Marshall Fields becomes Macy's

Apparently Chicagoans are in disbelieve bordering on anger over the renaming of the venerable Marshall Fields store in Chicago to Macy's of New York fame. Architectually it is a beautiful building inside and out. I love department stores. There are so few of them left in America. At one time they existed in every large city. Peoria had a couple. I remember going Christmas shopping in downtown Peoria, when there was still a downtown there. I remember doing the same in Bloomington. My travels in Europe have convinced me that these are a magnificent retail models that are worthy of re-examination. Sadly the few department stores I have been to in the U.S. since... oh... the 90s have been disappointments. I don't consider Bergners and Famous Barr to be proper department stores.

I have been to the Marshall Fields in downtown Chicago three times. On each of the visits I found the place to be dirty, unkempt, and by a appearances ill managed. Maybe there are a few weeks out of the year, that they are at their tip top best but the times I was there, were not one of them. Marshall Fields also seemed to be drifting from the more authentic department store model. Their locations in various malls bore little resemblance and felt more like Bergners or Famous Barr. Whatever the romance the original Marshall Fields location bears, the companyll seemed in trouble.


It would be nice to see department stores make a resurgance. Harrod's in London, while awfully full of itself, along with KaDeWe in Berlin, Lafayette in Paris, all make Marshall Fields a pale shadow of itself. I have not been to New York City yet so I can't really compare with the original Macy's or Bloomingdale's. The nice thing about the European department stores, was that you can buy anything. They appealed to the lower middle class, all the way to the uber rich. You could do your basic grocery shopping and buy an Armani suit all in one building. Yes I suppose in a way it is like a Super Wal-Mart, only with a much broader range of goods and much more floorspace and way more class. At KaDeWe, you could buy a 5 figure (five even in US$) bottle of wine along with the cheapest of beers. Have dinner prepared from the items available in the Deli. All that original main street charm that simply is not had at Northwoods or Grand Prairie.

Hopefully Macy's runs the place better. It is gonna be a tough sell getting Chicagoans to feel good about a New York transplant.