Department store pioneer, founded Wanamaker's in Philadelphia.

1. John Wanamaker

John Wanamaker (July 11, 1838 – December 12, 1922) was a Philadelphia merchant, civic leader, and retail innovator whose department store, Wanamaker's, helped reshape American consumer culture during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in the Grays Ferry neighborhood of Philadelphia, Wanamaker built a commercial empire on principles that were, at the time, genuinely radical: fixed prices marked on every item, a money-back guarantee, and full-page newspaper advertising. He also served as United States Postmaster General under President Benjamin Harrison from 1889 to 1893, using the office to push for parcel post service and rural free delivery. His flagship Philadelphia store, opened in its grand form in 1876, became one of the largest retail establishments in the world and housed what remains the largest fully functional pipe organ on earth.

Wanamaker's not only became a commercial hub but also a cultural institution, reflecting the ambitions and values of Philadelphia during a period of rapid industrialization and urban growth. The legacy of Wanamaker's endures in the city's history, with the original 1911 building still standing — and currently undergoing a major redevelopment — as evidence of the era's architectural and commercial ambition.

The story of Wanamaker's is bound up with Philadelphia's economic rise. As one of the first true department stores in the United States, it helped establish the city as a center for retail innovation. The store's success was driven by its commitment to product quality, its emphasis on customer experience, and its ability to adapt to shifting consumer expectations. The original Philadelphia store remained the cornerstone of that identity for over a century, drawing shoppers from across the region and serving as a symbol of the city's commercial confidence.

History

The origins of Wanamaker's trace back to 1861, when John Wanamaker and his brother-in-law Nathan Brown opened Oak Hall, a men's clothing store at Sixth and Market Streets in Philadelphia. Brown died of tuberculosis in 1868, and Wanamaker continued alone, expanding his retail ambitions steadily through the early 1870s. The 1876 store — formally called the Grand Depot — was a different proposition entirely. Wanamaker purchased the old Pennsylvania Railroad freight depot at 13th and Market Streets and converted it into a vast dry goods emporium, opening on May 6, 1876, just as Philadelphia was hosting the Centennial Exposition. The timing was deliberate: millions of visitors were arriving in the city, and Wanamaker meant to capture them.

The Grand Depot's interior featured one of the earliest uses of electric lighting in American retail, installed in 1878, and the store introduced a series of practices that its competitors would eventually adopt across the country. Among them: individually marked price tags on every item, which ended the tradition of haggling; an unconditional money-back guarantee; and large-scale newspaper advertising, including what is generally credited as the first full-page advertisement placed by a retailer in an American daily newspaper. The store organized its merchandise into distinct departments — each with its own staff and inventory system — giving the new form of retailing its defining name.

By the early 20th century, Wanamaker recognized that the Grand Depot's converted freight building had reached the limits of its usefulness. Construction on a new building on the same site began in 1904, and the result — a twelve-story Beaux-Arts structure designed by architect Daniel H. Burnham — opened in stages between 1906 and 1911. The building's heart was the Grand Court, a soaring atrium finished in marble, which became one of the most celebrated interior spaces in Philadelphia. At its center sat a bronze eagle sculpture, cast for the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, which Wanamaker purchased and installed as the store's unofficial mascot. "Meet me at the Eagle" became a common Philadelphia expression.

The Grand Court also became home to the Wanamaker Organ, a pipe organ originally built for the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair by the Los Angeles Art Organ Company. Wanamaker purchased the instrument, had it expanded by organ builder George Ashdown Audsley, and installed it in the Grand Court, where it was inaugurated by President William Howard Taft on June 22, 1911. The organ now contains 28,482 pipes spread across six manuals and is recognized by the Organ Historical Society as the largest fully functional pipe organ in the world. Daily concerts continued throughout the store's retail life and beyond.

The store's cultural reach extended into areas that might seem surprising today. Wanamaker was an early and prominent supporter of Mother's Day as a national observance, and his store was among the first retailers to recognize the commercial possibilities of the holiday after Anna Jarvis successfully campaigned for its adoption in the early 1910s. Jarvis, who had founded the holiday in memory of her own mother, grew bitterly opposed to its commercialization — she spent the last years of her life campaigning against the greeting card and retail industries that had, in her view, corrupted her original intent. Wanamaker's, along with florists and candy makers, was among the commercial interests she criticized directly.

John Wanamaker died on December 12, 1922. His heirs continued operating the business, but the store's postwar decades brought increasing pressure from suburban shopping malls and changing retail patterns. The Great Depression strained the operation, and while the Philadelphia flagship survived, the national expansion that Wanamaker had envisioned never fully materialized. The store passed through several ownership changes in the later 20th century, eventually becoming part of the Lord & Taylor chain before closing its retail operations in the Wanamaker Building in 1995. Macy's subsequently occupied the space until 2024.

Geography

The Wanamaker Building occupies the full block bounded by Market Street, Juniper Street, Chestnut Street, and 13th Street in Center City Philadelphia — a site Wanamaker chose in 1875 precisely because of its position at the commercial core of the city. The Market-Frankford Line runs directly below Market Street, and the location placed the store within easy reach of commuters arriving from across the region. That accessibility was not incidental; Wanamaker understood that a department store's success depended on volume, and volume required transit.

The surrounding area, part of what is broadly called the Market Street commercial corridor, has changed considerably since Wanamaker's heyday. The Pennsylvania Convention Center opened one block north in 1993, bringing convention traffic to the neighborhood. City Hall, with its famous statue of William Penn, stands three blocks west at Broad and Market. The building itself — the 1911 Burnham structure — remains standing and is listed on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places and as a contributing resource to the Market Street National Historic District, which has helped protect it from demolition through several decades of commercial uncertainty.

Culture

Wanamaker's influence on Philadelphia's cultural life ran well beyond the sale of dry goods. The store was an early adopter of electric lighting, installed Thomas Edison's system in 1878, only two years after Edison's first commercial demonstrations. It held regular concerts in the Grand Court — the Wanamaker Organ was played twice daily for much of the 20th century — and hosted speakers, exhibitions, and civic events that made the building function as a kind of secular public hall for the city. The Christmas light show in the Grand Court, a tradition that began in the store's retail era, became one of the city's most enduring seasonal customs.

That tradition came under threat when Macy's closed its Wanamaker Building location in 2024, raising questions about whether the light show would continue. It did: the lights returned for the 2024 holiday season, preserving a custom that generations of Philadelphia families had made part of their December routines. The organ, maintained by the Friends of the Wanamaker Organ, continues to be played regularly in the Grand Court regardless of the building's commercial occupancy.

Wanamaker was also a significant figure in Philadelphia's religious and philanthropic life. He founded Bethany Presbyterian Church in 1858, which grew into one of the largest Sunday school programs in the country, and he was deeply involved in the YMCA movement. His civic engagement shaped institutions that outlasted his commercial empire, and his belief that a merchant had obligations beyond the transaction — to employees, to the community, to the city — influenced how other Philadelphia business leaders understood their own roles.

Notable People

John Wanamaker was born on July 11, 1838, in the Grays Ferry neighborhood of Philadelphia — not, as is sometimes reported, in New York — to Nelson Wanamaker, a bricklayer, and Elizabeth Dever. He left school at fourteen to work as an errand boy and eventually found employment at a bookstore and then at a men's clothing firm, learning the retail trade from the ground up before striking out with his brother-in-law Nathan Brown in 1861. His appointment as Postmaster General in 1889 made him one of the most powerful businessmen ever to hold a cabinet position, and he used it aggressively: he campaigned for parcel post service, which Congress resisted until 1913 under pressure from the powerful express companies, and he pushed for rural free delivery, which was eventually enacted during his tenure.

Robert Curtis Ogden, a longtime Wanamaker business partner, became an influential figure in his own right as an advocate for African American education in the South, serving on the boards of Hampton Institute and Tuskegee Institute. The store's early workforce included many women in sales and clerical roles at a time when such employment was relatively unusual, and Wanamaker established an employee benefit and educational program — the John Wanamaker Commercial Institute — that trained thousands of young workers in business skills.

Economy

The economic impact of Wanamaker's on Philadelphia was substantial and measurable. At its peak in the early 20th century, the Philadelphia store employed more than 5,000 people and generated annual sales that placed it among the highest-volume retail operations in the country. The store's payroll supported thousands of Philadelphia families, and its purchasing operations stimulated manufacturers across Pennsylvania and the Mid-Atlantic states. Wanamaker's advertising budgets — he spent heavily and consistently on newspaper advertising — helped sustain Philadelphia's daily press and set expectations for what retail advertising could accomplish.

The store also shaped the commercial geography of Center City. Its presence at 13th and Market anchored what became one of the densest retail corridors in the American Northeast, attracting other department stores — Gimbels, Strawbridge & Clothier, Lit Brothers — to the same blocks. This clustering created a retail district that defined downtown Philadelphia's economic life for most of the 20th century. The decline of that district, which accelerated after the 1970s with the growth of suburban malls, was inseparable from broader shifts in how Americans shopped. Wanamaker's didn't cause that decline, but its own struggles mirrored the city's.

The Wanamaker Building Today

The 1911 Burnham building is not demolished, nor is it derelict. It stands fully intact at 13th and Market Streets, and it is now at the center of one of Philadelphia's most closely watched real estate projects. Following Macy's departure in 2024, the architectural firm PAU (Practice for Architecture and Urbanism) was selected to lead the building's transformation into a mixed-use development that would include residential units, retail space, and preserved public areas including the Grand Court. The project has been designed to retain the building's historic character, including the Grand Court, the Wanamaker Organ, and the bronze eagle — all of which are expected to remain accessible to the public.

The Christmas light show in the Grand Court returned for the 2024 holiday season, operated independently of the building's ongoing redevelopment. The Wanamaker Organ, maintained by the Friends of the Wanamaker Organ, continues to be played in the Grand Court on a regular schedule. For Philadelphians who grew up visiting the store, the building's future carries a weight that goes beyond real estate: it holds decades of accumulated civic memory, and the city has watched the redevelopment closely.

Attractions

The Grand Court of the Wanamaker Building remains the building's most celebrated feature. Its marble walls, vaulted ceiling, and the bronze eagle at its center are intact, and the Wanamaker Organ — with its 28,482 pipes — continues to be played regularly by staff organists and visiting musicians. The Friends of the Wanamaker Organ maintains the instrument and publishes a schedule of public performances. The Christmas light show, which fills the Grand Court with an elaborate display synchronized to organ music, draws large crowds each year and has been a Philadelphia tradition since the mid-20th century.

The building itself is worth visiting as an architectural object. Daniel Burnham's design — he was also responsible for the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington — gives the Wanamaker Building a grandeur that is unusual in American retail architecture. The exterior's granite facade and the interior's grand proportions reflect the conviction, common among Wanamaker's generation, that commerce deserved monumental expression. The building is accessible directly from the Market-Frankford Line's 13th Street station and is surrounded by City Hall, the Reading Terminal Market, and the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

Getting There

The Wanamaker Building sits at 13th and Market Streets in Center City Philadelphia, one block east of City Hall and directly above the Market-Frankford Line. The nearest subway station is 13th Street on the Market-Frankford Line, accessible from both directions across the city. SEPTA regional rail lines serving Jefferson Station (formerly Market East), two blocks east, provide connections from the suburbs and Amtrak's 30th Street Station. Multiple bus routes run along Market Street and Chestnut Street, both of which border the building.

For those arriving by car, parking is available in several garages nearby, including the Parkway parking garage on 15th Street and the Convention Center garage on Arch Street. Street parking in the immediate area is limited. The building is within easy walking distance of the Reading Terminal Market, the Pennsylvania Convention