3. Early competition between department stores originated in New York
It was in New York, rapidly emerging as the United States’ most important commercial center, competition between merchants operating department stores truly began. Before the American Civil War’s first shots, stores in New York included Macy’s, Lord and Taylor, and Altman’s. Near the end of the Civil War, Brooklyn’s Abraham & Strauss was in business, and by the end of Reconstruction Strauss and Macy’s interests were sharing offices for their European operations, and working closely together in American expansion. Macy’s concentrated on the Manhattan market with Strauss occupying a similar role in Brooklyn and both ventures flourished in the age which became known as the Gay Nineties. By the turn of the century, Abraham & Strauss boasted over 2,000 employees.
The use of picture windows at the street level to display merchandise is often attributed to Abraham & Strauss, though the practice seems to have emerged synergistically in several locations, among several different stores. Macy’s and Strauss eventually merged, a process which occurred gradually, and by the time Isador Strauss died on RMS Titanic in 1912, he and his brother Nathan were partners with full ownership of R. H. Macy and Company. Isador’s wife, Ida, was also killed in the Titanic disaster, and when her body was never found water from the site of the wreck was placed in an urn and interred in the Strauss Mausoleum, alongside the recovered body of her husband. What could be called the Golden Age of the downtown department store followed, but the foundations were established, at least in New York, by the end of the first decade of the twentieth century.