BESIDES 100 West 33rd Street itself, which faces 6th Avenue between West 32nd and West 33rd Street, the only tangible remnant of the Gimbel Brothers Department Store, known as Gimbels, is this vertical painted sign that can be seen as you are traveling east at #119 West 31st Street, a block away from the store itself.
The Gimbel Brothers chain of department stores did not originate in NYC and in fact existed for over 60 years before arriving in NYC. An immigrant entrepreneur from Bavaria, Adam Gimbel, opened a dry goods store in Vincennes, Indiana in 1842 and later expanded to Milwaukee and Philadelphia. The Gimbels commissioned architect Daniel Burnham to design its NYC flagship store in 1910. Gimbels was so successful it later acquired rivals such as Saks and Schuster’s and by mid-century, it was one of the two Midtown department store titans along with R.H. Macy, a block away on West 34th Street.
Gimbels had a hand in midtown infrastructure. Its skybridge across West 32nd Street is still in place, though threatened, and an underground pedestrian passageway the department store constructed to connect Penn Station on 7th Avenue with Herald Square has long been closed, as policing it is apparently too expensive and no agency can agree on who would be responsible for paying for such security.
After Gimbels succumbed to competition and closed in 1986 (rival Ohrbach’s closed around the same time) 100 West 33rd, on 6th Avenue directly across from Herald Square, was converted into the Manhattan Mall in 1989. When I worked a few blocks away, I considered the Manhattan Mall a modern marvel as its interior was hollowed out and you could look up and see seven floors all containing stores, with access by escalators and glass walled elevators. Best of all was that the food court was on the 7th floor, the highest one, and if I was lucky I could sit by one of the huge windows during lunch and look up and down 6th Avenue. This configuration, though, was considered too good for the hoi polloi and after JC Penney had taken over as the mall flagship from A&S, the food court was relocated to the basement and executive offices were moved to the top floor.
Today there are no stores in the “mall” at all as it serves as office space, and Macy’s greatest rival is now represented by a painted ad.
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Photo: Robert Mulero
4/28/23
12 comments
Having worked in and around the mall for 13 years, I think your timeline is a bit off. The food court was already in the lower levels when they converted floors 3-11 into office space. When JC Penney moved in, they took the lower floors and eliminated the food court entirely. I haven’t been there since the pandemic hit so I don’t know what state it’s in now, but I do know that it was hemorrhaging stores and companies until only a couple were left.
I have a very nice white sweater with a Gimbel’s label which was a gift from a girlfriend in the 80s who has recently come back into my life. And I remember well the 7th Fl food court in the Gimbel’s Building. Used to eat there after browsing in Willoughby-Peerless and Camera Barn.
Thank you
Their weird,grainy commercial on channel 9 always puzzled me.Their master
craftsmen were shown repairing furniture upholstery.I didnt find out till years
later that they were a department store.
When the shopping plaza now known as the Manhattan Mall opened up, it was originally known as A&S Plaza. It acquired its current name after A&S went out of business.
Gimbels also made a huge bet on
opening a store on 86th St. it was a
huge blunder and contributed to its
demise.
My mother worked in Gimbal’s from about 1963 to the late 70’s. As children we would ride the subway from way out in Brooklyn on her late nights and wander the store till closing. The basement (classier than the sub basement) had booths of people selling their own products – many former show and sideshow people. (Cactus Lanzoil – but that’s another story) The store would do “classy” events like maybe bring a replica of Michangelo’s Pieta for people to see. They would also bring movie and tv personna – when Man From U.N.C.L.E. Star David McCallum was scheduled to appear it drew such crowds they had to cancel. Back then department stores had everything you could want or need – even pet shops and hair salons.
Oy. I always call ’em just “hoi polloi” – “the many” – not the redundant “the hoi polloi”. Oy yoy yoy. The “hoi” is Greek for the “the”.
Gimbels had a great stamp collecting department, aside from everything else!
JC Penney had a near-death experience in late 2020. Not having had a profitable quarter since 2010, and having gone through a revolving door of top executives, Covid was about ready to kibosh it. More or less at the last minute the country’s two top mall operators, Simon and Brookfield, bailed it out at the last minute. They did not do so out of the goodness of the hearts, or because they thought JCP was a terrific investment; they simply wanted to avoid having their malls lose a major anchor store.
JCP is now a privately held company and releases no financial information. About a month ago, however, one of its landlords disclosed some incomplete but useful numbers. As best can be determined the company’s financial position is rather poor, but maybe not immediately dire. JCP is unlikely to fail in the short run, its long term survival is uncertain.
From memory (so watch out for errors!) Manhattan Mall was in the former E J Korvette building, which had been previously Saks 34th St.
In the science fiction novel, “Crisis in 2140” by H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire (Ace Books, 1957, #D-227), there’s a nuclear war between Gimbel’s and Macy’s, improbable as that sounds.