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