Macy's Herald Square: How a Dry Goods Shop Became the World's Largest Store

By Solomon Rokowsky

The biggest department store in America covers almost an entire Midtown block, but it was built around a corner it could not buy. Macy's Herald Square opened in 1902 as a nine-story gamble twenty blocks north of the shopping district, grew in three bursts of construction into the self-declared largest store in the world, gave New York its Thanksgiving Day Parade, and still carries shoppers upstairs on wooden escalators that have been running for more than a century.

Macy's and Herald Square in 1907, five years after the store opened. Photograph by Irving Underhill, via the Library of Congress and Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Where did Macy's start?

Macy's own history page says Rowland H. Macy opened R.H. Macy & Co. as a dry goods store in New York City in 1858. Wikipedia's building history is more precise about the address and the day: the store stood at 204-206 Sixth Avenue near 14th Street, and sales on the first day, October 28, 1858, totaled $11.08. The star in the company logo goes back to Macy himself - Wikipedia notes it echoes a red star-shaped tattoo he got as a teenager working on a Nantucket whaling ship.

Macy died in 1877. The National Park Service's landmark nomination for the building records that ownership passed through the Macy family until 1895, when the company was bought by Isidor and Nathan Straus, brothers whose family had run concessions inside the store for years. Under the Strauses, the nomination says, annual sales approached $10 million by 1900.

Why did Macy's move to Herald Square?

Because the 14th Street store was falling apart and the trade was moving uptown. The nomination form says Macy's main leases expired in 1903, that other major retailers were already leaving the street, and that the Strauses looked at sites as far north as 45th Street before choosing Herald Square. The new store, designed by De Lemos & Cordes and built by the George A. Fuller Company, was completed in 1902 at a cost of about $4.8 million including the land. Wikipedia adds a charming detail about how far north the location then seemed: Macy's ran a steam wagonette to ferry customers up from 14th Street.

The nomination's inventory of the 1902 building reads like a world's fair pavilion: 13,000 tons of structural steel, 1,000 tons of ornamental iron and bronze, 33 hydraulic elevators, 18 miles of brass tubing for a pneumatic tube system, 42 miles of wiring, six iron and marble stairways, four Otis mahogany-and-steel escalators, six Corliss-type steam engines totaling 3,040 horsepower, and a built-in vacuum cleaning system then known as a "suction duster." Wikipedia describes the style as Palladian, with two pairs of caryatids by the Scottish-American sculptor J. Massey Rhind flanking the 34th Street entrance.

What is the Million Dollar Corner?

The most famous holdout in New York retail. The Strauses failed to assemble the entire block. The nomination form tells the story of a small lot at the southeast corner, on 34th Street at Broadway, whose owner agreed to sell for $250,000 - until Macy's connection to the purchase became public, whereupon a company called R. Smith and Company persuaded him to sell to them for $375,000. The Strauses believed rival Siegel-Cooper, which had built what it thought was the world's largest store on Sixth Avenue in 1896, was behind the move. Macy's refused to pay and simply built around the lot. Wikipedia records that the little building was sold for a then-record $1 million on December 6, 1911 - earning the name the Million Dollar Corner - and that Macy's leases its upper stories to this day as the base for the giant red shopping-bag sign on the Broadway facade.

How did it become the world's largest store?

In three additions. Macy's added a story to the 1902 building in 1910, then acquired most of the rest of the block and completed a 20-story Seventh Avenue addition in 1924, designed by Robert D. Kohn. Wikipedia records further Kohn additions in 1928 and 1931, each round turning more Art Deco. Macy's official history states that with the 1924 completion of the Seventh Avenue addition, the Herald Square store became the largest store in the world - the Park Service nomination says the same, in physical size and in amount of business. Today the building totals about 2.2 million square feet, with roughly 1.25 million square feet of selling space, making it the largest department store in the United States.

The same year it became the world's largest store, it started the parade. Macy's official history records that 10,000 people watched the first parade in 1924, now known as the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade; Wikipedia notes the parade still ends at the Herald Square store every Thanksgiving. In 1927 the store established a Bureau of Standards to test products, which the nomination calls unique in retailing. And through it all, the machinery kept running: Wikipedia notes that several of the store's original wooden escalators remain in operation, and the nomination already counted them survivors decades ago.

The parade is not the store's only event. Wikipedia lists Macy's Santaland, the Christmas-season area where children meet and are photographed with Santa Claus, and the annual Macy's Flower Show, for which flowers are coordinated to bloom as they are installed in the store each spring. Macy's official timeline adds another city tradition: the Macy's 4th of July Fireworks made their debut in 1976. And the store itself is a film location of record - the 1947 film Miracle on 34th Street is set in it.

The Broadway front in September 2018, with the shopping-bag sign on the corner building Macy's never acquired. Photograph by Chris Sampson, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 2.0.

What happened to the Straus family?

The store's owners met one of the century's famous ends. Wikipedia records that Isidor Straus and his wife Ida both died in the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912 - he was last seen on deck with her, having refused a lifeboat place. The company stayed under Straus-family leadership for decades afterward; the nomination notes that although R.H. Macy & Co. went public in 1922, the Straus family retained control well into the century.

How has the building changed recently?

The flagships of American retail have not had an easy century, but this one invested in itself. Wikipedia records that Macy's began the first full renovation of the store in 2012 at a reported cost of $400 million, with Studio V Architecture as master plan architect and Kevin Kennon Architects designing the exterior and entries; the work finished in November 2015. In 2019 and early 2020 Macy's floated plans for a 900-foot office tower of up to 1.5 million square feet on top of the store; it was never built. The building's protections are older than the renovation: Wikipedia records that it was added to the National Register of Historic Places and made a National Historic Landmark on June 2, 1978. The New York Times reported in 2014 that the store drew six million visitors a year.

One of the store's wooden escalators, still in service more than a century after the 1902 opening. Photograph by Ethan Long, December 2025, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.

The 34th Street and Broadway corner in December 2022. Photograph by Kidfly182, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who owns and runs Macy's Herald Square?

Macy's, Inc. - the store is both the chain's flagship and its corporate headquarters. The corporate lineage runs through Cincinnati: Macy's official timeline records that Federated Department Stores was formed in 1929 as a holding company for several family-owned stores, that Federated acquired R.H. Macy & Co. in December 1994, creating the largest department store retailer in the nation, and that Federated renamed itself Macy's, Inc. in 2007.

Where can you eat or drink at Macy's Herald Square?

The store's own directory currently lists a Starbucks on the mezzanine, Just Salad on the fourth floor, Stella 34 Trattoria on the sixth floor along with Zaro's Bakery, and Auntie Anne's Pretzels, Carvel and a McDonald's on the seventh floor, plus an IT'SUGAR candy store on the mezzanine and Bissinger's chocolates on the first and sixth floors. The eighth floor holds the DeGustibus Cooking School. Macy's Inc. introduced Stella 34 in 2013 as the store's flagship restaurant, with views down Broadway; the store also runs seasonal dining events there, such as its Breakfast with Santa dates. Listings and hours here were read on the official store page on October 23, 2026.

Sources

• National Park Service, R. H. Macy and Company Store, National Historic Landmark nomination
• Wikipedia, R. H. Macy and Company Store (building)
• Macy's, Brand Heritage: Macy's Through The Years
• Macy's, Herald Square store page
• 34th Street Partnership, Macy's Herald Square
• Macy's, Inc., Macy's Herald Square Debuts Broadway's Newest Star - Stella 34 Trattoria, February 27, 2013