B. Altman & Co., New York City

B. Altman & Co.'s neo-Renaissance palazzo

anchored the east end of  34th St.,

and Fifth Avenue, too.

The store's Fifth Ave. side was built in 1906,

replacing an older facility in lower Manhattan,

as the store moved northward.

In 1914, B. Altman & Co. reached its ultimate form with

the addition  of a 12-story building to the rear that

doubled the size of the store.

B. Altman & Co.'s Fifth Avenue store
was housed in a neo-classical palace of
a building designed by architects
Trowbridge and Hollingsworth.

As a store, Altman's exuded the same
classic dignity as its building, here
seen from Madison Avenue.

The Madison Avenue extension
of 1914 differed slightly
from the original building

The Main Floor of the Fifth Avenue Store was quiet,
stately and spacious.

The charming eighth-floor Charleston Gardens restaurant

featured a real plantation facade and three other walls

of murals simulating an outdoor garden.

B. Altman & Co. (1865)
361 Fifth Avenue (at 34th Street)
New York, New York 10018

MUrray Hill 9-7000

 
Main Floor
The Collectibles (127) • Sportswear One (106) • Blouse Bazaar (141) • Handbags (21) • Gloves (22) • Belts (14) • Revlon (55) • The Perfumery (19) • Toiletries (19) • Neckwear (14) • Hat Bar (34) • Fine Jewelry (38) • Watches (38) • Gems (127) • Better Jewelry (127) • Sunglasses (4) • Hosiery (25) • Ribbons (13) • Handkerchiefs (24) • Umbrellas (28) • Small Leather Goods (88) • Robes (26) • 1001 Notions (17) • Gift Shop (43) • Camera Shop (38) • Candy (51) • Luggage (41) • Stationery (20)
Altman’s Men’s Store Studio I (9) • Men’s Tailored Sportswear (41) • Men’s Sport Shirts (49) • Men’s Shoes (39) • Men’s Raincoats (41) • Men's Hats (32) • Men’s Sportswear (104) • Men’s Outerwear (112) • Men’s Clothing (41) • Men’s Ties (66) •  Men’s Furnishings (27) • Men’s Sleepwear (26) • Men’s Slippers (39) • Men’s Gloves (26) • Men’s Socks (26) • Men’s Accessories (32)

Second Floor
Shoe Salon (53) • Shoes on Two (53) • Aigner Studio (53) • Slipper Bar (128) • Junior Lingerie (115) • Robes (72) • Sleepwear (48) • Lingerie (46) • Loungewear (72) • Slimwear (45) • Studio II (48) • The Pampered Pet • Shops for Girls 4-6x (61) • Shops for Girls (57) • Children’s Lingerie (50) • Infants Apparel (57) • Toddlers Apparel (49) • Boy’s Shop 4-7 (118) • Infants Furniture (138) • Children’s Shoes (74) • Young Juniors (133) • Charles of the Ritz Beauty Salon

Third Floor
Studio III (147) • Geoffrey Beene Shop (147) • Dana Shop (145) • Versace Shop (147) • The Designers (70) • Designer Jeans (83) • Better Sportswear (146) • Meadowbrook Shop (143) •  Opulent Dress • Fur Salon (13) • Sweaters and Skirts (30) • Sport Dresses (78) • Sports Separates (83) • Millinery (34) • Beach Shop (122) • Active Sportswear (126) • Skiwear (122) • Young Expressions Sportswear (113) • Young Expressions Dresses (114) • Young Expressions Coats (69) • Americana Dresses • Americana Coats (63) • Leather and Suede Shop (89) • Raincoats (89) • Blouse Bazaar (141)

Fourth Floor
Glassware (31) • Dinnerware (60) • Chinaware (60) • Silver Shop (35) (120) • Art Porcelain for Collectors (16) • Waterford Gallery (131) • Wedgwood Gallery (60) • Figurines (16) • Boehm Gallery (16) • Gift Shop (87) (108) • Table Linens (84) • Sheets (86) • Blankets (85) • Bedspreads (10) • Pillows (65) • Towels (33) • Bath Shop (134) • Curtains (81)

Fifth Floor
Book Shop (97) • Trim the Tree Shop (137) • Basket Shop (136) • The Buffet Shop • Pot and Plant Shop • The Kitchen (105) • Housewares (29) • Cutlery • Electricals (12) • Buffet Shop (105) • Art Needlework (65) • Fashions-by-the-Yard (11) • Handcraft Gallery (136) • Fireplace Shop (136) • Crewel-by-the-Yard (82) • Candles (93) • Lamps (93) • Broadloom (92) • Oriental Rugs (91) • Area Rugs (77) • American Express Travel Service

Sixth Floor
Casual Dresses (54) • Forenoon Shop (160) • Moderate Sportswear (140) • Women’s Moderate Dresses (68) • Women’s Moderate Sportswear (121) • Murray Hill Shop (62) • Murray Hill Coats (90) • Today’s Separates (192) • Miss Altman Dresses • Success Shop • Spare Parts for Young Men (3) • Boy’s Shop 8-20 (58) • Young Colony Dresses (2) • Young Colony Sportswear (6) (64) • Young Colony Coats (5) • Young Colony Shoes (15) • Junior VIP Sportswear (130) • The Shop for Pappagallo (142)

Seventh Floor
Williamsburg Craft Shop (710) • Hitchcock Gallery (96) • Upholstered Furniture (98) • Living Room Furniture (101) • Furniture (100) • Tables (99) • Mattresses (75) • Recliners (132) • Sofa Beds (132) • Dining Room Furniture (52) • Bed Room Furniture (96) • American Gallery • Charleston Town House

Eighth Floor
Music Center (88) • Electronics (88) • Records (88) •  TV (88) • Toy Fair (56) • World of Games (56) • Sporting Goods • Art Gallery (116) • Collector's Gallery (102) • Delicacies (51) • Charleston Garden Restaurant
(850,000 sq. ft.)

White Plains

Bloomingdale Road

1930/1949/1963

Charleston Gardens

Manhasset
September 17, 1948
117,000 sq.ft.
Charleston Gardens

The Mall at Short Hills
Short Hills, NJ
1956
Charleston Gardens

St. David's Square

Radnor, PA

1965

Charleston Gardens

Ridgewood-Paramus, NJ

The Fashion Center
176,000 sq. ft.

1967

Charleston Gardens

There are many reasons why New York City’s patrician B. Altman & Co. store stands out as unique, even among the fine department stores that have graced the streets of the Gotham city.  Altman’s began the retail march up Fifth Avenue from lower Manhattan in 1906. The store’s cachet and exclusivity were maintained by its palatial Fifth Avenue home, and a small number of suburban branches, one of which even carried the store’s reputation as far as suburban Philadelphia. The Charleston Gardens, its beloved eighth floor restaurant was unique, even among the most noted of department store Tea Rooms.  Uniquely, and practically unbeknownst to shoppers was, however, the store’s defining historical aspect: It was the source of income for the eponymous foundation that was created by its benevolent and thoughtful founder, Benjamin Altman.

The son of German-Jewish immigrants Philip and Cecilia Friedsam, of Memmelsdorf, Bavaria, Altman was born in New York City on  June 12^th, 1840.  Five years earlier, his parents came from Europe, like so many others, in search of a better life in the New World.  The Friedsams operated a dry goods store on the lower east-side, and the 12-year old Benjamin began working there in 1853.  Eventually, Altman opened his own business at 39 Third Avenue, and nine years later, flush with success, no doubt owing to his astute business practices, he moved the store moved to Sixth Avenue and 18^th Street.  B. Altman & Co.’s store on the so-called “Ladies’ Mile” was of such proportion and beauty that it became known as the “Palace of Trade.”

B. Altman & Co. in 1877

B. Altman & Co. "Palace of Trade"
in later years.

The dawn of the twentieth century brought great prosperity and development to New York City which was reflected in the great railroad terminals built to connect Manhattan island with the rest of the country, not to mention local outlying areas which themselves were prime for development. In 1904, ground was broken for the Pennsylvania Railroad’s colossal Pennsylvania Station at Seventh Avenue and 33^rd Street, while rival New York Central System began developing plans for a new terminal at 42^nd Street and Park Avenue in 1903. The Grand Central Terminal and Pennsylvania Station developments spurred economic development in midtown Manhattan and the retail world began its move uptown.  R.H. Macy & Co. relocated to 34^th and Broadway in 1901.

In addition, as early as 1893, ultra-wealthy socialite Mrs. William B. Astor moved her home thirty blocks north, on Central Park, and her old mansion was raised to accommodate the construction of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel (which was later demolished and replaced by the Empire State building).

Benjamin Altman subsequently (one should say “wisely”) purchased a lot at 34^th Street on New York’s prestigious 5^th Avenue, which was then a street of mansions which had been built by the previous generation of the wealthy class in the city.  By the time Altman made his purchase, a majority of these mansions were  re-purposed to accommodate the small businesses that transformed the Avenue’s character.

Altman’s choice of Trowbridge and Livingston as architects was fortuitous given the fact that the merchant would be the first retailer to leave lower Manhattan for Fifth Avenue. The firm’s work on many deluxe townhouses and mansions in New York City, as well as large-scale structures like the St. Regis Hotel and J.P. Morgan’s Wall Street offices made it an ideal candidate to integrate a large department store into the established character of B. Altman & Co.’s new neighborhood.

The building that they produced was built in sections; the first to go up were 7 bays along Fifth Avenue at 35^th street between 1905 and 1906.  The Fifth Avenue frontage was completed when Altman purchased the holdout piece of property at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 34^th Street.  Trowbridge and Livingston completed the dignified Beaux-Arts style building in 1913 with a 13-store addition to the rear along the block’s Madison Avenue frontage. The overall design gives the illusion that the million-square foot department store is in reality a neo-Florentine palazzo.

The unfinished building in 1906

The resultant building is a refined composition of limestone façades, enhanced by a colonnade of two-story windows set between engaged Doric columns. The Fifth Avenue main entrance features a projected colonnade of fluted Ionic columns, and this entrance, like the others, is enriched by curving metal canopies at street level.  True to the style chosen for it, the bulk of the building is broken into the previously-described base, a shaft of rectangular windows set in plain limestone, and an exuberant capital consisting of two floors of windows topped with roman arches and surmounted by a deep and vigorously detailed cornice.  The Madison Avenue addition of 1914 fit the overall composition, but added more variety in both its details and additional height.

Benjamin Altman did not live to see the completion of the store over the whole block bounded by Fifth Avenue, 34^th Street, Madison Avenue and 35^th Street.  He acquired the whole block on which his store sat by 1910, but he passed away on October 7^th, 1913, at his home at 620 Fifth Avenue.  He had suffered from heart and kidney ailments for some time, but only retired to his bed on the day before his death, according to his obituary in the New York Times. He was eulogized in a funeral at Temple Emanu-El on Fifth Avenue in New York City, at which not only the cream of New York society, but thousands of B. Altman & Co. employees were present.

Altman was devoted in life to his two passions, namely, the department store that bore his name, and to art collecting.  As a result of the latter, he amassed a magnificent collection of artwork, including paintings (of which 75 were pieces created by Old Masters), Persian rugs, Renaissance  tapestries, Chinese porcelains, crystals and jades valued, at the time, at $15,000,000.00. In fact his estate, which included the B. Altman & Co. store business, was estimated at the time of his death at $45,000,000.00. Intensely private, he devoted his time to his business and to his art collection.

Benjamin Altman's private art collection
in his Fifth Avenue home.

It is important to distinguish, in Altman’s case, that his concern for the business was most emphatically not an obsession with money; In fact, he was described in the press as a “humane businessman” who was modest, shy, and retiring. He sincerely concerned himself with the well-being of those in his employ, and among the features he provided in his store were clean restrooms and eating facilities for the staff, and educational facilities for their benefit.  He also supported the trend towards shorter working hours and Saturday closures in order to give his workers more time with their families and greater opportunities for leisure.

His will illustrated core values well. In life he lived as a quiet bachelor and left no heirs though he did provide handsomely for the children of his sister Sofia Altman Fleishman and those of his late brother Morris. One of the two main provisions of the will were the establishment of the Benjamin Altman Foundation, charged with promoting “the social, physical, and economic welfare of the employees of B. Altman & Company, and for the benefit of charitable and educational institutions in the City of New York.”  The department store business was owned by the foundation and provided a source of income for it.

The other major gift is known as the Benjamin Altman Bequest to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The wealth and status of Altman’s collection was such that it was widely considered to have, at the time, elevated the status of the museum to one of the world’s greatest. Surprisingly, Altman’s will specified requirements that the collection be displayed in its entirety in their own rooms and clearly denoted as a gift from him, somewhat unusual for such a retiring man in life.

After Altman’s death, the store was run by his cousin Col, Michael Friedsam, himself an avid art collecto rand philanthropist, who joined the organization in 1870 and became a partner in B. Altman & Co. in 1900. After Friedsam’s death in 1931, 42-year old John S. Burke, vice president of the firm, was elected president by the Altman board of directors. Col. Friedsam's will not only left his substantial art collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Brooklyn Museum, but also provided funds for the Central Park Carousel and the Prospect Park Carousel in Brooklyn, both of which delight children to this day. Burke carried on the policies and charitable acts of his predecessors and escalated the store’s branch expansion during his tenure, which lasted until his retirement in 1955.  His funeral in 1972 was held at St. Patrick’s cathedral in New York City.

Altman's branch stores in the
early 1950s.

In 1955, John Burke Jr. assumed the office of chief executive, a post he held until the store business was sold off in 1986.  Throughout the tenure of the two Burkes, Altman’s maintained its status as a refined and luxurious shopping destination with fine customer service and friendly, doting sales personnel.  In 1938, the delightful Charleston Gardens restaurant was opened on the store’s eighth floor, recreating the atmosphere of a garden at night beside an ante-bellum mansion.  Branch development began in 1929 when B. Altman & Co. opened a small store in White Plains, New York, which was subsequently enlarged and ultimately replaced with a new store in 1949.  Branches carried the cachet of B. Altman & Co., arguably New York’s traditional department store, to suburban Manhasset in 1951, Short Hills, New Jersey in 1956, Radnor, Pennsylvania in 1965, and Paramus, New Jersey in 1967.  The opening of the Short Hills store resulted in the closing of a 1930 branch store in the central shopping district of East Orange, New Jersey, which was subsequently bought by Newark’s Kresge department store.

 

A new tax law that forbade ownership of its source of income by any charitable foundation forced the Altman Foundation to sell the store in 1986 to an investor group that planned to downsize it and rent the upper floors as office space.  Though the leader of the group was a former director of Brooklyn’s Abraham and Straus, and owned a chain of specialty stores, the “new” Altman’s was not as successful as might have been hoped.  In fact, New York Times architecture critic Paul Goldberger lamented in December of 1984 that the beloved Altman’s of old would likely disappear. He described the store as “quiet, altogether self-assured and understated.”

B. Altman & Co. on Fifth Avenue at 34th Street.

Another change of ownership two years later preceded the store’s sale to L. J. Hooker, an Australian developer intent on developing retail properties in the USA.  Hooker (which also bought Bonwit Teller, Sakowitz and Parisian store chains) had no experience in the running of American businesses, and its one shopping center development in America was the poorly planned, and badly located Forest Fair Mall in Cincinnati. Though it planned to take the Altman name to Buffalo, Syracuse and Cincinnati, the whole debacle of the Hooker period meant bankruptcy in 1989 and the ultimate end of B. Altman & Co. in early 1990.

After sitting idle for a number of years, the well-loved building would be renovated and re-purposed to house the City University of New York and a department of the New York Public Library.  The highly revered institution it once housed is left, alas, only a memory.