John Wanamaker

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Wanamaker, John (1838–1922), department‐store merchant.The eldest son of a Philadelphia brick‐maker, Wanamaker was largely self‐educated. In 1871 he opened in Philadelphia what he called a “New Kind of Store” named for himself. As a leader in department‐store retailing for over five decades, Wanamaker pioneered the use of technology, from pneumatic tubes to escalators; personnel policies that included employee training and paid summer vacations; and such marketing techniques as frequent sales and full‐page illustrated newspaper ads. His innovations in customer service included restaurants, reading and restrooms, and home delivery. Wanamaker's was known for its stained‐glass windows, elaborate store displays, and spectacles including organ concerts, pageants, and storybook characters in show windows. In 1896, Wanamaker expanded from Philadelphia to New York City. Other merchants such as Rowland Macy in New York, Marshall Field in Chicago, and the Filenes in Boston adapted Wanamaker's retailing innovations, but none matched his level of self‐promotion or so enthusiastically incorporated the golden rule into retailing through the maxim that the customer is always right.

A paragon of the Victorian Christian gentleman in business, Wanamker amassed a vast furtune while spurning the crasser aspects of the commercial world. He devoted time and money to the Young Men's Christian Association, the Civil War Christian Commission, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, Sunday schools, and the revivals of Dwight L. Moody and Billy Sunday. As postmaster general in the Benjamin Harrison administration (1889–1893), he championed such Populist policies as parcel post, rural free delivery, and postal savings banks.
See also Advertising; Consumer Culture; Gilded Age; Mass Marketing; Protestantism; Revivalism; YMCA and YWCA.

Bibliography

Joseph H. Appel , The Business Biography of John Wanamaker, Founder and Builder, 1930.
William Leach , Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture, 1993.

Susan Porter Benson

John Wanamaker , 1838–1922, American merchant, b. Philadelphia. He went into the men's clothing business in Philadelphia with Nathan Brown, his brother-in-law, in 1861. The firm was Wanamaker and Brown until the death of Brown in 1868, and from 1869 it was John Wanamaker and Company. In 1875, Wanamaker bought the site of the old Pennsylvania RR freight station and opened a new dry goods and clothing store, which later became one of the first and best-known department stores. He was Postmaster General (1889–93) in Benjamin Harrison's cabinet and greatly improved the efficiency of the service. He extended his business into New York City in 1896, when he took over the store which had formerly been A. T. Stewart and Company. He was identified with religious work in Philadelphia, as a paid secretary (1857–61) and later president (1870–83) of the Young Men's Christian Association and as superintendent of the Bethany Presbyterian Sunday School for many years.

Bibliography: See biographies by H. A. Gibbons (1926) and J. H. Appel (1970).