When the “Mile” was Magnificent
Remember when there was a classic five-and-dime at 676 North Michigan Avenue?
By Megan McKinney
It was simply picking up an old biography of Poor Little Rich Girl Barbara Hutton several days ago that pulled this reader into the world of Ms. Hutton’s grandfather, Frank Winfield Woolworth. We are all aware of the supposed tragedy of Barbara’s being “too rich,” but do we know from how the developer of America’s first chain store—the high tone classification into which the original five-and-dime is categorized —was able to make a fortune from nickels?
©/ photograph by Bettmann
Barbara Hutton, who became “too rich” from all those nickels and dimes.
Below is Barbara’s grandfather, or Woolly, as she and everyone else referred to him.
F. W. Woolworth
F. W. Woolworth, whose name we saw running across the top of the five-and-dime stores he developed for decades, set about creating the genre with wonder and joy, collecting at random $100 worth of nickel items and arranging them artfully with red fabric.
They were not unlike the above objects in value, yet appropriate to their time.
The Woolworth Building in Watertown, New York
The location was Augsbury & Moore, a department store where the young Woolworth worked in Watertown New York. The above structure, which carries Mr. Woolworth’s name, is on the site today.
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A store of Woolly’s in small Vermont town around 1910
The above store, though not the first, is an early Woolworth’s.
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Here is his style for Miami , Florida, in 1921.
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The following year,1922, he built the above store at Canal and Bourbon Streets in New Orleans. Note the addition to the overhead sign NOTHING OVER 10 c
The nickels and dimes had been adding up quickly. Winfield Hall, Frank Woolworth’s estate in Glen Cove , New York, was designed by architect C. P. H. Gilbert, in 1916.
His house in town was at Fifth Avenue at 80th Street, across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The grand entrance to the Woolworth Fifth Avenue house
And the Music Room
The sixty-story Woolworth Building, at Broadway between Park Place and Barclay Street in downtown Manhattan, was the tallest building in the world when it was completed, in 1913. Financed in cash by the five-and-dime millionaire, it was designed by architect Cass Gilbert.
Author photo: Robert F. Carl.
