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That narrative isn’t entirely wrong. Shoplifting is causing store closures in urban areas, and Union Square has apparently been particularly hard hit. Employees at the Macy’s there told the San Francisco Standard that theft was rampant. But while shoplifting is obviously bad for business, this isn’t mostly a story about urban mismanagement. It’s a story about the technological forces that created the department store — and the ones that are now killing it.
The department store rode into town on rails, and the modern city rode in along with it. Railroads brought cheap goods into towns from all over, along with people to buy those goods. Streetcars made it convenient to work or shop miles from where you lived. These trends drove the shape of the classic prewar city, with its stately residential neighborhoods and its downtown near the rail stations, brimming with office clusters and shopping districts anchored by the great department stores.
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Rail made it practical to sell at scale, which allowed department stores to do things no previous retailer could imagine. They bought in bulk and sold at prices no smaller shop could match, sent trendspotters to Paris and translated those designs into large-scale orders for the growing, immigrant-fueled, ready-to-wear industry. They brought the entire emerging urban middle class under one roof — the young secretary in the bargain basement, the doctor’s wife upstairs among better dresses, but all in the same place, buying the same sorts of things and having their tastes shaped by the same displays. There was no more efficient way to shop: furniture, baby clothes, housewares and a new tie in one building — along with a leisurely lunch at the store’s tearoom.
In their heyday, department stores accounted for more than 10 percent of all retail spending and were near the forefront of successive technological and cultural transformations. They were early adopters of elevators, escalators, electric lights and air conditioning, which let them make their buildings bigger and keep shoppers there longer. Along with sustaining the ready-to-wear revolution, they invented the bridal registry and provided some of the first well-paid jobs for women.
After the Second World War, when automobiles and interstates drew consumers away from downtown, department stores followed Americans to the suburbs, becoming anchors for the newfangled shopping mall. And when urban downtowns became chic again, they were still there in their beautiful old buildings, reflecting all the glamour they’d embodied over the years. Except the department store didn’t make much sense anymore. There was now an even more convenient way to see a thousand products in short order: Open your computer.
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Whatever local conditions are exacerbating the predicament at any given store, the fundamental issue is that Macy’s and its brethren have been obsoleted by one technological advance too many. Shoplifting and disorder are serious problems, but they’re problems Macy’s could handle if we still wanted to shop there: Add staff, invest in anti-theft technology, pressure the local government into adding police patrols. But we don’t want to shop there, so those investments probably won’t pay for themselves.
If San Francisco officials had kept better order in Union Square, they likely could have held on to Macy’s and other retailers a little longer. But it’s hard to see how they could have done more than delayed the inevitable, especially with remote work drawing professionals out of urban cores. Physical department stores are a vital part of urban history — and mine personally. But, aside from happy memories, they’re unlikely to play a starring role in our future.
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My first memory of something I am certain actually happened is the time my mother lost me in Macy’s. I remember it in snatches: the crowds, my sudden bewilderment, my vehement sobbing. But mostly, I remember being whisked to a back office where cooing adults bought me every ice cream bar the employee vending machine offered — and the sound my mother made when she saw my chocolate-smeared face peering out from behind a security guard.
Most New Yorkers of my age have a Macy’s story, or three, or 30. By the time I was growing up, in the 1970s and ’80s, the department store was already well past its peak nationwide, but for a lot of us it was still where most major shopping trips started, or ended. The Macy’s in “Miracle on 34th Street” was our Macy’s, with its iconic wooden escalators and Thanksgiving Day Parade and magical animatronic window displays every Christmas. It was where I did my annual school shopping, bought my first cocktail dress and got my first makeover. For middle-class kids like me, it was a memory fountain and milestone factory.
Those days are long gone, of course. I live in D.C. now, and the last Macy’s I visited was a forlorn mall outpost surrounded by fly-by-night stores and CBD vending machines. I wasn’t even going to Macy’s proper; I was picking up glasses from the in-store LensCrafters. This week, when Macy’s announced it is closing 150 stores over the next three years, I wondered whether that location would be among them — and how much longer the Herald Square mother ship can hang on.
It’s hard to find information about which locations are closing, which is a measure of how unimportant the department store has become to American life. Seemingly the only reason anyone is paying attention to this story is that the store in San Francisco’s Union Square is on the chopping block. This attracted conservative attention on social media, not because they want to shop there but because its closure feeds a larger narrative about out-of-control shoplifting and urban disorder.
That narrative isn’t entirely wrong. Shoplifting is causing store closures in urban areas, and Union Square has apparently been particularly hard hit. Employees at the Macy’s there told the San Francisco Standard that theft was rampant. But while shoplifting is obviously bad for business, this isn’t mostly a story about urban mismanagement. It’s a story about the technological forces that created the department store — and the ones that are now killing it.
The department store rode into town on rails, and the modern city rode in along with it. Railroads brought cheap goods into towns from all over, along with people to buy those goods. Streetcars made it convenient to work or shop miles from where you lived. These trends drove the shape of the classic prewar city, with its stately residential neighborhoods and its downtown near the rail stations, brimming with office clusters and shopping districts anchored by the great department stores.
Rail made it practical to sell at scale, which allowed department stores to do things no previous retailer could imagine. They bought in bulk and sold at prices no smaller shop could match, sent trendspotters to Paris and translated those designs into large-scale orders for the growing, immigrant-fueled, ready-to-wear industry. They brought the entire emerging urban middle class under one roof — the young secretary in the bargain basement, the doctor’s wife upstairs among better dresses, but all in the same place, buying the same sorts of things and having their tastes shaped by the same displays. There was no more efficient way to shop: furniture, baby clothes, housewares and a new tie in one building — along with a leisurely lunch at the store’s tearoom.
In their heyday, department stores accounted for more than 10 percent of all retail spending and were near the forefront of successive technological and cultural transformations. They were early adopters of elevators, escalators, electric lights and air conditioning, which let them make their buildings bigger and keep shoppers there longer. Along with sustaining the ready-to-wear revolution, they invented the bridal registry and provided some of the first well-paid jobs for women.
After the Second World War, when automobiles and interstates drew consumers away from downtown, department stores followed Americans to the suburbs, becoming anchors for the newfangled shopping mall. And when urban downtowns became chic again, they were still there in their beautiful old buildings, reflecting all the glamour they’d embodied over the years. Except the department store didn’t make much sense anymore. There was now an even more convenient way to see a thousand products in short order: Open your computer.
Whatever local conditions are exacerbating the predicament at any given store, the fundamental issue is that Macy’s and its brethren have been obsoleted by one technological advance too many. Shoplifting and disorder are serious problems, but they’re problems Macy’s could handle if we still wanted to shop there: Add staff, invest in anti-theft technology, pressure the local government into adding police patrols. But we don’t want to shop there, so those investments probably won’t pay for themselves.
If San Francisco officials had kept better order in Union Square, they likely could have held on to Macy’s and other retailers a little longer. But it’s hard to see how they could have done more than delayed the inevitable, especially with remote work drawing professionals out of urban cores. Physical department stores are a vital part of urban history — and mine personally. But, aside from happy memories, they’re unlikely to play a starring role in our future.
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