ABSTRACT
The innovative role of the later nineteenth-century department store has become a commonplace of historical discussion. Yet the historian’s regard is as liable to be seduced by these 'cathedrals of commerce' as was that of the contemporary observer, with their impressive array of goods, and their extravagantly public style of both built architecture and window display. The history of the department store is bound up with the heroic founding capitalist, and the self-made manufacturer of the industrial revolution was reconstituted for a later age in which distribution and consumption had come to provide the stuff of legends. Department stores were diffusers of culture and lifestyle as well as goods, for they attracted mere visitors as well as purchasers. The contemporary discourse surrounding the department store, whether from its critics or its friends, was certainly of interest, but it may lead us to overstate its influence as a motor of cultural and social change.
