Marshall Field's

Marshall Field & Company (colloquially Marshall Field's) was an American department store chain founded in 1852 by Potter Palmer. It was based in Chicago, Illinois and founded in the 19th century, it grew to become a large chain before Macy's, Inc. acquired it in 2005.

The company's flagship Marshall Field and Company Building on State Street in the Chicago Loop is a National Landmark for its importance in the history of retail. It was officially branded Macy's on State Street in 2006, when it became one of Macy's flagship stores.

Marshall Field & Company traces its antecedents to the P. Palmer & Company, a dry goods store opened at 137 Lake Street in 1852 by Potter Palmer. In 1856, 21-year-old Marshall Field, from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, moved to Chicago on the southwest shores of Lake Michigan, and found work at Cooley, Wadsworth & Company, then the city's largest dry goods firm. In 1860, just before the American Civil War, Field and bookkeeper Levi Z. Leiter became junior partners in the firm, then known as Cooley, Farwell & Company. In 1864, the firm, then led by senior partner John V. Farwell, Sr., was renamed Farwell, Field & Company. only for Field and Leiter to soon withdraw from the partnership with Farwell when presented with the opportunity of a lifetime.

Potter Palmer, plagued by ailing health, was looking to dispose of his thriving business; thus, on January 4, 1865, Field and Leiter entered into partnership with Palmer and his brother Milton. The firm of P. Palmer & Company became known as Field, Palmer, Leiter & Company, with Palmer financing much of their initial capital, as well as his own contribution. After Field and Leiter's immediate success enabled them to pay him back, Palmer withdrew from the partnership in 1867 to focus on his own growing real-estate interests on one of the burgeoning city's important thoroughfares, State Street; Milton Palmer left at this time as well. The store was renamed Field, Leiter & Company, sometimes referred to as "Field & Leiter".

The buyout, however, did not bring an end to Potter Palmer's association with the firm. In 1868, he convinced Field and Leiter to lease a new, six-story edifice he had just built at the northeast corner of State and Washington Streets. The store was soon referred to as the "Marble Palace", owing to its costly marble stone face.

When the Chicago Fire, broke out on October 8, 1871, news reached company officials Henry Willing and Levi Leiter, who decided to load as much of their expensive merchandise as possible onto wagons and take it to Leiter's home, which was out of the path of the fire. The company's drivers and teams were ordered out of the barns. Horace B. Parker, a young salesman, rushed to the store's basement, broke up boxes, and built a fire in the furnace boiler so the steam-powered elevators could be operated. These employees worked feverishly through the night to move vital records and valuable goods to safety.

At one point, the gas tank exploded, which put out the store's gaslights. The men worked on by candlelight and the glow from the approaching flames. The employees got enough steam up to operate the store's powerful pumps in the basement, and volunteers went to the roof and used the store's fire hoses to wet down the roof and the wall on the side of the oncoming fire. Early the following morning, however, the city's waterworks burned, thus ending the water supply and making further efforts useless. The last employee had scarcely exited the building when it burst into flames, shooting fire from every window.

The store burned to the ground, but so much merchandise was saved that the store was able to reopen in only a few weeks (first the wholesale department on October 28, then the retail department on November 6), albeit temporarily relocated to a horse-streetcar barn of the Chicago City Railway Co. at State & 20th Streets. In April 1872, Field & Leiter reopened at a building at Madison and Market Streets (the location of present-day West Wacker Drive). Salesman Parker stayed with the company for 45 more years, rising to the level of General Sales Manager.