Kaufmann's Department Store
1871 - 2005
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Advertising as “Kaufmann’s Cheapest Corner,” the business soon acquired several adjacent addresses, eventually occupying 83-87 Smithfield Street under the name J. Kaufmann and Brothers. As business grew, the brothers began introducing the kind of interior features for which the store became known: a grand staircase and electric chandeliers installed in 1882 and a hydraulic elevator installed in 1885 presaged the Carrara-glass columns and escalators added in 1926. By 1888, Kaufmann’s stocked women’s clothing, housewares and shoes. The building underwent nearly constant revisions, including a corner at Forbes Avenue rebuilt in 1908 by architect Charles Bickel and an addition by Jannsen & Abbott along Fifth Avenue in 1913. In the 1890s, a bronze, four-faced freestanding clock was added to the street below, introducing the phrase “meet me under the Kaufmann’s clock.” The clock was replaced by an ornate bronze mounted timepiece after the 1913 renovations, and the corner remained a popular Pittsburgh meeting place well into the late twentieth century. When the business was incorporated in January of 1913, the Gazette Times called it “one of the most important department stores in the United States.”
In 1920, Edgar J. Kaufmann, son of Morris Kaufmann, assumed the store’s presidency. Under the leadership of Kaufmann and his wife, Liliane, the store embraced innovations in fashion, design, telecommunications and product testing. A 2.5-million-dollar refurbishment of the store’s first floor and Arcade was completed in 1930. The Vendôme, the store’s famous penthouse fashion shop, was founded by Liliane Kaufmann in 1933. Exhibitions highlighting arts and sciences were held semi-annually. After Kaufmann’s merged with the May Department Stores Company in 1946, Edgar Kaufmann remained at the helm. The 19-story Frick Annex Building on Forbes Avenue and Carnegie-Illinois Building on Fifth Avenue were purchased in 1950 to make way for a service building and sales annex. Kaufmann’s downtown location remained its flagship store as a regional expansion began. Suburban branch locations built in Monroeville, Mt. Lebanon and the North Hills in the late 1960s preceded branches in Steubenville, Ohio, Erie, Pa., New York and West Virginia. Many were replaced by embedded shopping mall locations in the 1980s. After Federated Department Stores acquired the May Company in 2005, the Kaufmann’s name was replaced by Macy’s. The downtown location closed in 2015 after a decade under the Macy’s banner and was sold to developers in 2016.