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's
Following World War II, the Merchandise Mart building was sold in 1945 to Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., (1888–1969), significantly improving the Field Company's finances and enabling the store to cope with the post-war suburban residential and commercial boom. Marshall Field's presciently followed its customers to their new homes outwards to the suburbs, including opening a store in 1950 in partnership with pioneering suburban developer Philip M. Klutznick (a famous Jewish leader and later U.S. Secretary of Commerce) at his new Park Forest Plaza, which utilized revolutionary new concepts in land use and architecture.