Credit: From The Business Biography of John Wanamaker, 1922.
The son of a Philadelphia brickmaker, Wanamaker between 1858 and 1861 served as the first national secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association. Soon before this photo was taken, Wanamaker, then 24 years old, quit the YMCA to open his first clothing store. In the decades that followed, he would become one of the nation's most innovative, successful, and celebrated retailers.
