Industry | Retail |
---|---|
Founded | 1896[lower-alpha 1] |
Defunct | 1995 |
Fate | Acquired by May Department Stores |
Successor | Macy's |
Products | Clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, and housewares. |
Parent | May Department Stores (1994-1995) |
Steiger's was a department store company of New England in the 19th and 20th centuries. Founded in Holyoke, Massachusetts in 1896, its flagship store for much of the company's history was in Springfield, Massachusetts. At the time of its purchase by May Department Stores, Steiger's was described as the last family-owned chain of department stores in New England. [1] [2]
Albert Steiger (1860–1938) was born in Ravensburg, Germany, on May 12, 1860, the eldest child of Jacob and Mary (née Felerabend) Steiger. His grandfather, John Ulrich Steiger, was a Swiss-born manufacturer of muslin who emigrated to the United States following the death of his wife and set up a bedspread manufacturing business in Huntington. In 1869 Albert Steiger and his parents would move to the United States as well, joining the family firm. Two years later however, John Steiger died, and by 1873 Albert Steiger's father and uncle had as well. At the age of 13 Steiger became the breadwinner in his family, looking after a widowed mother and two younger sisters. For the better part of 20 years he supported himself and his family by purchasing dry goods from a Mr. Darwin Gillett of Westfield, reselling and delivering these goods to the Hilltowns at a profit.
In 1894, at the age of 34, Steiger left Massachusetts and relocated to Port Chester, New York, north of New York City, where he opened his first dry goods store for a short time. [3] In 1896, he would return to Western Massachusetts and found his namesake department store in Holyoke, Massachusetts under the name The Albert Steiger Company, which quickly became a mainstay in that city. [4] [5] The Holyoke store, built in 1899, was a four-story beaux arts building designed by George P. B. Alderman, on High Street across from City Hall. The former department store building is still in use as offices today. [6]
Around the turn of the 20th century, Albert Steiger opened a series of stores in Fall River, Massachusetts, New Bedford, Massachusetts, and Springfield, Massachusetts. A store in Hartford, Connecticut followed in 1918. [7] By his death in 1938, Steiger's branches in western New York and New England brought in an estimated gross revenue of $25,000,000, equivalent to more than $450 million dollars in 2020 USD. [5]
The five-story art deco [8] downtown Springfield store was the chain's flagship during the mid-to-late 20th century. [4] In contrast to Springfield's other main store, traditional full-service department store Forbes & Wallace, Steiger's concentrated more on being a high-end clothing store. [7] [8] Several generations of the Steiger family carried on this business. [7] Albert Steiger's grandson, Albert E. Steiger Jr., was president of the company from 1959 to 1992, [9] his younger brother Ralph A. Steiger was appointed treasurer and vice president since 1947 and CEO from 1992 to 1995.
Over time, the freestanding downtown stores were closed and replaced with rented outlets in malls. The Hartford store was sold in 1962, leaving just the Springfield and Holyoke locations as traditional downtown department stores. [7] Mall outlets were opened in the Longmeadow Shops (1961), Springfield Plaza (1964), Friendly Shops at Westfield, Massachusetts (1965), Eastfield Mall (1967), Enfield Square Mall (1972), [4] Hampshire Mall in Hadley, Massachusetts (1978), and Holyoke Mall at Ingleside (1979).
Steiger's was taken over by The May Department Stores Company in 1994 and the company and brand ceased to exist. [7] The Eastfield Mall store, for instance, was replaced by a Filene's, then in 2006 by a Macy's before being closed in 2016. [10] The downtown Springfield store closed in 1995 and the building was torn down soon after. A park now occupies the site.
Direct Swiss/German relatives of Albert Steiger (1860-1938):
Ulrich Steiger, brother of Albert Steiger's father Jacob – co-founder of Steiger & Deschler , a major textile company in Ulm, Krumbach, and Ravensburg, in Germany
Walther Steiger, cousin of Albert – constructor and founder of the Steiger automobile company in Burgrieden near Ulm, in Germany.
Westfield is a city in Hampden County, in the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts, United States. Westfield was first settled by Europeans in 1660. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 40,834 at the 2020 census.
Downtown Crossing is a shopping district within downtown Boston, Massachusetts, located east of Boston Common, west of the Financial District, south of Government Center, and north of Chinatown and the old Combat Zone. It features large department stores as well as restaurants, souvenir sellers, general retail establishments, and street vendors. The Downtown Crossing MBTA station lies in the center of the district.
Kaufmann's was a department store that originated in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Filene's is an American department store chain; it was founded by William Filene in 1881. The success of the original full-line store in Boston, Massachusetts, was supplemented by the foundation of its off-price sister store Filene's Basement in 1908. Filene's, in partnership with Abraham & Straus, Lazarus, and Shillito's, was an original member of the holding company Federated Department Stores upon its establishment in 1929.
The Holyoke Mall at Ingleside is a shopping center located in Holyoke, Massachusetts, in the city's Ingleside neighborhood. It is owned by The Pyramid Companies. The mall features 135 stores, a large food court, and several restaurants and is 1.6 million square feet, the third-largest in New England by retail space. The mall features the anchor stores Macy's, JCPenney, Target, Best Buy, Burlington, Hobby Lobby, and Altitude Trampoline Park, run by Joseph Berthiaume and Benjamin Shirely.
South Shore Plaza is a shopping mall in Braintree, Massachusetts, United States, owned by Simon Property Group. It is near the Braintree Split interchange, off the I-93 / US 1 and Route 37 junction. The mall opened as an open-air plaza in 1961; it was enclosed in 1976 and expanded between 1995 and 1996. With 192 tenants and 1,586,446 sq ft (147,385.7 m2) of gross leasable area, the mall is the largest in New England in terms of square footage and is the 16th-largest mall in the United States.
Abraham & Straus, commonly shortened to A&S, was a major New York City department store, based in Brooklyn. Founded in 1865, it became part of Federated Department Stores in 1929. Shortly after Federated's 1994 acquisition of R.H. Macy & Company, it eliminated the A&S brand. Most A&S stores took the Macy's name, although a few became part of Stern's, another Federated division, but one that offered lower-end goods than Macy's or A&S did.
Filene's Basement, also called The Basement, was a Massachusetts-based chain of department stores which was owned by Retail Ventures, Inc. until April 2009 when it was sold to Syms.
Forbes and Wallace was an American department store chain based in Springfield, Massachusetts.
The Loop, formerly Methuen Mall, is a shopping mall in Methuen, Massachusetts, United States. It was built in 1973 as an enclosed shopping mall on a 60-acre (240,000 m2) site and initially included Howlands and Sears as its anchor stores, as well as 70 other retailers. In 1977, Howlands was replaced by Jordan Marsh, while Filene's Basement was added in the 1980s. Methuen Mall suffered a significant loss in tenancy after both Sears and Filene's Basement moved to The Mall at Rockingham Park across the state line in Salem, New Hampshire. It remained in operation until 1997 and was demolished in early 1999, undergoing redevelopment soon afterward into a strip mall known as The Loop. Major tenants of The Loop are The Home Depot, Marshalls, and AMC Theatres.
The Eastfield Mall was a shopping mall in Springfield, Massachusetts, which was owned by Mountain Development Corporation, and was built in late 1967 by the Rouse Company. The three anchors, JCPenney, Macy's, and Sears closed in 2011, 2016, and 2018, respectively. The movie theater, Cinemark, closed in 2020. The mall was managed by Mountain Development.
Berkshire Mall was a shopping mall located in Lanesborough, Massachusetts outside Pittsfield. The mall was built in 1988 and closed in 2019. It could be reached from both Route 8 and U.S. Route 7. Currently the mall's one tenant is Target.
G. Fox & Co. was a large department store that originated in Hartford, Connecticut. It was the largest privately held department store in the nation when it was sold in 1965 to the May Department Stores Company. In 1993, May Department stores phased out the G. Fox & Co. brand, converting them into the Boston-based department store Filene's. In 2005, the May Company merged with Federated Department Stores which converted the store and several other regional chains to Macy's.
The Shoppes at Buckland Hills, formerly and commonly known as Buckland Hills Mall is a shopping mall located in Manchester, Connecticut and is currently owned by Spinoso Real Estate Group. The mall features the traditional retailers Macy's, JCPenney, and Barnes & Noble while featuring prominent specialty retailers such as Aeropostale, Charlotte Russe, Express, Forever 21, H&M, Build-A-Bear, Newbury Comics, and Windsor.
Enfield Square, formerly Westfield Shoppingtown Enfield Square, is an enclosed shopping mall in Enfield, Connecticut. The mall is owned by Woodsonia Acquisitions. At 788,000 square feet (73,200 m2), Enfield Square is the 10th largest mall in the state of Connecticut, containing 54 shops, all on one level. As of 2018, there was only a single anchor store: Target.
R. H. White was a department store company of the 19th and 20th centuries, based in Boston. The company existed from 1853 to c. 1980; the flagship downtown Boston store was open from 1876 to 1957.
Ingleside is a neighborhood in Holyoke, Massachusetts located to the south of the city center, approximately 2 miles (3.2 km) from downtown. The neighborhood features access to the Connecticut River through the Sue Ellen Panitch River Center and the Land of Providence reservation. Ingleside is also home to the Holyoke Mall, the Nuestras Raices farm, the Sisters of Providence of Holyoke, the Providence Behavioral Health Hospital, and several recreational and historical venues.
Despite representing a significantly smaller population than their Irish, French, Polish, or Puerto Rican counterparts, in the late 19th century through the mid-20th century, German immigrants predominantly from Saxony and Rhineland played a significant economic, cultural, and political role in the history of Holyoke, Massachusetts. The influx of these immigrants can largely be attributed to a single mill and millworker complex, the Germania Woolen Mills, which formed the basis of the immigrant colony that would make the ward encompassing the South Holyoke neighborhood that with the highest German population per capita, in all of New England by 1875. Along with unionization efforts by the Irish community, Germans would also play a key role in the city and region's socialist labor movements as workers organized for higher pay and improved living conditions in the textile and paper mill economies.
This is a timeline of the history of the city of Holyoke, Massachusetts, USA.