Gimbels Has It! (13 page)

The North Hills store was the first branch location for the Pittsburgh division.
Courtesy of the Milwaukee County Historical Society
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Pittsburgh’s Eastland branch opened in 1963.
Courtesy of the Milwaukee County Historical Society
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This company-wide advertisement from 1949 celebrated the locations of all full-service Gimbels and Saks & Co. stores.
Collection of the author
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An early view of the popular Mayfair location in the Milwaukee area.
Courtesy of the Milwaukee County Historical Society
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The Milwaukee division continued a strong period of growth into the 1960s. On September 19, 1958, Gimbels Mayfair opened its doors in suburban Wauwatosa. Miss Wisconsin, Miss Wauwatosa and Miss Milwaukee were there to greet the shoppers. Chairman Bernard Gimbel said that the new Mayfair store sparkled “like a new black diamond.”
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The company told shoppers to “come find fine quality merchandise at Gimbels famous right prices that offer you the greatest values possible, day in, day out.” Gimbels was the first tenant at the popular Mayfair center, but it was joined by Chicago’s iconic Marshall Field’s department store in January 1959. Former Milwaukee director Barbara Markoff says, “Mayfair was probably the strongest branch because it also had Marshall Field’s and Field’s attracted customers.” Gimbels made its boldest move in December 1961, when Bruce Gimbel announced that it would buy Milwaukee’s Schuster’s stores. The purchase made Gimbels the dominant retailer in all of Wisconsin. It was the first acquisition in over thirty-five years, with the exception of the 1956 purchase of Lockhart’s specialty store in downtown St. Louis, which was converted into a Saks Fifth Avenue branch. The merger between Gimbels and Schuster’s was not without opposition. Family members questioned the purchase, and so did the government. Schuster’s told its customers and its shareholders, “There is pride in this announcement because it unites two companies, old in Milwaukee, but youthful in spirit and accomplishments, both of whose long retail lives have been devoted to the same high principles of community service.” When the purchase was approved and completed the following spring, Gimbels in Milwaukee grew from three stores to seven, plus one under construction in Madison. The Milwaukee division also assumed the name Gimbels-Schusters on its stores.

Back east, shoppers flocked to the new Cherry Hill Shopping Center in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Cherry Hill, located in the Philadelphia area, opened its doors in October 1961 to hoards of shoppers. It was the largest enclosed shopping center on the East Coast south of New York City. According to its lease, Strawbridge & Clothier had the right to select its competing anchor store at Cherry Hill. Bamberger’s was chosen rather than any of the Philadelphia stores. Shut out of Cherry Hill’s success, Gimbels teamed up with Wanamaker’s and developed its own mall in Moorestown, New Jersey, just a few miles down the road. But Moorestown couldn’t match Cherry Hill’s popularity. Former Gimbels employee John Caccese says, “Cherry Hill was the first indoor shopping environment in the area, and the Strawbridge’s there was so unbelievably large. It was unheard of. Moorestown was a second-rate mall. Cherry Hill had the ambiance.”
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The once popular Gimbels-Schusters store at Capitol Court in Milwaukee.
Courtesy of the Milwaukee County Historical Society
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A young child takes a break from shopping at Gimbels-Schusters in the early 1960s.
Courtesy of the Milwaukee County Historical Society
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In August 1962, Gimbels quietly opened a large department store at the Roosevelt Field Shopping Center in Garden City, New Jersey. However, as the store’s traditional competitors began to emphasize style and fashion in their advertising and merchandise, Gimbels held firm to its commitment to “budget values.”

The Moorestown Mall Gimbels shortly after its opening in 1963. The Moorestown, New Jersey store was part of the Philadelphia division.
Courtesy of the Temple University Libraries, Urban Archives, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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An accurate interior sketch of the Moorestown store.
Courtesy of the Temple University Libraries, Urban Archives, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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The main entrance of the downtown Pittsburgh store decorated for the Christmas season.
Courtesy of the Milwaukee County Historical Society
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In 1965, Adam Gimbel still controlled the wildly successful Saks Fifth Avenue business. He almost single-handedly built Saks Fifth Avenue into America’s largest and most profitable chain of high-fashion specialty stores. His wife, Sophie, produced “Sophie Originals” in her Salon Moderne in the Fifth Avenue flagship. By 1965, the Saks Fifth Avenue chain had grown to twenty-six locations throughout the country. However, Gimbels not only operated the luxurious Saks Fifth Avenue group but also ran the popularly priced Saks–Thirty-fourth Street stores. Saks–Thirty-fourth Street not only operated its aging store located between Macy’s and Gimbels, but it also moved into the New York suburbs with locations in Massapequa, Commack and Stamford, Connecticut. Saks–Thirty-fourth Street did not have a clear marketing strategy. It tended to carry the same brands that Gimbels offered, but it did not have the variety of merchandise. Former Macy’s president Stanley Abelson remembers, “Saks–Thirty-fourth Street served no purpose.” Perhaps its only purpose was to have a Gimbels presence at Herald Square, diverting as much subway traffic as possible to the other side of Thirty-fourth Street, toward the Gimbels store and away from Macy’s. But its outmoded building was one of the only large retail buildings in New York that did not have escalators, and its exterior seriously needed renovation.

In June 1965, Gimbels president Bruce Gimbel pulled the plug on Saks–Thirty-fourth Street. The store was barely profitable, and its name prevented it from moving off Thirty-fourth Street. The company thought about relocating the store to an uptown location, but that would require a name change. In the long run, Saks–Thirty-fourth Street did serve no purpose. The company announced that the Thirty-fourth Street flagship store would be sold to E.J. Korvette and the three small suburban branches would become Gimbels locations. The
New York Times
reported that after the 550 employees were notified of the store’s closing, “there were some tears, exchanges of compassion, and the death of a store began.”
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