Gimbels Has It! by Michael J. Lisicky

John Caccese remembers seeing the foot traffic outside the Gimbels windows. “You were proud that you worked on the busiest corner of the world,” says Caccese. 61
    Located directly opposite Gimbels was Strawbridge & Clothier. Founded by two Quaker families, Strawbridge & Clothier had an extremely loyal customer base and reached out to the “better” customer in Philadelphia. S&C stood for quality and value. Its flagship store was rebuilt in 1932 and served as a nice complement to the older stores around the corner. Strawbridge’s led the march to the Philadelphia suburbs, which helped propel the store to eventual market dominance. Former Gimbel manager Roseann Rubinstein wonders about the role each of the stores served in Center City. “We shared the same customer with all of the other stores,” says Rubinstein. “I don’t think that we were all that different.”
    The third corner at Eighth and Market Streets was home to Lit Brothers. Lit Brothers welcomed the lower-income shopper and appealed to a more ethnic customer base. Trudy Haynes, an African American Philadelphia news personality, says, “Gimbels was a very friendly store but Lit Brothers was about the best. Since Lits was accommodating to ethnic people, it became sort of my hangout.” Opened in 1891, Lits Market Street store was a compilation of many different iron front buildings. By the 1960s, these storefronts showed their age, and the store’s image suffered. “Gimbels was not very attractive, but it looked a lot better than Lits,” says Roseann Rubinstein. 62 Lit Brothers operated stores outside Center City, but the once-popular locations were located in deteriorating structures and neighborhoods. Still, Lit Brothers had a loyal group of customers. Louise Wanamaker, the widow of John Wanamaker’s great-grandson, comments, “Lits was a good low-price store, but it didn’t have any taste to it. Gimbels was a little higher up than Lits, not much, just a little.” Former Gimbels Philadelphia chairman Stanley Abelson looks fondly at Lit Brothers’ tenure in Philadelphia. “Lits had a very long tradition in the Philadelphia area. They struggled but they had a good corporate management. They just didn’t have the funds to invest to keep the stores contemporary and competitive,” says Abelson. 63 And employee John Caccese likes to add, “Gimbels in Philadelphia always wanted to be a little better. It always wanted to move up a step and distance itself from Lit Brothers.”

    The Lit Brothers store at the Lawrence Park Shopping Center in Broomall, Pennsylvania. The location was formerly occupied by Snellenburgs. Courtesy of the Temple University Libraries, Urban Archives, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania .
    Down the street at Eleventh and Market Streets was Frank & Seder. Frank & Seder came to Philadelphia by way of Pittsburgh in 1915. In 1925, the company opened a new twelve-story store that was the tallest building on East Market Street. Frank & Seder is credited with opening the first branch department store in the Philadelphia area. In October 1929, it opened a sixty-thousand-square-foot store in Upper Darby. Frank & Seder also had a downtown Detroit store, and the company frequently advertised “National Sales Days” that touted the vast buying power of the three Frank & Seder stores. Frank & Seder was the first of the large Philadelphia department stores to succumb to financial challenges. Its Detroit store closed in 1951, and the Market Street store announced its closure on November 4, 1953. The Pittsburgh store closed its doors in December 1958 after being unable to work out a lease agreement with over one hundred landlords that controlled the store’s property.
    In 1889, Snellenburgs opened a full-line department store at Twelfth and Market Streets. Snellenburgs’ no frills style of merchandising earned it a special place in the hearts of Philadelphians. In May 1951, Bankers Securities Company took control of Snellenburgs. Bankers