It’s an annual retail miracle on 34th Street.
On Thanksgiving in 1924, a parade set out from 145th Street in New York, and proceeded down the Upper West Side, all the way from Harlem to Midtown. This was the first-ever Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The New York Times of November 28 described the event: “Santa Claus chose Thanksgiving Day this year to come to town.”
The parade participants were mostly store employees, and “[b]eautiful floats showed the Old Lady Who Lived in a Shoe, Little Miss Muffett and Red Riding Hood.” (This was before branded characters entered the mix, and the parade itself became a merchandising opportunity.)
The parade ended at the Macy’s flagship store at Herald Square, where Santa was seated on a throne, and the Christmas window display was unveiled—thus cementing the idea that Thanksgiving was a (literal) curtain raiser to the Christmas shopping period.
Although it’s not the oldest such parade, it’s probably the best known. (Gimbels department store started one in Philadelphia in 1920—and while it continues, it is now sponsored by Dunkin Donuts, and Gimbels went out of business in 1987.) The Macy’s parade has only been canceled 3 times, during the war years of 1942–44.
This year, over 28 million people are likely to watch it on TV—or at least have it on in the background while they slice the sweet potatoes and put together the green bean casserole. Millions more will show up to watch it in person in New York. The route isn’t as long as in 1924, but celebrity performers will pass by on floats, along with school marching bands, community groups from across the country, as well as, of course, inflatable versions of cartoon characters (this year the lineup includes Minnie Mouse, Spider-Man, and Dora the Explorer).
At the time of the first parade, Macy’s itself was on an expansion spree, buying up other regional department stores in the 1920s, including Lasalle’s of Ohio (1923), Davison’s of Atlanta (1925), and Bamberger’s of New Jersey (1929), although these stores kept trading under their old names for decades, not being officially rebranded as branches of Macy’s until the 1980s. It was also expanding its Manhattan footprint: adding on 1,500,000 square feet of space in a 19-story addition in the spring of 1924, allowing it to claim the title of the “world’s largest store”.
The 1920s were a heyday for the urban department store, with both city residents and workers shopping there, as well as suburbanites coming to town via train or streetcar in order to shop. Indeed, their accessibility via public transportation was a marketing element used by department stores of this period. They were targeting suburban women, many of whom did not have cars (the family car would have been driven by their husband), or who preferred not to drive into the city. Department stores were one-stop destinations, offering a range of services, from travel agents to beauty salons and restaurants, as well as general retail goods.
In 1945, Macy’s arrived on the West Coast, acquiring O’Connor Moffat in San Francisco for a reported $2,175,000 in stock. On October 16, 1947, the store was rebranded as Macy’s. That same year, Macy’s and its parade were featured in the Hollywood movie Miracle on 34th Street, associating Macy’s with both Christmas and the Thanksgiving Day Parade in the minds of millions of moviegoers, even those who lived nowhere near New York. The parade would then enter people’s homes, being televised on NBC starting in 1953.
Later Macy’s would become one of the department stores with branches anchoring malls across the country, and see those stores vanish with the great retail collapse of recent decades, leaving malls facing the wrecking ball. Our shopping culture is no longer of housewives getting the streetcar to the big department store in the city. We shop online. In the abundance of options for Internet shopping, every day is Christmas.
But Macy’s has turned out to be one of the survivors. They even swallowed up the great Marshall Field’s in 2005. Bouncing through the leveraged buyouts, takeovers, mergers, and Chapter 11 brushes which have marked all major retailers since the 1980s, the Macy’s brand lives on. The value of the Herald Square store alone is estimated at $3 billion.
In 1924, Macy’s shop floor staff had to brace themselves against a chilly morning (47°), as they started their 2-hour walk dressed as elves and fairy tale characters. They didn’t know they were the start of a legacy, a branding opportunity that could not be recreated now. The parade continues, as a reminder of a retail culture that has shaped how Americans experience the holidays.
