stake in Macy’s in 1887 and full ownership in 1895.

The Straus brothers oversaw a sizeable expansion of Macy’s, with a location on 18^th and Broadway closer to Ladies Mile and building another on 13^th and 6^th.²⁵ In 1902, Macy’s made the big move to Herald Square. This was far enough north to be a bit of a commute for some customers,²⁶ so Macy’s had a wagon that would bring customers up from Lower Manhattan.²⁷ You know how liquid and sometimes cats will expand to fill any container? That’s kind of how Macy’s grew between 34^th and 35^th and Broadway and 7^th. Their expansion hit a roadblock on the corner of 34^th and Broadway, when 1313 Broadway was bought possibly by an ally of a competitor who didn’t want to relinquish the title of worlds largest store. It sold in 1911 for a million dollars, but Macy’s negotiated rights to have a billboard above it.

The Million Dollar Corner, baby.

In 1912, owner Isidor Straus and his wife Ida were lost on the Titanic. If you’re thinking of the movie, they’re the older couple shown waiting for the rising waters holding each other in their stateroom. Most survivors’ accounts put them on the deck, with both being offered a place in a lifeboat but Isidor refusing to take the spot of someone with their whole life ahead of them and Ida refusing to go without him. Isidor Straus was highly thought of enough as a boss that the Macy’s employees had a memorial plaque put up at the original Herald Square entrance, now directly across the Target near the MAC counter.

There is also a Straus cenotaph at Woodlawn Cemetery, so if you believe in ghosts, you need to accept the possibility of a ghost partners meeting.

It was onwards and upwards (and outwards) for Macy’s. In September of 1924, with Jesse Straus²⁸ as president, the store expanded with a nineteen-story annex west on 34^th. This brought the number of employees up to 7,500 (with planned provisions for more) with 12 new acres of selling floor and 148 departments, including a grocery and a pharmacy.  I guess you could say this kind of sustained growth would give a person a lot to be… thankful for.²⁹ An expansion this size needs a grand announcement and a new 150-foot-long counter needs a lot of customers to fill it, so November seems like the perfect time for a parade.

Not pictured, the 1924 parade.

And so Thanksgiving of 1924 saw hundreds of Macy’s employees, several floats inspired by kid lit, a bunch of live animals on loan from Central Park Zoo and a be-throned Santa march from 145^th and Convent down to Macy’s, where Santa was crowned “King of Kiddies”. The real coronation was that of Macy’s flagship, largest store in the world, name emblazoned in lights from the roof shining for miles, host to Santa just as R.H. Macy suggested, with windows decorated to the theme “The Fairy Frolics of Wondertown," bringing Margaret Getchell LaForge’s vision to tinkling life. The press didn’t pay it too much mind, but that first parade drew an estimated quarter million New Yorkers, which is enough to make it a tradition.³⁰ If you’re in the business of getting people into your store, it does help to have Santa leading the way. An added bonus was that the Gimbels department store, a rival of Macy’s founded by another set of Bavarian Jewish immigrant brothers in the Midwest, had started a Thanksgiving parade in Philadelphia in 1920.

Nothing says flex like flexing on a rival.

The first balloon to join the parade was Felix the Cat, with Mickey Mouse following in 1934. Snoopy would join in 1968.

That’s the New-York Historical Society behind 2023’s Snoopy balloon.

The balloons used to be set free after the parade and if you recovered one, you got a gift certificate from Macy’s, which is a very charming visual but not a great idea for a host of liability and environmental reasons, so now they get disassembled on the ground. There were road blocks along the metaphorical parade route: the parade wasn’t held several years during World War II as the rubber and helium were needed elsewhere and blustery November winds don’t always pair well with gigantic balloons. Periodically the balloons are blown off course or deflate prematurely which seems hilarious until it hits a street lamp and the debris causes injury³¹ or a spectator watches as a mammoth cartoon character bear down on them, which has to be terrifying with a side of pique at what you know is going to be an obituary gets mocked.³²

This picture is just here because I enjoy The Mandalorian and cute puppets with good ears.

The parades were enough of an event that they were broadcast on the radio starting in 1932 and local television in 1946. It became such a defining event of the season that it’s not uncommon to hear New Yorkers elide the name into the Macy’s Day Parade.³³ The television broadcast went national in 1948, but Macy’s would get another boost and another holiday to claim in 1947.

Part of the introduction to Macy’s Santaland are animatronic reenactments of scenes from Miracle on 34th Street. Some of the robots are more unsettlingly proportioned than others.

May of 1947 saw the release of Miracle on 34^th Street.³⁴ Not to put too fine a point on it, but the titular 34^th Street is Macy’s address. The parade scene filmed live at the 1946 parade, with Edmund Gwenn on the float as that year’s Santa. The film included Macy’s rivalry with Gimbels but also had the owner named R.H. Macy, which is a bit odd since he died seventy years prior and the chairman of the board at this point was Jack I. Straus,³⁵ who was maybe a little too Jewish for a secondary role in a Christmas movie.³⁶ Quibbles aside, pop culture seemed to agree: Santa hangs out at Macy’s.

This guy may or may not be the real Santa. He also may or may not have been the only Santa working at Santaland that day.

1958 marked the 100 year anniversary of Macy’s founding, and the store celebrated in style: a massive firework display on July 1^st over the Hudson River. The store was honored by Robert Wagner³⁷ and an estimated million spectators came out to see the show. The festivities included a whale of lights as nod to Macy’s time on The Emily Morgan and a flashing “Spirit of ‘76” since this was days away from the 4^th. All accounts can basically be boiled down the description “rollicking.” A reporter from the Times asked if Gimbels had been invited – they hadn’t but Jack Straus said maybe they should have.³⁸ The show made such an impression that in 1976, the city would ask Macy’s to put on a different centennial fireworks display.

Not pictured: 1976. Barely pictured: the “Macy’s” displayed in lights on the barge deploying the fireworks.

I will admit, I had wondered if there was something nefarious in a private business undertaking such public patriotic celebration³⁹ but I couldn’t find any. Certainly, the context itself is a clue: the fireworks we’re looking at were for the 200^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence but if we pull back just a little, we can see the October 30^th, 1975 headline in the Daily News, “Ford to City: Drop Dead.”⁴⁰ Senator Jacob Javits (R-The Convention Center) would pull him back from that opinion but the simple fact was New York was broke and didn’t have a lot extra fireworks money⁴¹ in its pocket.⁴²

Architecture Critic Paul Goldberger said in 1866, “it is the ambition of the New Yorker to live upon the Fifth Avenue, to take his airings in the Park, and to sleep with his fathers in Green-wood" but I think you can add, it’s also good to have a friend on the Upper West Side to watch the Macy’s parade from comfortably inside and a friend in Greenpoint to watch the fireworks.

Macy’s teamed up with Disney in 1976 but went solo for future fireworks and has been the sponsor of the city’s most shining patriotism ever since.⁴³ Certainly one advantage of Macy’s running the show is preventing and an all-out turf war between east and west side politicians over which river will host the display.

Macy’s itself has been acquired and reacquired since the fireworks began and faced all the downturns one can come to expect from retail stores in an increasingly digital shopping world.⁴⁴ Which I guess means other holidays are safe from being added as a feather in a cap sold in Women’s Accessories and Times Square won’t have to fight to hold onto New Year’s Eve.⁴⁵ It is still striking to take in how many of our holiday traditions are tied to a brick and mortar retail store and anchored in the imaginations of distant cousins from Nantucket.

Happy Macy’s Day, dear reader, and to all a good night.

1. And if you don't think I immediately stopped the research I was doing to write a There Once Was a Man From Nantucket limerick then, hi. I'm Deborah. It's really nice to meet you. Here’s the limerick I wrote: There once was a man from Nantucket/Who saw setbacks and never did chuck it/His tattoo was a star/And his business went far/And to Gimbels his heirs all said suck it.

2. Which is fair! Anyone who's read Moby Dick can attest to that being A Lot as lives go.

3. Definitely not a tramp stamp, according to the historical record, but I can’t and won’t stop you from writing fanfic.

4. In New York, we call this career trajectory the Full Melville. Well, we don't, but wouldn't it be better if we did?

5. Eh? Eh? Gold Rush pun!

6. Let's pause for just a moment to clarify what dry goods are, because it's not a store type one really sees anymore and I've thrown it around a bit already. At the risk of stating the obvious, it's stuff that isn't liquid. It can run the gamut from textiles and fabrics to pre-made clothing, grocery things you could reasonably transport in a sack (so - coffee, flour, sugar, tobacco, which counted because we're basically in Coca Cola Has Actual Cocaine In It times) and some toiletries.

7. Not really the time or place for an abolitionist Yankee to be running around.

8. Not due to the Civil War: that's just the time frame

9. Hey, if wanted to be given her due, she shouldn't have been born a woman, amirite?

10. I guess Nantucket is a pretty small island.

11. That makes him second favorite Captain LaForge: shout out to Geordi La Forge's mom Silva La Forge, Captain of the Federation ship the USS Hera.

12. That's what LaForge called him in his letters home to his sister and to be real, I'm not typing out Rowland Junior any more than I have to.

13. It's certainly one way of keeping a family business in the family.

14. The other partner was a nephew named Robert Valentine.

15. I guess that works when you might actually sell kitchen sinks.

16. Old timey dollars. It was quite successful, is what I'm saying.

17. That's a universal experience and not just a bad choice I made once because I forgot it was Christmas Eve, right? Whatever. It was a great coat and 70% off. Thanks, Margaret!

18. The other thing he apparently brought back with him was a habit of swearing like a sailor, which seems fair, since he was.

19. The store but also the family that was still in control of it.

20. Literally: he opened a general store after selling from a pushcart.

21. Which I'm not going to lie knocked me back. Lazarus Straus is consistently noted as being devout in his faith but seems to have wildly missed the message of Passover. You want locusts and rivers of blood? Because this is how you get locusts and rivers of blood.

22. Or just knew to say that when the family moved to New York after the war, because abolition, like charity, begins at home.

23. Or "Jew," as the Strauses seem to have been to the totality of the Jewish Population

24. The third son was Oscar, who went into politics and would become the first Jewish member of the cabinet as Theodore Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor and Commerce. Good job, Oscar! We're not really going to talk about him anymore though. Bye, Oscar!

25. It’s part of the New School now but you saw their custom logo masonry above.

26. There were elevated trains but the subway wouldn’t begin operations for another two years.

27. Anyone who’s taken the Ikea bus out to Jersey or its ferry to Red Hook can get behind this idea.

28. Isidor and Ida’s son.

29. I absolutely just put on figurative sunglasses at that one.

30. I’m sorry to say the casualty of this success was Ragamuffin Day, which had begun after Lincoln federalized Thanksgiving to promote national unity and make sure our founding myth was rooted in Union Massachusetts rather than Virginia, confederate capital. Ragamuffin Day involved children going to door to door asking for treats and presents, and got pushed out by Thanksgiving Day Parades and later replaced in spirit by Halloween trick-or-treating, though maybe it’s time to admit that trick-or-treating could be improved with the promise of stuffing.

31. In 1997, a Cat in the Hat balloon went astray and the resulting debris left a woman in a coma for a month, which I think is exactly the energy that I always found too stressful about that character.

32. I speak from experience from that time there was almost a stampede leaving an opening night screening of Barbie and I thought I’d be trampled outside a Dave and Buster’s in Times Square.

33. I would say that’s the kind of branding that money can’t buy, but the parade can cost 13 million dollars at this point.

34. The novella and the film came out the same year.

35. Isidor Straus’ grandson, if you like family trees.

36. It does leave space for a horror satire remake with a zombie Rowland Macy and frankly, I still think it's weirder that the movie declared that Santa lived in Great Neck.

37. The mayor and son of the senator, not the one connected to Natalie “Susan Walker” Wood’s death.

38. After all, it’s not for Macy’s to hold a grudge: it’s not like anyone slips and calls Thanksgiving “Gimbels Day.”

39. I mean, beyond just capitalism.

40. This holds a prime spot on my Things That Happened Before I Was Born That I’m Still Holding a Grudge About, alongside the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn and anything George McClellan said or did. But seriously – you’re gonna pardon Ford and hang New York out to dry? Get out of here!

41. Or any other kind of money, to be honest.

42. Proof that fashion is cyclical is that an anonymous donor is covering the costs of continuing New York’s composting program because our budget is dedicated to robot cops that look like yassified daleks.

43. Except for 1986 which was not sponsored by Macy’s and focused instead on the anniversary of the arrival of the Statue of Liberty.

44. Though it did fight back against Amazon leasing the billboard over its missing corner on 34^th street.

45. May god have mercy on its soul.