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.
Blue Ridge Crossing
Blue Ridge Mall was one of the first shopping malls built in the United States. Located in Kansas City, Missouri, on I-70 & Sterling Avenue at Exit 10. The location surrounds the area from U.S. Route 40 to 43rd Street on the North/South and Sterling Avenue to Blue Ridge Boulevard on the West/East. It sits on the site of Blue Ridge Crossing and is about one mile (1.6 km) from the Truman Sports Complex at Exit 9. It opened on October 17, 1957 as an open-air shopping center and included a location of Harzfeld's. H. Roe Bartle, the Mayor of Kansas City, cut the ribbon that officially opened the shopping center.