Saks Global, which owns Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman, is on its way to financial restructuring in the wake of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing that would enable the company to pay its bills and keep its New York stores open.

Even so, these woes are the latest warning flag about a kind of retail business that a million fancy boutiques can’t replace: department stores, which are a civilizing and democratizing influence on urban life.

Retail economists disparage the country’s surviving department stores as “dinosaurs,” a perception that’s grown since online shopping dealt a staggering blow to bricks-and-mortar retailing. But when Lord & Taylor closed its Fifth Avenue flagship in early 2019, I lamented not only losing its absurdly discounted $39 Perry Ellis jackets on the sixth floor, but also the emporium’s “welcoming civility that softened the city’s rough edges.”

Manhattan, once home to over a dozen department stores, is down to five full-size ones — Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, Saks, Nordstrom and Bergdorf Goodman — and a smaller........

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