John Wanamaker Wanamaker Department Store
Biography of John Wanamaker
WANAMAKER, JOHN (July 11th, 1838-December 12th, 1922), merchant, born in a small frame house on the outskirts of Philadelphia, was the eldest of the seven children of Nelson and Elizabeth Deshong (Kochersperger) Wanamaker. He was descended on both sides from early settlers, his father was of German and Scotch ancestry and his mother was of French Huguenot. His paternal grandfather, John Wanamaker, and his father operated a brickyard until the competition of larger brick yards caused the former in 1849 to move to a farm near Leesburg, Indiana, where Nelson and his family joined him in 1850. After a hard year during which the elder John died, the family returned to Philadelphia. Nelson Wanamaker went back to brick making, and John, at thirteen, became an errand boy for a publishing house at $1.25 a week. He soon shifted to the men's clothing business, gradually advancing to the position of salesman. But in 1857 a breakdown in his health forced him to take an extended trip west. Wanamaker returned, towards the end of the year, to become the secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association in Philadelphia at a salary of $1,000 a year. He thus became the first paid Y.M.C.A. secretary in the country; his success in the face of widespread opposition established the value of such an officer. His marriage to Mary Erringer Brown in 1860 crystallized the problem of his future and led him to finally break with paid religious work.In 1861, Wanamaker and his brother-in-law, Nathan Brown, invested their modest combined capital in a men's clothing business. In ten years Wanamaker and Brown's "Oak Hall" had become the largest retail men's clothing store in the country. Brown died in 1868, but the store continued under the original name. The following year, Wanamaker opened a more fashionable men's store, known as John Wanamaker & Company, at 818-22 Chestnut Street. In 1876, with characteristic showmanship, he converted the rambling old freight depot of the Pennsylvania Railroad at Thirteenth and Chestnut Streets into a huge dry goods and men's clothing store, the "Grand Depot," which attracted considerable attention from visitors to the Centennial Exposition. After the fair, Wanamaker tried to get merchants in other lines to lease space in the "Grand Depot," as it was called until 1885. Failing this, he inaugurated on March 12th, 1877, his "new kind of store," a collection of specialty shops under one roof. This venture precipitated the first serious crisis in his meteoric career, but after a year of uncertainty, success was evident, and the store soon became one of the largest department stores in America.
Wanamaker was always master in his establishments, but he knew how to utilize the skill of close associates. The lower Chestnut Street store he delegated to his brothers. He induced Robert C. Ogden to take charge of "Oak Hall" in 1879. Wanamaker's sons, Thomas B. and Lewis Rodman, entered the business after completing their college work at the College of New Jersey (Princeton) in 1883, and 1886, respectively. In 1885, Wanamaker promoted Ogden and Thomas B. Wanamaker to a partnership in profits in the "Grand Depot." During Wanamaker's term as postmaster-general, Ogden successfully managed the department store. In In 1896, Wanamaker bought from the receivers the old store of Alexander T. Stewart in New York City and placed Ogden in charge. Continued growth encouraged Wanamaker in 1902 to begin enlarging both department stores. The panic of 1907 broke when he was in the midst of this building program; again he was almost ruined. The burden on the aging merchant was increased through the retirement of Ogden in 1907, and the illness of his son Thomas, who died in 1908. But again, the storm was weathered. In the development of the modern department store, Wanamaker moved consistently with the vanguard and was often a pioneer. He was an inveterate innovator and even a gambler, and his stores were in an eternal flux of change and reconstruction. He did not create the one-price system, but, beginning in 1865, he implemented it by guaranteeing their money back to dissatisfied customers. He was a master of the art of publicity, notably newspaper advertising. His paternalistic attitude towards his employees led him to set up an employee's mutual-benefit association (1881), training classes for clerks, continuation classes for boys and girls, which in 1896 became the John Wanamaker Commercial Institute, and other educational and recreational features,
Wanamaker's apparently inexhaustible energy led him into a wide variety of undertakings, to each of which he managed somehow or other to give effective attention. Next to his mercantile activity, the most characteristic feature of his career was his religious work, especially in connection with the Bethany Sunday School (Presbyterian) which he founded in 1858. He was an outstanding lay leader and derived genuine pleasure and relaxation from his religious activities. An early temperance worker, he hailed the passage of the prohibition amendment and fought the relaxation of the Sunday blue laws in Pennsylvania. His vigorous Christianity saw no inconsistency in requiring the military drill of the young men in his store or in offering the government-trained complements of men from his employ in 1898 and 1917. A consistent Republican, Wanamaker in 1886 was considered for the nomination for mayor. In 1888, he raised a large campaign fund to aid the election of Benjamin Harrison. For this, he was rewarded with the postmaster-generalship (March 5th, 1889). The circumstances surrounding his appointment and his use of the spoils system brought down on his head the severe condemnation of the civil-service reformers. As postmaster-general, he instituted several technical improvements, experimented with rural free delivery, and advocated parcels post and postal savings, both of which were adopted much later; he favored government ownership of the telegraph and the newly perfected telephone services. For several years in the nineties, he waged a vigorous but unsuccessful fight against the Quay machine in Pennsylvania. He sought the Republican nomination for the United States Senate in 1896-97, and for the governorship in 1898. On the outbreak of the World War, he at first urged neutrality, but with the sinking of American ships by German submarines, he used his widely read store editorials to increase the clamor for American entry on the side of the Allies.
Wanamaker remained active in his business and religious undertakings to the end of his long life. He died at his home at "Lindenhurst," near Philadelphia, on December 12th, 1922, after an illness of about three months. His son, Rodman, succeeded him as sole owner and director of the two department stores. Two daughters also survived him. His wife had died in 1920.
