Former Lord & Taylor Building

History and architecture

One of the most impressive stores in the late 19th-century shopping district known as "The Ladies' Mile," the former Lord & Taylor building stands at the southwest corner of Broadway and 20th Street and, with its picturesque corner tower, still dominates its site today. Handsomely designed in the French Second Empire style by the architect James H. Giles, the store was constructed with the most up-to-date materials of the time, cast iron and glass, and hailed as strikingly modern and elegant when it was completed in 1870.

The prestigious firm of Lord & Taylor began as a small drygoods store in lower Manhattan in the early 19th century. Samuel Lord was born in Saddleworth, England, and worked in an iron foundry there owned by James Taylor. At the age of 21, Lord married Taylor's daughter, Mary, and shortly afterward the couple emigrated to America. In 1826, Lord opened a drygoods store at 47 Catherine Street and soon made his wife's cousin, George Washington Taylor, his partner In the new venture.

The store was an immediate success and in 1832 the firm moved to more spacious quarters on Catherine Street. The prosperity of the Lord 8 Taylor store enabled Samuel Lord to purchase an extensive country estate in the village of Newtown, now Elmhurst, Queens. Lord lived there with his wife and eight children and, by constantly adding to his property, eventually became one of the largest landowners in the area. One of his many building projects in Newtown was Clermont Terrace,a row of residences erected near his estate; one of these houses still stands today.

While Samuel Lord managed the selling and buying for the firm, his partner, George Taylor (1802-79) handled the financial matters. Taylor was credited with having a special talent "for figures and could carry the whole business of the young firm to a penny in his memory" (New York Times, March 25, 1879). After having amassed a considerable fortune, Taylor retired to Manchester, England in the 1850s, where during his latter years, he reputedly made it a practice to donate one quarter of his income to charity.

The extremely successful firm of Lord & Taylor continued to expand and in 1853 moved to a larger store at Grand and Chrystie Streets. This new building, the third in the history of Lord & Taylor stores, was skillfully designed with a large central rotunda crowned by a dome. Soon, however, this space also proved too small and another "branch" of the store was opened at Grand Street and Broadway in 1860. The rapidly expanding business of the firm led Samuel Lord to take in two new partners -- his oldest son, John T. Lord, and John S. Lyle, who had been the first errand boy to work in the store. In 1866, Samuel Lord retired to his native England, where he delighted in his hobby of horticulture. At his death, Lord left a fortune of nine million dollars.

As the development of Manhattan extended northward during the second half of the 19th, century, the commercial center also moved uptown and the area between 8th and 23rd Streets, Broadway and Sixth Avenue gradually became the principal shopping district. Beginning in the 1850s, a number of the finest department stores in the city moved to Broadway, in this newly fashionable section which was soon to be known as "The Ladies' Mile." One of the first to move northward was the A.T.

Stewart store erected in 1862, which stood at Broadway and 10th Street. A few years later, in 1868, construction began on the massive Arnold, Constable 8 Co. store, which still stands today at the southwest corner of Broadway and 19th Street. The next year, in keeping with the northward shift in commercial activity, the new Lord & Taylor store was begun across the street. Designed on a grand scale in the most striking architectural styles, these new stores, many of cast iron, were the work of the city's most prominent architects.

Eventually all of the most important retail firms In the city, including B. Altman's, Macy's, W. & J. Sloane and Siegel-Cooper & Co. owned impressive emporiums in this district. The Lord & Taylor store, which originally extended 83 feet along Broadway, was widely acclaimed as its opening in 1870 and its modern design was praised by the New York Times (Nov. 27, 1870): "It is wholly of iron and exhibits better, perhaps, than any previous attempt the capacity of iron for effects of its own In building."