Bonwit Teller

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Bonwit Teller
Type Department store
Founded 1895 New York, New York
Headquarters New York, New York
Industry Retail
Products Clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, and housewares.
Website None

Bonwit Teller was a department store in New York City founded by Paul Bonwit. Now defunct, it was one of a group of department stores that catered to the carriage trade on Fifth Avenue, including Peck & Peck, Saks Fifth Avenue and B. Altman and Company.

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[edit] History

In 1895, Paul Bonwit opened a store at Sixth Avenue and Eighteenth Street. Two years later, in partnership with Edmund D. Teller, he relocated their establishment to Sixth Avenue and Twenty-third Street, becoming Bonwit Teller. The firm was incorporated in 1907 as Bonwit Teller & Company and in 1911 relocated yet again, this time to the corner of Fifth Avenue and Thirty-eighth Street.[1]

They announced that this new location would provide consumers with:

“ an uncommon display of wearing apparel from foreign and domestic sources . . . which will appeal to those who desire the unusual and exclusive at moderate prices. ”

The firm specialized in high-end women's apparel at a time when many of its competitors were diversifying their product lines, and Bonwit Teller became noted within the trade for the quality of its merchandise as well as the above-average salaries paid to both buyers and executives.

In 1930, with the retail trade in New York City moving uptown, the store moved to a new address on Fifth Avenue – the former A.T. Stewart & Company building at Fifty-sixth Street. In 1931 noted financier Floyd Odlum, who had cashed in his stock holdings just prior to the stock market crash of 1929, was acquiring and turning around firms in financial distress. In 1932, Odlum's wife Hortense became a consultant to the company; and two years later, he sold the firm to Atlas Corporation. Odlum promptly named his wife as the new president (she became the first woman to hold such a position in New York). Paul Bonwit's son Walter Bonwit stayed on as vice president and general manager.[2]

By 1958, Bonwit Teller had six locations, in New York, Manhasset, White Plains, Chicago, Cincinnati, and Boston, as well as a resort shop in Palm Beach. With the addition of Short Hills in 1961 it had eight stores, and by 1965, with the merger of the three-store Bonwit Teller Philadelphia chain, it had twelve.

[edit] Ownership changes

Sold to the Hoving Corporation in 1946, the store underwent several changes of ownership, beginning with Genesco in 1956, then Allied Stores Corporation in 1979, and finally L.J. Hooker in 1987. In the early 1980s, Donald Trump demolished the flagship Manhattan location to build the original Trump Tower.[3] It had a new location attached to the Tower's indoor mall, however it only lasted a short time, before being replaced by another short-lived department store venture, Galeries Lafayette.

The Pyramid Company purchased the Bonwit Teller chain from bankruptcy court for $8 million in 1990, planning to have a Bonwit store as one of four major anchors in the company's then soon-to-open Carousel Center mall in Syracuse, New York. The company had plans to expand the store name throughout the company's two dozen malls and to create a new flagship store in Manhattan, but these plans never materialized. Pyramid reportedly lost $60 million between 1990 and 1999 operating Bonwit Teller. The amount was the subject of a lawsuit alleging company chairman Robert Congel illegally transferred $20 million of the debt to partners in the company's Crossgates Mall in Albany, which never housed a Bonwit Teller store.[4]

In 2005, River West Brands, a Chicago based brand revitalization company, announced that it had formed Avenue Brands LLC to help bring back the company as a luxury brand.

In June 2008 it was announced that Bonwit Teller "boutiques" would be opening in as many as twenty locations, beginning with New York and Los Angeles.

[edit] Former locations

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

[edit] California

[edit] Florida

[edit] Illinois

  • 745 North Michigan Avenue - opened 1947, moved to 875 North Michigan 1971, later I. Magnin, now smaller stores
  • 875 North Michigan Avenue in John Hancock Center - now Paul Stuart

[edit] Massachusetts

  • 234 Berkeley Street - opened 1947, closed 1988, now Louis Boston
  • 500 Boylston Street - now offices

[edit] Michigan

[edit] Missouri

[edit] New Jersey

[edit] New York

[edit] Ohio

[edit] Pennsylvania

[edit] South Carolina

[edit] Canceled stores


[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://dlxs.lib.wayne.edu/d/dhhcc/retailers/bonwitteller.html
  2. ^ http://dlxs.lib.wayne.edu/d/dhhcc/retailers/bonwitteller.html
  3. ^ The Midtown Book - Trump Tower
  4. ^ "Suit Slams How Congel Covered Losses" Syracuse Post-Standard. May 28, 2006