Museum Collections

R. H. Macy & Co. (now known as Macy’s) was founded in New York City in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy, Sr. as a dry and fancy goods store. With his contemporaries A. T. Stewart and Charles Lewis Tiffany, Macy was an early retail innovator who forever changed the way Americans shopped and retailers operated. When Macy’s opened it was located at Sixth Avenue and Fourteenth Street, north of the city’s fashionable shopping district. Merchandising and marketing innovations included cash only purchases, using lighted window displays, and capitalizing on American Christmas celebrations. By 1900, Macy’s had far expanded from its original product lines and sold men’s and women’s clothing, linens, furniture, bicycles, books, and pharmaceuticals. Advertisements from the 1900s note “The best-known and most popular proprietary medicines will be found in our drug department. We sell the famous remedies of both Europe and America.” These medicines included a variety of cod liver and castor oils, pectorals, and “patent medicine products.”