Marshall Field and Company Building Audio Guide

Marshall Field and Company Building: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Marshall Field and Company Building

   Welcome to State Street, in the heart of the Chicago Loop. The enormous building in front of you is the Marshall Field and Company Building, at the corner of State and Washington Streets. It is a department store, and a National Historic Landmark too. Chicago's city landmark designation describes it as the grand dame of the city's department store buildings. This was the flagship of the Marshall Field's chain for generations. Today it is still a working department store, the Macy's flagship for the Midwest, so the building is alive with shoppers and not preserved behind glass. It is also counted as the third largest store in the world. Over the next few stops we will follow the story of a business that grew with the city, from its roots here in the 1860s, through a great fire and a series of expansions. We will look at the architecture, with its balconied atria, and at the man whose name still defines this corner. Take a moment to look up at the facade first. Then we will begin.

2. 02

   From Palmer's Corner to a Rebuilt Store

   The story of this corner begins in 1868. Potter Palmer had stepped back from day-to-day involvement in the business, and he convinced Marshall Field and Levi Leiter to move their store, then called Field, Leiter and Company, into a building Palmer owned on State Street at the corner of Washington Street. The company's Chicago roots go back to 1852, but this corner is where the store settled. Then came the Great Chicago Fire, which consumed that building. The business split its wholesale trade from its retail operations, and the retail store resumed at State and Washington in a rebuilt structure, which it leased from the Singer Sewing Machine Company. That is a remarkable detail: the most famous name in Chicago retail was, for a time, a tenant. The business never left. It stayed on this corner and added four later buildings, which together became the single integrated structure you see today. So you are looking at the result of a long story of growth, one building after another, with the city rising around it.

3. 03

   Built in Stages: Burnham's Design and the Great Atria

   Here is something the facade does not tell you at first glance: this building was erected in stages over more than two decades. Even so, it reads as one grand composition. It was designed by Daniel Burnham for Marshall Field. Descriptions differ in the labels they use. One calls it Beaux-Arts and Commercial in style, and Chicago's own landmark designation calls it finely designed and detailed in the Classical Revival style. Both point to the same thing: a monumental, ordered, classical look. Inside, the building is known for its multiple atria. These are balconied, light-filled spaces, and one of them is called the Great Hall. Picture the store as a series of grand rooms stacked around open courts, where shoppers could look up and across at the floors above. Burnham's influence on Chicago's architecture is a story in itself. As you walk the perimeter, notice how the long street fronts hold together despite the building's staged construction. Look also for the clocks, which are among the building's best-known details.

4. 04

   The Man, the Motto, and a Street of Rivals

   Marshall Field joined the partnership in 1865 and rose in Potter Palmer's original retail establishment. He then developed it into a grand and innovative shopping enterprise. A well-known history of the company carries the title Give the Lady What She Wants, a phrase that captures the customer-first spirit associated with the store. Field died on January 16, 1906, in New York City. On the day of his funeral, every store along State Street, big and small, closed, and the Chicago Board of Trade suspended its afternoon trading in his honor. That tells you how large he loomed over this street. State Street was a retail battleground. Not far away stands the Carson Pirie Scott Company Building, now known as the Sullivan Center. Schlesinger and Mayer commissioned it from Louis Sullivan in 1899. And one famous figure who worked in Field's world, Harry Gordon Selfridge, went on to establish Selfridges in London.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   The building you are standing beside has worn several names. It was declared a National Historic Landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 2, 1978. It was designated a Chicago Landmark on November 1, 2005. On September 9, 2006, the stores that had been headquartered here changed their name, as the merger that produced Macy's, Incorporated folded the Marshall Field's stores into the national Macy's network. The name on the door has changed, but the building is still a department store, and you are welcome to step in and see how those atria feel from the inside. The building is also part of the Loop Retail National Historic District, so a stroll along State Street will show you more of the neighborhood that Field and his rivals built. As you wander, ask yourself which parts of the building feel like the original grand design, and which feel like the later additions. The best answers are often found by looking up.