Flip to John Wanamaker's first store, corner of Market and 6th Streets, Philadelphia, PA, circa 1902.Close Window
Credit: Herbert Adams Gibbons, John Wanamaker. Harper & Brothers, 1926.
In 1910, John Wanamaker replaced his aging Grand Depot with a palatial new department store on the same site in Center City, Philadelphia. Designed by Chicago architect Daniel H. Burnham, the twelve-store emporium boasted nearly two-million square feet of floor space, a Grand Court that provided shoppers music played on the world's largest pipe organ, and a host of services and amenities. In the decades that followed, Wanamakers served as the western anchor of a string of department stores that stretched east along Market Street. Wanamaker's was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1978.
