The main Marshall Field and Company Store (today Macy's) is not one but several buildings, with the two most familiar sections are along State Street between Randolph and Washington.
The following excerpted from Jazz Age Chicago (
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"What became Midwest's most prominent and well-known department store dates back as far as 1852 when Potter Palmer, one of Chicago's great nineteenth-century movers and shakers, opened a small dry goods store on Lake Street, then the city's prime retail strip. In 1868, Palmer built a palatial structure on the northeast corner of Washington and State and then convinced Field to relocate his firm to the new State Street building.
Three years later, when the Great Fire swept across central Chicago, Marshall Field's fledgling dry goods emporium was burned to the ground and thousands of dollars worth of merchandise lost. But Field insisted upon reopening the store almost as soon as the smoke had cleared. Within just a few short days, newly ordered shipments of goods were arriving from the East and Field was conducting business as usual, albeit on a temporary site just outside the burned over district. Not soon thereafter, plans were laid for the construction of an even grander and more spacious State Street store than the one that had been destroyed only months before.
In the years that followed, Field's business enjoyed tremendous success and quickly established its reputation as Chicago's most fashionable and respectable department store. As business and profits increased, the store building itself was progressively enlarged, coming eventually to occupy the entire square block bounded by State, Washington, Randolph, and Wabash. The southeast quadrant was built in 1893 in anticipation of the Columbian Exposition, followed by the northwest and northeast quadrants.
With business steadily increasing throughout the 1880s and 1890s, it soon became apparent to Marshall Field that if he was to grow as Chicago grew, larger quarters would be in order. The first major expansion of the store was completed in 1893 with the opening of the nine-story structure on the northeast corner of Washington and Wabash. Although the new additional retail space helped to handle the thousands of out-of-town visitors to the store during the World's Columbian Exposition, the continued growth of everyday consumerism in Chicago soon prompted yet more expansion plans.
By the early 1900s, with the intention of expanding the store even further, Marshall Field set out to purchase all the remaining properties in the city block bounded by Washington, State, Wabash, and Randolph Streets. By 1907, the entire block of buildings, with the lone exception of the 1893 structure, had been demolished and replaced with new retail buildings, all of which offered upwards of seven floors of selling space, effectively tripling the size of the store within a five- to six-year period.
Equally remarkable was new store's primarily neo-classical design, as most evident in its refashioned State Street facade. Toward the center of the block was the building's front portico, where Marshall Field's wealthiest and most elite customers would be greeted by well-mannered doormen and politely escorted inside the store. The portico was set off by four marble Ionic columns and was meant to suggest not only the firm's economic might and financial stability--recall, most banks and municipal buildings utilized neo-classical design elements--but also the store's apparent authority and reliability in matters of fashion and cultural tastes. The State Street store retains its neo-classical appearance to this day.
As part of the 1907 rebuilding project, the earlier 1879 building at corner of Washington and State was demolished. The structure that replaced it was designed in the neo-classical style, in tandem with the structure already completed at State and Randolph Streets, and included a five-story interior light court topped by an enormous glass mosaic (Tiffany) dome."
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