ABSTRACT
Ground was broken in February 1902. Constructed across eight years, the new building was phased such that the older store emptied a section at a time into it without ever halting business; parts of the new store opened successively in 1905, 1908, and 1910. Its grand opening was held in 1911, Wanamaker’s jubilee year in business. The dedication was celebrated in the highest style of any commercial building to date, its trappings indicative of the public character of this privately financed building and 30,000 people in attendance. Of special note was speaker William H.Taft; because U.S. presidents usually bestowed the decorum of their office only on occasions meant to improve or enhance the public welfare, the Wanamaker Store was interpreted on par with such progressive, civicminded, and publicly oriented projects as the opening of railroads or the celebration of a historical event. Taft glorified the store as “one of the most important instrumentalities in modern life for the promotion of comfort among people” by bringing under one roof at low and fixed prices all of life’s necessities (Appel, 1930). Wanamaker, too, lauded the societal importance of his store and compared it with great building projects of the past: unlike the Colosseum-an architectural masterpiece but an otherwise “empty shell”—he compared his store with the Cooper Union, the Carnegie Institute, and Girard College, each a gift of education from a businessman. At Wanamaker’s, space was set aside for workers to complete high school degrees. More generally, customers with a world of goods at their fingertips could learn the geography and produce of different countries along with economic lessons; they also had access to free concerts and Wanamaker’s own art collection, drawn from the Paris salons, which adorned the store.
