Alexander Turney Stewart (October 12, 1803 – April 10, 1876) was a successful Irish entrepreneur who made his multi-million fortune in what was at the time the most extensive and lucrative dry goods business in the world.
Stewart was born in Lisburn, Ireland, and abandoned his original aspirations of becoming a minister to come to New York City in the summer of 1823. He spent a short time teaching before returning to Ireland to receive the money his grandfather had left him, purchase some Belfast linens and laces, and return to New York to open a store.
He was a business genius, and by 1848 he had built a large marble-fronted store on Broadway between Chambers Street and Reade Street, which was devoted to the wholesale branch of his business, and the largest retail store in the world at that time. Stewart also had branches of his company in different parts of the world and owned several mills and factories. Stewart had an estimated annual income of $1,000,000 in 1869.
Contents |
Alexander Turney Stewart was born in Lisburn, Ireland to Scottish Protestant parents on October 12, 1803. The date of his birth has been debated by historians over the years and is still questionable. However, historians have acknowledged this date since this is the one put on his coffin plate.
Three weeks after his birth, Stewart’s farmer father died of tuberculosis. About two years later Stewart’s mother remarried and followed her new husband to America, leaving Stewart behind to be raised by his grandfather, John Torney.
While raising his only grandson, Torney wanted Stewart to enter The Church of England to become a minister, but Stewart wanted to go to Trinity College. At age seven, Stewart was sent to a village school, and then in 1814 he entered Mr. Neely’s English Academy. In 1816, when Stewart’s grandfather died, he was brought into the home of Thomas Lamb, an Irish Quaker.
When finishing up his formal education at Belfast Academical Institute, he decided to further his knowledge of other cultures by writing to his mother, who was in New York City at the time. The more Stewart kept in touch with his mother, the more he desired to further his life in New York. However, before moving, Lamb insisted that Stewart get some experience in business training and earn money as a grocer in Belfast. Weary of prolonging his stay in Ireland, Stewart agreed to take the position recommended by Lamb and began to work at the age of fifteen as a bag boy. In the spring of 1818, shortly after working as a grocer, Stewart packed his bags along with the $500 he had earned and left Belfast for New York City.
After traveling for about six weeks at sea, Stewart arrived at his mother's home in New York City. Upon his arrival in the big city, Stewart became a tutor at Isaac N. Bragg’s Academy, a school for wealthy students located on Roosevelt Street. Here he earned $300 a year, an honest wage during the early 19th century. After securing a place to live and a job, Stewart joined an Episcopal church run by Reverend Edward Mitchell. There Stewart met his future wife, Cornelia Mitchell Clinch, the daughter of Susannah Banker and James Clinch, a wealthy ship chandler. Cornelia's brother was Acting Collector of the Port of New York Charles P. Clinch (1797–1880).
Historians know little about Stewart’s life between 1818 and 1822, except that he returned to Ireland upon receiving his grandfather’s inheritance of somewhere between $5,000 to $10,000. The will pertaining to Stewart stated:
Upon returning to New York City in 1823, Stewart married Cornelia on October 16, 1823. Before marrying, Stewart opened his first store. Located at 283 Broadway, the first in a series of retail locations Stewart established in his future empire of A.T. Stewart and Company, his store sold Irish fabrics along with some domestic calicos, which had been purchased with money from his inheritance and his earnings as a tutor.
The store was just across from City Hall Park, north of Chambers Street on the opposite side of Broadway from where his later successful store, “The Marble Palace” was to be built. The store opened on September 1, 1823. It measured 12.5 feet wide by 30 feet deep, being a rather small store by today’s standards, but average size during the 19th century. Stewart rented out the space for $375 a year. The store was split up into two parts, divided by a thin wall. The larger front section was used for the business and the smaller area in back served as the owner’s residence.
Unlike his other competitors in the dry goods trade who were located along Pearl Street, Stewart innovated by placing his establishment several blocks west on Broadway. He acknowledged that customers would travel to buy goods where they could get the best price and the easiest method of buying. Stewart knew that the key to success was not where the store was placed, but rather where “to obtain wholesale trade to undersell competitors".[2]
When first opening the store, Stewart placed cases full of merchandise along the sidewalk in front of the store as a way of advertising his establishment. Stewart claimed that “the messy clutter in front of the store and pushing crowds advertised the business.” [3]
As he rose to the top of the retail developers, Stewart included no signs on any place of his store and did not use any advertisements until May 13, 1831. He felt that anyone who wanted to shop in his store would “know where it was located.” [4]
A natural salesman, Stewart realized that “you will deal with ignorant, opinionated and innocent people. You will often have an opportunity to cheat them. If they could, they would cheat you, or force you to sell at less than cost. You must be wise, but not too wise. You must never actually cheat the customer, even if you can.... You must make her happy and satisfied, so she will come back.” [5] Stewart held that the key to establishing a great business was to make friends with the customers and encourage their return.
Between 1846 and 1848, the construction and finishing details were completed of one of Stewart’s most famous buildings, the "Marble Palace" at 280 Broadway. This establishment, "the cradle of the department store",[6] sent A.T. Stewart and Company to the top of America’s most successful retailers.
The building, originally four stories over a ground floor supported on cast iron Corinthian columns, survives at 280 Broadway at the corner of Chambers Street, just across from his first store. It offered imported European women’s clothing. In addition to its merchandise, the second floor offered the first women’s “fashion shows” as full-length mirrors enabled women to view themselves from different angles.
The Italianate design, faced with Tuckahoe marble, featured four floors of pedimented windows, the first commercial building in the United States to display an extravagant exterior. Inside, not only did Stewart want to display his merchandise, but he wanted the structure to emphasize natural light from its central rotunda and high ceilings.
“The Marble Palace” claimed to be one of the first “big stores” that sold merchandise, and was a huge financial success. In 1856 Stewart decided to expand his merchandise to include furs, “the best and most natural skins”, as customers were told. In the 1850s, he also followed other retailers such as Macy's, Lord and Taylor and B. Altman and Company to the area which was to be called “Ladies Mile”, on Broadway and Sixth Avenue between 9th Street and 23rd Street.
However, in 1862, Stewart’s “true” department store, referred to as the “Iron Palace”, was built. This six-storey building with its cast-iron front, glass dome skylight and grand emporium, employed up to 2,000 people. The immense structure occupies a major portion of a city block near Grace Church, from Broadway and Ninth Street to Tenth Street and Astor Place. The establishment’s nineteen departments included silks, dress goods, carpets and even toys.
By 1877, it had expanded to thirty separate departments, carrying a wide variety of items. As noted by The New York Times, “a man may fit up his house there down to the bedding, carpets and upholstery.” [7]
A.T. Stewart and Company did not go unnoticed throughout the country. Along with his successful retail store in New York City, Stewart also established himself as one of the wealthiest men in the United States by allowing women all over the country to purchase and order items from his wholesale department store.
Beginning in 1868, Stewart began receiving letters from women in rural parts of the United States requesting his merchandise. Stewart promptly replied to these letters and orders by sending out the requests and even paying the postage. Once received, women would send back the money needed to pay for their orders.
Seeing potential for the mail order business, by 1876 Stewart had hired twenty clerks to read, respond and mail out the entailed orders. That year he profited over $500,000 from the mailing business alone. Stewart’s mail-order business’ efficiency, convenience and profits gained so much attention from all over the country that other famous businesses such as Sears, Montgomery Ward and Spiegel's followed in his footsteps.
In March 1869, President Ulysses S. Grant offered Stewart the position of Secretary of the Treasury (after Joseph Seligman had declined it), but he was not confirmed by the United States Senate. One source[8] reports that a major impediment to Stewart's appointment was a provision in the act of September 2, 1789, which established the Treasury Department. This law provided that the Treasury Department, having the administration of the custom houses under its control, should not have at its head a merchant or importer in active business. Although Grant requested the two houses of Congress to override this provision, upon the objection of Charles Sumner this request was not considered in the Senate. Another source[9] attributes Stewart's rejection to his close association with Judge Henry Hilton, his wife's cousin's husband and a member of the corrupt Tweed Ring.
In 1869-70, A.T. Stewart built the first of the grand Fifth Avenue palaces, on the northwest corner of 34th Street, across from the doyenne of New York society, Caroline Schermerhorn Astor.[10] His architect, as for the store, was John Kellum. When all of Fifth Avenue was of brownstone rowhouses, Stewart's fireproof structure in French Second Empire taste was faced with marble.
It had three main floors and an attic in a mansard roof. A mezzanine floor at cornice height was used for storage. The house was separated from the sidewalks by a moat-like light well that lit the service areas in the basement. The main parlour ran the full length of the house's Fifth Avenue frontage.
On the death of Stewart's widow in 1886, it was rented as premises for the Manhattan Club and was painted in 1891 by Childe Hassam[11] In 1901 Stewart's marble palace was razed, to make way for the new premises of the Knickerbocker Trust Company.
Stewart incorporated the Central Railroad of Long Island in 1871 and completed it in 1873, running from Long Island City through his development at Garden City to a brick yard at (Old) Bethpage and docks at Babylon. This became part of the Long Island Rail Road system in 1876, and the parts that have not been abandoned are the Hempstead Branch and Central Branch. The brickyard continued into existence until 1981, variously known as Bethpage Brickworks, Queens County Brick Manufacturing Company, and (after Nassau County split from Queens County in 1899) Nassau Brick Company.
Before Stewart died in 1876, he succeeded in creating his own manufacturing facilities. He wanted to have his own mills, to supply his wholesale and retail operations. With these mills located in New York and New England, Stewart produced his own woolen fabrics and employed thousands of workers. Stewart also served on several New York State Chamber of Commerce Committees between 1862 and 1871. Though he never officially was elected as a New York State officer, he did attend Lincoln’s funeral as a Chamber delegate.
At the time of Stewart’s death, he was one of the richest men in New York, just behind a Vanderbilt and Astor. Worth an estimated $40 million,[12] Stewart, unlike New York’s other wealthy men who made their millions through real estate, had earned his wealth in retail trade. Out of the twenty-four clerks who entered A.T. Stewart and Company in 1836, six still worked for the company in 1876. To these long-term employees, Stewart showed his gratitude by leaving them more than $250,000 (equivalent to $5,017,188 in 2009[13]) in his will.
The Stewart fortune, willed to Mrs Stewart, with Judge Henry Hilton as trustee was the subject of litigation for years, although a swarm of long-lost Turney relatives were quickly dismissed. Litigation was based in part on Mrs Stewart's hasty transfer of the dry goods business in 1876 to Hilton, in exchange for the $1,000,000 willed to Hilton, who carried on the business under the name E.J. denning & Co.[14]
Mrs Stewart, who lived quietly in New York and at the Grand Union Hotel (Saratoga Springs, New York), which she inherited, died suddenly, of pneumonia, 25 October 1886,[15] and ex-Judge Hilton died there 24 August 1899, having previously given $500,000 to the Garden City institutions.
In 1896, the Iron Palace was bought by John Wanamaker and reopened as “Wanamaker’s.” The Philadelphian Wanamaker, had long been an admirer of Stewart and stated that one of his best qualities was his “personal attention to the details of the business... He could have had others to look after the details--they have to be looked after, but few attend to sweeping up, and that’s what Stewart did.” [16] In 1917, the New York Sun newspaper bought out Stewart’s first store for its main offices. In 1966, the building, though known as the "Sun Building", was labeled a landmark structure by the City of New York.
Historians and other retail owners have concluded that it was A.T. Stewart’s awareness and love for details that differentiated him from his competitors and contributed greatly to his success. Today, Sears, K-Mart and Wal-Mart have built upon and refined Stewart’s ideas of distribution, merchandising, manufacturing and payment methods, to become some of the most powerful stores in the world.
At the time of his death, Stewart was building at Hempstead Plains, Long Island, the town of Garden City, with the purpose of affording to his employees comfortable and airy housing at a moderate cost. After his death, his wife Cornelia erected several buildings in memoriam, including St. Paul's School and The Cathedral of the Incarnation, Garden City; the latter also served as a mausoleum to both Stewart and his wife. Stewart and his wife had played a large role in the development of Garden City, developing such landmarks as The Garden City Hotel (rebuilt in the 1983), St. Paul's School and the Cathedral of the Incarnation.
Three weeks after his burial at St Mark's Church in the Bowery, Stewart's body was stolen and the remains held for ransom. The ransom was paid, and remains were returned, although never verified as his. A local legend states that the mausoleum holding his remains is rigged with security devices which will cause the bells of the Cathedral to ring if ever disturbed.[17][18]
On May 1, 1890, a notice appeared in the New York Times announcing that Joseph Pulitzer, Julius Chambers, et al. had been indicted for posthumous criminal libel against Alexander T. Stewart. The newspaper reprinted a letter to District Attorney Fellows complaining about statements in a series of articles, from the 14th to the 19th of April in the New York World, accusing Stewart of "a dark and secret crime", as the man who "invited guests to meet his mistresses at his table", and as "a pirate of the dry goods ocean."[19]