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
Marshall Field's established numerous important business "firsts" in this building and in a long series of previous elaborate decorative structures on this site for the last century and a half, and it is regarded as one of the three most influential establishments in the nationwide development of the department store and in the commercial business economic history of the United States. Both the building name and the name of the stores formerly headquartered at this building changed names on September 9, 2006 as a result of the merger of the previous May's Department Stores (Marshall Field's former owner and parent) with the Federated Department Stores which led to the integration of the Marshall Field's stores into the Macy's now nationwide retailing network.