Marshall Field's
Marshall Field & Company traces its antecedents to a dry goods store opened at 137 Lake Street in Chicago, Illinois in 1852 by Potter Palmer, (1826–1902), eponymously named P. Palmer & Company. In 1856, 21-year-old Marshall Field (1834–1906) moved to the booming midwestern city of Chicago on the southwest shores of Lake Michigan from Pittsfield, Massachusetts and found work at the city's then-largest dry goods firm – Cooley, Wadsworth & Company. Just prior to the American Civil War, in 1860, Field and bookkeeper Levi Z. Leiter, (1834–1904), became junior partners in the firm, then known as Cooley, Farwell & Company. In 1864, the firm, then led by senior partner John V. Farwell, Sr., (1825–1908), was renamed Farwell, Field & Company. only for Field and Leiter to soon withdraw from the partnership with Farwell when presented with the opportunity of a lifetime.
Marshall Field and Company Building
The 13-story granite building was constructed in stages between 1891-1892 and 1914 on a partitioned block with sections that were added to the building in 1902, 1906, 1907, and 1914. Although he died before they were constructed, Charles B. Atwood, (1849-1895), of the D. H. Burnham & Company (from original 1891-1892 structure's architect Daniel H. Burnham, (1846-1912), later firm), designed the two primary additional sections along State Street (The north building built in 1902 and the south in 1907). For a time, the building was the largest store in the world at of floorspace, with the largest book, china, shoe, and toy departments of all the world's department stores.