Macy's SF Closure
Le plus ça change...
My first entry under the “Essay” category on here. This category is more for my non-fiction musings and reflections, and will be about anything, so entries will likely be sporadic. Just want to give everyone appropriate expectations… Thanks for reading!
I’m feeling very sad about the Macy’s closure announced today, and while I’m not a bit surprised, I did think we’d hear about the fate of Neiman Marcus before we heard this news. It’s not that I’ll miss Macy’s because I haven’t shopped there in ages (I guess no one else has either, although the lingerie department really could be counted on,) but I will miss it’s ballast in Union Square.
Macy’s Union Square has far more weight and presence to me than Nordstrom for some reason, and while our retail landscape in San Francisco has been bleak of late, it now feels like we’ve lost our last anchor.
I remembered doing research for my former podcast during the pandemic and learning that even Macy’s didn’t just migrate here from New York when it opened its doors in 1947. The RH Macy Co acquired home-grown favorite O’Connor & Moffat which was opened in San Francisco by two Australians, Bryan O’Connor and George Moffat, in 1866. The brand moved between multiple locations until 1929, when they finally moved into the large building at Stockton and O’Farrell Streets designed by Lewis Hobart.
O’Connor & Moffat had a reputation for good values and high design, targeted at a middle class customer. They even sponsored the first “Bride’s Houses” (or model homes) in the 1930s, furnishing all of the rooms with items from the store. Some were in newly-built homes in St Francis Woods or The Marina, but in 1934 they built one on the roof of the store so more people could visit.
In 1945, after 81 years in business, RH Macy came calling and acquired O’Connor and Moffat for $2.175M, or roughly $37M today, and within two years the store was fully rebranded as Macy’s. By 1949, the store had been remodeled and reopened with fanfare. The Union Square entrance to Macy’s was only found in the Brickell Building - a tiny building that housed Blum’s which allowed a pass-through, while Dohrmann’s department store was next-door.
On the corner next to Blum’s, the beautiful I. Magnin building was being built. After merging with Bullock’s in 1944 to create a portfolio of twelve stores on the Pacific coast, a new I. Magnin brand flagship was in order. Grover Magnin acquired the Butler building at Stockton and Geary, stripped it down to its steel frame (since steel was scarce during WWII) and had Timothy Pflueger create the smooth marble exterior, supposedly designed because Mr. Grover hated pigeons and didn’t want them marring his store. The I.Magnin store opened in 1948 and even though it closed in 1995, I don’t know a single San Franciscan that doesn’t still shed a tear at its passing.
But that’s where retail, especially San Francisco retail, all went wrong. By rights we should have our equivalent of Bergdorf Goodman, Liberty of London, Selfridge’s, Harrod’s, and the like…but we don’t. We don’t have beautiful, unique, memorable, heritage retail that’s emblematic to San Francisco the way those other brands are, and it’s an awful thing.
In 1964, Federated Department Stores purchased Bullock’s & I.Magnin, only to sell them to Macy’s in 1988 after Macy’s made a failed attempt to take over Federated. In 1994, Macy’s agreed to merge with Federated and they decided to close the I.Magnin stores. I only bring it up because it was then that Macy’s busted down the walls and moved into the former I.Magnin building, expanding the original O’Connor & Moffat footprint to stretch fully from O’Farrell to Geary on Stockton. They eventually purchased and demolished the Brickell and Dohrmann buildings facing Geary to create the vast retail behemoth we have today that encompasses roundly 800K square feet of retail space. (Officially around 400K, but when you add up all the buildings…) Oh, there’s also a Cheesecake Factory, which, entre nous, may be the reason the building still has any vibe at all.
And now the whole thing is closing. We’ve lost I. Magnin, White House, City of Paris (and we even lost it’s gorgeous building but for the rotunda to Neiman Marcus - tragic,) Ransohoff’s, the better part of Gumps…the list goes on. In fact, there’s a wonderful book called Lost Department Stores of San Francisco by Anne Evers Hitz and it’s a must-read.
It’s frustrating because even in the announcement the CEO of Macy’s, Tony Spring, said they wanted to “accelerate…sustainable, profitable growth and value creation for our shareholders.” I just think they should have thought of that before they gobbled up everything in sight. Even LVMH has realized that constant growth is not necessarily what makes brands valuable and profitable - in fact, it usually does the opposite by over-saturating the brand and diluting its value. That doesn’t impress shareholders in the long-term.
Le plus ça change, oui, but why can’t we at least keep the good stuff? Thankfully, Macy’s sold the I.Magnin building in 2019 for $250M to an investment firm that has vowed to preserve its heritage. But will they?
Of course this latest closure is just another data point in the history of failing San Francisco retail since even before the pandemic. Large stores can’t stay open and small independent stores can’t even get open at all. The high streets such as Hayes, Fillmore, Chestnut, and even Union are still strong, but no one goes to shop downtown any more, opting for safer, cleaner options outside of the city such as Walnut Creek, Stanford, Corte Madera, or Marin Country Mart. It’s a reversal of fortune: up until the last decade or so, everyone came to the city to shop because the stores were bigger and filled with better merchandise. Now it’s the opposite. I knew the Nordstrom store was doomed when I went in a few years ago looking for a basic gold sandal to wear to a wedding and the only shoes on offer were black or brown. Yikes.
It’s a problem unique to San Francisco too. New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Boston - all cities I’ve visited in the last year, all have thriving retail. Policy? Leadership? Crime? Bad management? A perfect storm of all these things? Yes and yes. And no one seems to have any solutions. This feels like we’re steering the Titanic: tiny rudder, ice berg right ahead.
In my dream world, The City of Paris lives on in great shape, the quintessential San Francisco store, while upstarts come and go. What is more San Francisco than a store that started on a ship in the bay? Of course I’d also want the Emporium with its Christmas rides on the roof.
Other than a few ”it’s” that should be “its”, well done! Example: but I will miss it’s ballast in Union Square. (apostrophe used only for “it is” contraction, not for possessive as in this example)
This is a fascinating essay, thanks so much for putting everything in context. Department stores ain’t what they used to be, but at least we have the memories.