Meier & Frank

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Meier & Frank

Former type	Department store
Fate	Merged into Macy's
Founded	1857
Defunct	2006
Headquarters	Portland, Oregon
Industry	Retail
Products	Clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, and housewares.
Parent	Federated Department Stores, Inc

Meier & Frank was a chain of department stores founded in Portland, Oregon, and later bought out by May Department Stores. Meier & Frank operated in the Pacific Northwest from 1857 to 2005.

[edit] History

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Summary

Meier & Frank was founded in Portland, Oregon in 1857, and acquired in 1966 by May Department Stores. May operated it as a separate division for nearly forty years, expanding the chain to Utah in 2001, as a result of a conversion of May Company's Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution or ZCMI stores purchased in 1999. In 2003 it was consolidated with North Hollywood, California-based Robinsons-May, but retained the historic Meier & Frank name in the Oregon, Utah, and Washington markets.

May itself was acquired by Federated Department Stores on August 30, 2005. On that day the former May Company divisions were dissolved and operational control of the Meier & Frank stores was assumed by Macy's Northwest. The Meier & Frank name was soon eliminated in favor of the Macy's name.

The company's flagship store was the historic Meier & Frank Building. This location is now called Macy's at Meier & Frank Square. The building restored with little attention to historical accuracy paid to the interior. The lower five floors and basement are now occupied by Macy's. The nine upper floors are being converted to a luxury hotel, The Nines (the name coming from a pun combining the number of stories the hotel will occupy with the idea of spiffy dress). The hotel will be owned and managed by Sage Hospitality of Denver, Colorado under a franchise from Starwood Hotels The Luxury Collection brand. Renovation work of the downtown store for the Macy's portion was completed in October 2007.^[1] Work continues on the hotel portion.

Extended History

1857 Aaron Meier (1831-1889) arrived in the Oregon Territory at age 26 and opened a 35 x 50-foot (15 m) mercantile store at 137 Front Street in Portland, population 1,300. He had come to California from Bavaria during the Gold Rush, and spent time as an itinerant peddler in southern Oregon. He formed a partnership with a Mr. Mariholtz and began selling merchandise that arrived by steamer from San Francisco and in the covered wagons rolling along the Oregon Trail.

1864 Meier returned to Ellerstadt, Bavaria, after his father died, leaving Mariholtz to run the business. During his extended stay in Ellerstadt, Meier married a local woman, Jeanette Hirsch (1843-1925), and returned with her to Portland. Meanwhile, back in Portland the dry goods store had collapsed financially, bringing the partnership to an end. Aaron Meier started a new store with his $14,000 inheritance, in larger quarters of 25 x 100 feet (30 m), at 136 Front Street. He hired Emil Frank (1845-1898) in 1870 and Emil’s younger brother Sigmund Frank (1850-1910) in 1872.

1873 Emil Frank became Meier’s partner and the store became known as “Meier & Frank’s”.

1878 The great Portland fire destroyed 20 downtown blocks, including the store, which was immediately rebuilt.

1884 Sigmund Frank became a partner in the store, and a year later married Aaron’s only daughter, Fannie Meier (1865-1930).

1885 Meier & Frank built its own 2-story masonry building, 100 x 200 feet (61 m), on Taylor Street between First and Second.

1887 The first “Friday Surprise” sale was held on April 29.

1888 Emil Frank left the partnership after years of simmering management differences, and Sigmund Frank became Meier’s sole partner just before Meier died in 1889. The name of the store thus remained “Meier & Frank”. Sigmund became the president and Aaron Meier’s widow, Jeannette Hirsch Meier, ran the store behind the scenes, having brought several half-brothers and nephews from Bavaria to work in the store.

1894 In the great flood, the street level of Meier & Frank was three feet deep in water. Customers were brought into the store in rowboats and stepped onto raised walkways to do their shopping.

1898 Meier & Frank emerged as “One of America’s Great Stores” as it moved uptown into its elegant 5-story building, 200 x 100 feet (30 m), on Fifth Street between Alder and Morrison. The building had two elevators and many mechanical innovations never before seen on the Pacific Coast. The opening of the building marked the transition from the old “country store” type of operation to a modern department store. The “new look” represented 120,000 square feet (11,000 m²) of floor space, 68 times more than when Aaron Meier began 40 years earlier. Meier & Frank pioneered the concept of a "money-back guarantee", until then unheard-of in merchandising.

1909 The store erected an adjacent annex of 130 x 100 feet (30 m), ten stories above the street, with two basements, making it the tallest store in the Pacific Northwest and Portland's lone skyscraper. Designed by architect A. E. Doyle, its white terra-cotta exterior set a design trend in downtown Portland, leading to the famed “wall of white” on S.W. Alder. At Sigmund Frank’s death, Aaron Meier’s elder son Abe Meier (1868-1930) became president, serving as the store’s greeter, while his younger son, Julius (1874-1937), became vice president and general manager—running the store. The store’s green delivery wagons (later its delivery trucks) were ubiquitous in Portland, with the company willing to deliver purchases of any size—even a spool of thread.

1913 The five-story building on Fifth Street was demolished, and construction began on a new sixteen-story building, which opened in 1915, giving the store 11 acres (45,000 m²) of retail space. Early on, Meier & Frank was one of the few stores to maintain a buying office in New York. Sales representatives there would joke that there were four major markets on the West Coast: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Meier & Frank.

1920 A full square-block garage and stockroom facility, four stories high, opened on N.W. 14th and 15th between Everett and Flanders. The Retail Reserve Building, eight stories high, opened at N.W. Irving between 14th and 15th in 1923.

1922 Meier & Frank's radio station KFEC, with its antenna atop the 16-story building, began broadcasting from its studio on the 5th floor. The station’s slogan was “KFEC--The Meier & Frank Station”. Meanwhile, Clark Gable worked at Meier & Frank selling neckties.

1930 The president of Meier & Frank, Julius L. Meier, was elected governor of Oregon as an independent, and served 1931-1935.

1932 Combining the 1909 and 1915 buildings with construction on the final quarter-block and topping the consolidated building off at 17 stories, Meier & Frank's now filled the entire block bounded by S.W. Alder, Morrison, 5th, and 6th. Locals jocularly referred to the store as "Murphy & Finnigan's". For a time, Meier & Frank reigned as the largest retail outlet west of the Mississippi and one of the largest stores in the nation.

1933 When President Roosevelt closed banks country-wide, Meier & Frank took out a full-page newspaper ad with a single word: "Confidence". Hundreds of people brought their savings to the store for safekeeping. The store canceled interest charges on all customers' credit accounts.

1937 Julius Meier died and his nephew, Aaron (Bud) Meier Frank (1891-1968) became president of the store, a position he would hold for nearly 40 years, becoming the most important businessman in Portland for decades.

1941-45 Meier & Frank went to war: Federal officials cited the store's efforts in support of the war 1941 to 1945 as the most outstanding of any department store in the United States. Meier & Frank devoted all of its newspaper advertising space to bond sales; for 1,207 continuous days the back page of the first section of The Oregonian ran ads—not to sell merchandise but to support the war effort. The store conducted the largest single sale of war bonds in the nation, a $32-million sale that lasted two weeks in the store's auditorium.

1950 The installation of the longest continuous up/down escalator system in the world was completed, serving all selling floors of the store and costing $1.5 million.

1952 The Portland Hotel was demolished and a two-level parking facility was built on a full block southwest of the store, between S.W. 6th, Broadway, Morrison, and Taylor. In the late 1960s, Meier & Frank proposed an 11-story parking garage on the block, which was denied by the city after a series of heated public hearings. This proposal helped prompt the downtown business community and the city to undertake a comprehensive downtown planning program. The lot became Pioneer Courthouse Square in 1984.

1955 Meier & Frank’s first branch store, with 185,000 square feet (17,200 m²), opened in Salem, Oregon, under the direction and management of Aaron Frank’s son Gerry Frank (1923-). It had store-side parking for 1,000 cars.

1960 Meier & Frank opened Oregon’s second largest department store (exceeded only by its own downtown store) in Northeast Portland in the new Lloyd Center, at the time the world’s largest shopping center. The crown prince of Japan (later Emperor Akihito) joined the dignitaries attending the opening festivities.

1964-66 A bitter intra-family battle erupted as stockholders considered two potential buyout offers for the store—one, supported by Aaron Frank, to sell to Broadway-Hale Stores for cash, and the other, supported by Jack Meier (Julius Meier’s son) (1912-1988), to sell to May Department Stores for stock. Most stock was owned by members of the Meier, Frank, and Hirsch families. After a lengthy and acrimonious struggle, the store was eventually sold to May in 1966 and Jack Meier became the store’s president. Aaron Frank retired, and Gerry Frank became chief of staff to newly-elected U.S. Senator Mark Hatfield, eventually earning the nickname “Oregon’s Third Senator”.

1969-2004 Meier & Frank opened stores in Eugene (1969), Washington Square in Tigard (1972), Vancouver, Washington (1977), Clackamas Town Center in Portland (1980 and 2002), Medford (1986), and Tanasbourne in Hillsboro (2004). Measuring by store units, Meier & Frank was roughly four times smaller than its closest rival within the May Department Stores family, but its average sales per square foot was the third highest, an enviable $225 per square foot during the late 1990s.

2001 May rebranded its Utah-based ZCMI stores (Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution) with the Meier & Frank name.

2002 Meier & Frank’s operations merged with the Robinsons-May division in Los Angeles, California, while retaining its name.

2005 May Department Stores was bought by Federated Department Stores, which then renamed itself after its flagship store, Macy's. The store (and many other venerable department store names owned by Federated) became “Macy’s”,^[2] amid public sadness at the passing of an era, just before the store’s 150th birthday.

[edit] Restaurants

In the Portland Metro area, Meier & Frank also operated several restaurants in or near its stores, all of which have now been closed.

• The Georgian Room, on the 10th floor - Downtown Portland (Closed in 2005 for building renovation)
• The Aladdin Restaurant, on the 3rd floor - Lloyd Center (Closed in 1990 for Lloyd Center renovation. Old space is now mall food court)
• The Homestead Restaurant, on the 2nd floor - Vancouver Mall (Closed in 2002 due to pending store expansion)
• The Homestead Restaurant, on the 2nd floor - Washington Square (Closed in 1981 for store expansion)
• The Oregon Room, on the main floor - Downtown Salem, Oregon (Closed, Date Unknown)

[edit] See also

• Julius L. Meier
• Meier & Frank Building

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• History of Meier & Frank, from an extensive, privately-maintained website covering Portland history
• Goodbye, Meier & Frank, a March 2005 story from the Portland Tribune
• Meier & Frank to be renamed Macy's, from the Portland Business Journal
• Federated Announces Plan to Expand Macy's Brand in 2006, a Federated July 2005 press release

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