Chicago hallmark Marshall Fields is now going to be MACY'S!!*&^%$

[in_cog_ni_to]

This is unfuckingbelievable! :cry: Marshall Fields IS Chicago. Marshall Fields is a Hallmark of the city and now it's going to be gone. :cry: I can't believe it. This is so sad. I know, in the grand scheme of things this isn't as important as a hurricane, but it really is a sad day for Chicago. There goes our holiday tradition of seeing the windows, lunch in the Walnut Room and seeing their wonderful decorations. *sigh* Oh well. Such is life in this country.

[daninthemoon]

1. When??? We travel a long way to Chicago at Christmas time, but

not this year. Will this happen before this holiday season? Are they definitely doing away with the windows?

[in_cog_ni_to]

6. I don't know if they're doing the windows. I was so ANGRY

I missed the rest of the news report. I heard that the Frango Mints will stay, but that's all I caught. It sounds like the change is to take place soon. :cry:

[subchicagogal]

16. Not till 2006.......

so this will potentially be the last holiday season for Fields. I just told my husband we definitely have to go to the Walnut Room this holiday season....:cry: I'm still holding out hope this is just a publicity stunt.

[in_cog_ni_to]

24. 2006? I can only IMAGINE how busy the holiday season will be this year!

I know WE won't miss it. I'm so sad. :(

[benburch]

2. Macy's can Go TO HELL.

I'll never shop there. Period.

[im10ashus]

3. That's sad.

I lived in Chicago for 10 years and loved Fields. Not hard to believe since they are owned by the same company.

[KittyWampus]

4. Too Bad. Once upon a time, Macys was a great dept. store. Now that it's

one of many dept. stores owned by a conglomerate it has gone down hill. Nordstroms and Bloomingdales gets all the glory. And JCPenny's gets the bargains. :(

[marmar]

5. Agreed.

Here in the Detroit area, we had a hard time when Target Corp. changed Hudsons to Marshall Fields (it was just the name thing - they had essentially been the same store for years) but we learned to live with it. But this is too much. Macys stores are a couple of steps down on the scale in my opinion, and I like the Field Gear brand at Fields. This really does suck.

[RC]

7. Yeah, but..., but...,

Macy's is easier to spell than Marshall Fields.

[Tatiana]

8. Fields is a Chicago staple!

UGH. Didn't Macy's close a bunch of department stores down south a couple of years ago?

Fields is one of my favorite downtown stores. I prefer it over Carson Pierie Scott.

I guess this is just more corporate conglomerania. :(

[daninthemoon]

11. Did they open that walmart in Daly Plaza, yet?

[in_cog_ni_to]

15. Fields WAS a Chicago staple.

Gone. :( Man, this just sucks.

[Tatiana]

20. Bet Roger Ebert does a column in the S-Times about this!

We should all write them and complain! (Not that it will do a bunch of good...)

FEDERATED CORPORATE (parent company of Macy's and Bloomie's)
West Seventh Street
Cincinnati, OH 45202
513-579-7000


MACY'S CORPORATE MARKETING
151 West 34th Street
New York, NY 10001
212-494-3412


MACY'S EAST
151 W. 34th Street
New York, NY 10001
212-695-4400

[Carla in Ca]

35. I know exactly how you feel

In Los Angeles stands one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen. It used to be called Bullocks Wilshire. It was built in the art-deco style in 1929. Some of my best childhood memories are of my great grandmother, grandmother, my mom and me having lunch in the tea room. Four generations.
Many of the greatest stars shopped there, like Garbo and Dietrich and some, like Angela Lansbury worked there until they got their big break. I wish I'd been old enough to see them!
Although it closed in 1996, it was refurbished and is now a law library. Tours are available several times a year.
There was also a Bullocks in Orange County. Not quite the same but about that same time, it was changed to Macy's. I was devastated. I went in and canceled my charge account immediately, and I told them why.
I still have the Bullock's card and my childhood memories. My mom, who is 72 now still likes to talk about Bullocks Wilshire. We drive by it once in a while, just to make sure it is still there.

[SeattleGirl]

9. They already assimilated The Bon here in Seattle.

Grf! It's starting to look like a bargain basement store.

[hedda_foil]

10. Oooh. This is going to be interesting.

Macy's obviously doesn't know Chicagoans. Their Chicago business is going to plummet. NOBODY does indignation like Chicagoans when Fields is messed with. We went nuts when they tried to take away our Fields green shopping bags, and nearly crashed the frango mint market when they moved production out of the city. Change the name? That's going to go down about as well as changing the name of the city to Macy's.

[grasswire]

12. same thing happening in Portland...

...to the venerable Meier and Frank department stores. They're "going Macy" too -- over the heartfelt disappointment of generations of Oregonians.

[SeattleGirl]

17. Crap! Not M&F also!

Wonder if they are changing the one in Eugene too. (my family lives there).

[Mz Pip]

This is just wrong.

I remember my parents taking me to see the Christmas displays at Marshall Fields and Carson Perrie (sp?) Scott in Chicago back in the days of the dinosaurs. It was a truly magical experience for a little kid.

I hope to get back to Chicago one more time before Fields becomes Macys. Yuck.

Are they still going to have Frango bars????

Mz Pip
:dem:

[in_cog_ni_to]

21. We've been taking our son there since he was in a stroller

and he's now 12. We just LOVE going there for a day during the holidays. :( The news report said Frango Mints will stay. :)

[Davis_X_Machina]

13. Happened here...

...with Jordan Marsh ages ago.

Jordan Marsh was Boston, and now

Filene's is now gone as well.

All the local little fish -- Porteus Mitchell and Braun, e.g. -- have been gone for a decade.

In ten years, there'll be one bank, called Bank. One department store called Department Store (or Macy's), one restaurant, called Restaurant, repeated endlessly from sea to shining sea.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

29. No more Filene's basement?

:-(

[Tesha]

40. "Filene's Basement" is a separate corporation.

"Filene's Basement" is a separate corporation. It's unaffected by
Federated's buy-out of Filenes.

Tesha

[Tesha]

41. "All restaurants are Taco Bells now!"

(Sandra Bullock in "Demolition Man".)

Tesha

[drbtg1]

43. A plaque for Jordan Marsh

I remember seeing a plaque of the side of the building where Jordan Marsh used to be at Downtown Crossing noting that it used to be Jordan Marsh.

I know it's not enough.

[mcscajun]

14. Ugh! I'm from NYC and even *I* understand.

My sympathies.

[Penndems]

18. I know how you feel

Federated bought out The May Company, which owns Hecht's, a D.C.-based department store that's been here over 100 years. In fact, it's the *LAST* D.C.-based retailer we have left.

It's gonna be converted to - you guessed it - a Macy's. :(

[etherealtruth]

45. Now that makes me sad ...

The Detroit areas change from Hudson's to Marshall Field's was hard (sad);a change from Marshall Fields to anything (Macy's, Uncle Elmo's Bait and Tackle ... )is irrelevant to most of us (as our heart was with Hudson's). Hecht's change makes me sad; I spent years in Va shopping at Hecht's:(

[Penndems]

49. Hecht's will be sorely missed around these parts

After Garfinkel's, Woodward and Lothrop, Kann's, Jelleff's and Raleigh's went under, Hecht's was the only home-grown retailing establisment we had left. Anybody who grew up in the D.C. area remembers going shopping for the hippest new school clothes at "The Hecht Company", as it used to be known as.

I worked at Hecht's Tysons Corner store in the mid-1970s, so it's especially bittersweet for me. :(

[BiggJawn]

19. Only a matter of time before Wrigley Field becomes Nextel Field...

Hell, they already took Comisky Park and named "US Cellular Field"...

[in_cog_ni_to]

26. The Macy's guy said that Chicagoans have "adapted well to calling

Comisky Park, US Cellular Field and they will get use to calling Marshall Fields, Macy's. I DON'T THINK SO! :grr:

[BiggJawn]

27. Next they'll re-name U-505 "USS Herringsalat"

I remember my mom talking about going to Marshall Fields at xmas time.
Not Macy's, Marshall Fields.

The motive power behind this is probably some spiff 20-something MBA with perfect bone-white teeth who thinks "nostalgia" is a Atari and couldn't comprehend someone taking their little girl on a train ride from Rockford to Chicago to go shopping....

[in_cog_ni_to]

28. My husband was just talking about that. He grew up in Chicago and his mom

was one of Marshall Fields' best customers, I guess (I never met her before she passed away). He said he remembered her taking him to Fields, sitting him on a chair (he was so little his feet didn't touch the floor, he was young) and she would spend HOURS picking out shoes and then they would go to the Walnut Room for lunch. This change means a lot to him too. Very, very sad. He has WONDERFUL memories of shopping with his mom at Marshall Fields and he so enjoys sharing those memories with our son. A TRADITION. Gone. :(

[BiggJawn]

30. Just like me going downtown to shop with my grandma.

She'd take me to L. S. Ayres in downtown Indianapolis. This was in the days when they had ELEVATOR OPERATORS, and the cashier was someplace out of sight, so sales slips and money was sent packing in those air tubes,and the receipt and change came flying back, and charges were done at the POP with a thing that looked like a miltary dog-tag called a "Charge-a-Plate" (No Capital One back then)

Then for lunch, we'd go to the "Tea Room", which by today's standards, was Formal Dining.

The Tea Room is Gone, the elevator operators are gone and L. S. Ayres Downtown is gone.

Sometimes, when I'm trying to avoid getting run over at the Big Box by some Moo w/a cart full of Ribbon Magnets, cookies, pork rinds and diet pepsi, I shake my head thinking that I actually got to experience a real honest-to-Random-Chance Department Store...

[Lydia Leftcoast]

22. Meanwhile Marshall Field's swallowed up Dayton's in Minneapolis

five years ago. :-(

Most long time Minneapolitans still call it Dayton's.

The swallower becomes the swallowee.

[LittleWoman]

36. Marshall Fields did not swallow up Dayton's

A number of years ago what was at that time the Dayton-Hudson corp acquired Marshall Fields. Subsequently, D-H changed their name to Target Corp and a few years after that Target Corp, which no longer has any of the original Dayton family ( yes Senator Mark Dayton is part of this family) involvement changed all the Dayton's stores to Marshall Fields.

A couple of years later Target Corp sold the Marshall Fields stores to Federated and who continued to operate the Marshall Fields chain. Federated did close a number of MF stores at that time.

Recently May corp bought out Federated and changed the name of several of their stores to Macy's. The Lazarus stores in Columbus and other areas suffered this fate. Now they too are Macy's as are Kaufman's which were part of Federated. If any of you are confused about this you are not the only one.

I grew up in Minneapolis and I shopped at the Dayton's downtown for many years. In those days it was a very classy store with wonderful Christmas decorations and beautiful spring flower shows usually in the dark, slushy days of March when you needed to see some sign of spring.

It looks to me like the retail business is a mirror of America these days. There are fewer and fewer of what I would call middle class department stores in the market. Now there are the very high end stores and the big box discounters with Target at the top end and Walmart at the bottom.

[LittleWoman]

39. My bad

Actually Federated bought May department stores, but they are still changing the name to Macy's which was a May chain.

[drbtg1]

44. Nope, Macy's was a Federated brand

http://www2.mayco.com/common/releases/rel02282005r1.pdf

[dflprincess]

50. It will always be Dayton's to me

My first credit card was from Dayton's (with a $50 limit - I got it in high school). When we'd come back to Minnesota every summer for vacation my Mom always had to make a pilgramige to Dayton's.

And so many Macy's stores around will ruin what mystique Macy's has had. I always associated them with NYC, but now with one on every corner, they won't seem like something special.

[BuelahWitch]

23. Why can't they keep the original name?

As in, "Marshall Fields" and have "A Macy's Company" listed below that?
So stupid. Local culture torn to shit for conglomerates. May CO. did the same thing to Utah's ZCMI store.

[Obamarama]

25. First the Sun-Times Building....now MF will be Macy's.....

All I can say is that they'd better keep the original Heaven on Seven at 11 S. Wabash open or I'll pitch a bloody fit!!

[Generic Other]

31. And Macy's will not have as good of stuff

They took over the Bon Marche' on the West Coast. The new stock is crappier.

[LouisianaLiberal]

32. All of the old New Orleans institutions are gone.

Long before the hurricane. Maison Blanche, Holmes, K&B, many others, and now the 140 year old bank, Hibernia, has been bought by Capitol One. Its feels strange to think that I miss a business, but each was a part of New Orleans, each had a specific childhood reference.

The banker at Hibernia actually said she understood when I told her I would close my accounts when the name changes to Capitol One.

[enid602]

33. Macys

Join the club. Macy's and Bloomies everywhere in Southern California. We lost Bullock's, Bullock's Wilshire, Broadway, etc. Robinson May is the only local store left.

[RPM]

34. Same in Pittsburgh - Kaufmann's --> Macy's

so does the famous Kaufmann's clock become Macy's clock?

[Spider Jerusalem]

37. Same thing happened in Atlanta.

And Boston. Rich's in Atlanta and Filene's in Boston are both now Macy's.

[KitchenWitch]

38. Imagine how we felt in the Twin Cities when Dayton's changed its name

to Marshall Fields after Dayton's purchased Marshall Fields...Daytons WAS Minneapolis...the Dayton name was very highly regarded.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

42. Any Other Bourgeois Concerns

nt

[ProfessorGAC]

46. Nope. Not Even This One

And i've been going to Marshall Fields since i was a little boy!

This is much ado about nothing. It's just a store, for goodness sake. And, truth be known: If they had been running the enterprise worth a darned, they would be the one buying up other chains, rather than vice versa.
The Professor

[Patiod]

47. They've assimilated Strawbridge & Clothier in Philadelphia

I used to work there when it was still owned by the Strawbridge family, and it was a GREAT place to work, and a great place to shop. Once Federated bought it, however, it started downhill. Now they're all becoming Macy's.

[Walt Starr]

48. I always used to go to Marshal Fields to buy gifts for my wife

Marshal Fields was always about quality.

Now, I'll go to Nordstrom's or Bloomingdale's instead. If you're going to shop at Macy's, you might as well save a few bucks and shop at Target.