Iconic retailer flickers and fades

© 2005 Philadelphia Inquirer

In the end, like rival Wanamaker's before it, Strawbridge's went out with a whimper, not a bang.

Its fate was written when stockholders approved Federated Department Stores' merger with the May Co., Strawbridge's current parent. Federated announced Thursday that it would not continue using the Strawbridge's name.

By next year, another Philadelphia icon for shoppers will be relegated to memory. Those who go back far enough will forever recall the store brand as Strawbridge & Clothier. It was mostly under that name that it waged mercantile warfare against the long-gone Wanamaker's stores.

John Wanamaker and Justus Strawbridge both began their businesses in 1861 on Market Street. Wanamaker's went on to become the legendary model for almost every huge, multi-floored, restauranted department store found in America's downtowns. Strawbridge's forged another route to success as an innovator of the surburban mall idea.

But neither store name has survived the flurry of department store acquisitions and mergers that have abated little since the mid-1980s. Other familiar brands that the Federated deal will kill include Hecht's, which in the mid-1990s briefly operated the Strawbridge's stores. Samuel Hecht opened his first store in Baltimore in 1857.

The ultimate survivor seems to be New York's Macy's. It is so famous nationally through its annual Thanksgiving Day parade and showings of Miracle on 34th Street, that it makes sense for Federated to keep that moniker. Lord & Taylor is also a survivor - for now. But if this keeps up, one day there will just be The Store. (Run by Wal-Mart, no doubt.)