Abraham and Straus: It's Worth a Trip from Anywhere

2009.

Introduction

Sometimes I forget that A&S is still open, at least in some form. There are so few downtown department stores left in this country. These remaining stores seem to be either important icons or faded relics. Every year, it seems as though another one bites the dust and its hometown is devastated, even though its residents had largely abandoned it as part of their shopping and social scene years ago.

It’s easy to think of New York as just Manhattan, especially from an outsider’s perspective. The other boroughs might appear to be a collection of neighborhoods, strong and weak, that just feed off Manhattan. But that is not the case, and it certainly is not the case with Brooklyn. Brooklyn has a tremendous history and is a major city within itself. Its working-class roots have either maintained their melting pot image or have transitioned into new wealth. And through it all, it’s proud of its identity. Through it all, the building that housed America’s third-largest department store complex is still open for business and plays a pivotal role in downtown Brooklyn’s revival.

Abraham & Straus grew up with Brooklyn, and Brooklyn grew up with Abraham & Straus. Many Brooklynites were unable to afford making regular shopping excursions to A&S, but they still relied on the store for holiday traditions and community sponsorships. Abraham & Straus was happy to oblige, and that was part of its legacy.

As the Store Grew in Brooklyn, Abraham & Straus expanded beyond Brooklyn and into other close and distant communities. Its 1952 Hempstead store was a marvel and is often revered by department store enthusiasts. It served Long Island residents who grew tired of getting on a train or driving long distances. After it added two additional floors to its original two-story structure, A&S Hempstead became the country’s largest suburban department store. Although there were other A&S branches, few could match the size and strength of Hempstead. That’s how it also seemed on Fulton Street. But after four decades of service, A&S Hempstead turned from a relevant behemoth to a white elephant. Some saw the former Fulton Street flagship in that very same light. However, in the end, that old Brooklyn store, unlike so many other amazing downtown department stores, is still open for business—at least in some form.

I am admittedly an outsider, not to the department store world but to New York City and, more specifically, Brooklyn. I grew up near Philadelphia, where John Wanamaker, Strawbridge & Clothier, Gimbels and, later on, Bamberger’s ruled the roost. When Abraham & Straus entered the Philadelphia market in 1981, I was anxious to pay it a visit. As I walked through the store, I knew that there was a problem: A&S was not Philadelphia. The store was loaded with glitz and chrome, and Philadelphia is not a glitz-and-chrome market. Philadelphia was competitive and crowded and largely consisted of traditionally frayed or realistically conservative retailers. Abraham & Straus was neither. A&S didn’t last long in Philadelphia, but as the years marched on, neither did much of its competition.

As a historian, I look back in awe at Abraham & Straus. The company, along with Filene’s, gave birth to the legendary Federated Department Stores company right on the family’s yacht. Federated eventually grew into America’s premier department store holding company. (The word premier is arguable.) And A&S’s Fulton Street flagship grew into America’s third-largest department store. That, too, is arguable. (I never got on my hands and knees with a ruler and measured every floor. I would need to do the same at Chicago’s Marshall Field building. I don’t have that option at Detroit’s J.L. Hudson, the country’s undisputed second-largest store, as that icon was closed in 1983 and imploded in 1998.)

Within these pages, the story of Abraham & Straus is largely told. At times, it goes hand and hand with the story of Brooklyn. Its history deserves to be in print. As of 2017, the former downtown A&S continues to welcome area residents and workers. The building is experiencing a massive redevelopment. It is no longer the country’s third-, or fourth-, largest department store. Its floor size has dropped from 1.6 million square feet to just over 270,000. It may not be the same store that Brooklyn, and other borough residents, remembers, but its legacy is well worth documenting and celebrating.

CHAPTER 1

Opportunity Days

Since its founding, Abraham & Straus had, at its hand, men of vision, character, and leadership. It was not solely occupied with selling goods, and making a profit. It was interested in having a store that played a very important part of the community, which is Brooklyn.

—Walter Rothschild Sr., grandson of company founder Abraham Abraham, December 1, 1953

Back in the 1860s, Brooklyn, with a population of approximately 300,000 residents, was America’s third-largest city. In the early half of the nineteenth century, its farmlands supplied wheat, corn and potatoes to neighboring communities. Brooklyn was home to everything from horse stables to skating ponds, as well as some of the country’s finest examples of Dutch architecture. Brooklyn was just a placid, country town [in the 1860s], stated an Abraham & Straus brochure from 1945. Brooklyn belles wore billowing crinolines and coaches clattered over the cobblestone streets.¹

Brooklyn was home to a variety of industries, and its busy waterfront was lined with warehouses. Ships delivered sugar, molasses, honey and cotton to its surrounding area. During the nineteenth century, Brooklyn grew into a diverse community and was home to many Irish, German and English residents. As its population grew, Brooklynites demanded greater services and amenities. In 1865, two enterprising young men opened a small dry goods establishment that developed over time into one of the country’s leading and largest department stores. For three decades, Wechsler & Abraham was one of Brooklyn’s leading retail houses.

The original Wechsler & Abraham dry goods business at its 285 Fulton Street storefront.

In February 1865, Abraham Abraham established the original business at age twenty-two. Members of the Abraham family worked in the store’s management until 1969.

Joseph Wechsler was born in Poppenhausen, Bavaria, and immigrated to New York in 1856, along with his mother and brothers Abraham, Samuel and Herman. For the next three years, Wechsler worked as a humble peddler and pushed carts throughout Brooklyn that contained dry goods and notions.² In 1859, Joseph, along with his brothers, opened a storefront at 137 Myrtle Avenue, between Gold and Duffield Streets. The Wechsler Bros. store offered Dry Goods for the Million, and customers, housekeepers, and parties coming from the country were respectfully invited to view the largest assortment of goods in the city, at retail for wholesale prices. Described as a person who was quiet in his ways, Joseph Wechsler was a shrewd businessman.³ He convinced his brothers to stock the business with Irish, French and German goods that catered to the area’s immigrant population. The popular Wechsler Bros. establishment drew the attention of New York merchant Judah Abraham. After he developed a close business relationship with Joseph Wechsler, Judah invested in the Wechsler firm.

Abraham Abraham, the son of Judah Abraham and Susan Sussman, was born in his parents’ New York Murray Street home on March 9, 1843. [Abraham] must have had a lazy mother or else he would have had a different name, his grandson Walter Rothschild Sr. quipped in 1953. Or else she liked alliteration. Throughout his early childhood, Abraham was plagued with health problems, and his parents kept him from attending school. At age fourteen, he became a clerk at Newark’s Hart & Dettlebach dry goods firm and worked alongside young Simon Bloomingdale and Benjamin Altman. Within two years, Abraham was named head of the shawl department and earned a salary of $8 per week.

When the Civil War commenced, Abraham traveled to Chicago, intending to enlist in the Union army. Thwarted by his parents, Abraham returned to New York and worked in a variety of area stores. Abraham ultimately settled on Brooklyn’s Wechsler Bros. The Wechslers provided him with room and board in addition to his salary. The ambitious Abraham ultimately wanted to open his own dry goods store. Lacking the financial capital necessary, he convinced Joseph Wechsler to partner in a new business. With $8,000 from Joseph Wechsler and $4,000 from Abraham Abraham, the Wechsler & Abraham dry goods business was born.⁴

Abraham persuaded Wechsler to locate their new business on Fulton Street, Brooklyn’s most fashionable thoroughfare. Fulton Street was a heavily traveled street that led to the Fulton Ferry, Brooklyn’s connection to Manhattan. On Fulton Street, crowds of ladies and children, misses and pet poodles, promenade[d] the sidewalk even down to the river.⁵ On February 14, 1865, Wechsler & Abraham celebrated its grand opening at 285 Fulton Street. Promoted as a Dry Goods, Shawl, and Cloak Emporium, Wechsler & Abraham was stocked with shawls, capes, ribbons, millinery, velvets and woolens. Merely twenty-five feet wide and ninety feet long, Wechsler & Abraham employed only three workers. Its grand opening notice in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle proclaimed its reasonable prices with polite and attentive clerks.⁶

Abraham & Straus [Wechsler & Abraham] started at a rather unfortunate time, recalled Abraham Abraham’s grandson Walter Rothschild Sr. Heavy rain drenched Brooklyn on the store’s opening day. [Abraham] spent most of the day with his nose glued against the door, looking out in the mess for perspective customers, remembered Rothschild in 1953. To make matters worse, his banker was there and [Abraham] was practically sure [his banker] was going to call the loan on him. The outbreak of the Civil War also threatened the business’s success. The two partners had purchased their stock during the peak of inflation. The war sent prices sky high, said Rothschild. The war stopped, the prices tumbled and there we were with a big stock.⁷

In 1866, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle published a Wechsler & Abraham advertisement that stressed the store’s excess of stock.

Exactly two months after the store’s opening day, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. As the community mourned, many Brooklyn business owners placed memorial displays in their street windows. Featuring a bust of the fallen president, Wechsler & Abraham’s store window was wildly commented on. I had seen [a bust of Lincoln] in a barber shop and when the tragedy occurred I secured it at once, said Abraham in 1908. The pedestal [in the display window] was draped in black and white silk and on it hung a quotation from ‘Hamlet.’⁸ As Lincoln’s death led to an era of economic instability, Wechsler & Abraham persevered and kept all bills current.

When it initially opened for business, Wechsler & Abraham leased the entire four-story building but sublet the upper floors to renters. "I remember there was a photographer just above [our original] store and over