MARSHALL FIELD & COMPANY

There’s Nothing Like It Back Home

Marshall Field & Company was arguably the Grande Dame among American department stores. An aristocratic bastion of tradition, it grew up with the dynamic city of Chicago, and ultimately became synonomous with the Windy City. It is also one of the most-lamented of the many lost retail institutions that provided the very best in merchandise and genteel customer service in a magnificent architectural setting, largely the work of Daniel Burnham, designer of Chicago’s World’s Columbian Fair of 1893. WIth author and architect as a guide, relive the heyday of this world-famous store, from its stately, suave and opulent first floor, furnished in mahogany and marble, to its luxurious fashion salons and sumtuous restaurants, and the branch stores that took it to outlying areas, and it subsidiary companies like Frederick & Nelson of Seattle, a veritable offshoot of this most fascinating of department stores.