Bonwit Teller: История роскошного универмага

Defunct American luxury department store

Bonwit Teller & Co. was an American luxury department store in New York City, New York, founded by Paul Bonwit in 1895 at Sixth Avenue and 18th Street, and later a chain of department stores. In 1897, Edmund D. Teller was admitted to the partnership and the store moved to 23rd Street, east of Sixth Avenue. Bonwit specialized in high end women's apparel at a time when many of its competitors were diversifying their product lines, and Bonwit Teller became noted within the trade for the quality of its merchandise as well as the above average salaries paid to both buyers and executives. The partnership was incorporated in 1907 and the store moved to the corner of Fifth Avenue and 38th Street. Throughout much of the 20th century, Bonwit was one of a group of upscale department stores on Fifth Avenue that catered to the "carriage trade". Among its most notable peers were Lord & Taylor, and Saks Fifth Avenue.

The Bonwit Teller's flagship uptown building at Fifth Avenue and 56th Street, originally known as Stewart & Company, was a women's clothing store in the "new luxury retailing district", designed by Whitney Warren and Charles Wetmore, and opened on October 16, 1929, with Eleanor Roosevelt in attendance. It was described by The New York Times as a 12 story emporium of "severe, almost unornamented limestone climbing to a ziggurat of setbacks"—as an "antithesis" of the nearby "conventional 1928 Bergdorf Goodman. wanted to begin demolition in 1980. Trump "promised the limestone reliefs" to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When they were "jackhammered" "to bits" the act was condemned.—Trump said that his company had obtained three independent appraisals of the sculptures, which he claimed had found them to be "without artistic merit." An official at the Metropolitan Museum of Art disputed the statement, stating: "Can you imagine the museum accepting them if they were not of artistic merit? Architectural sculpture of this quality is rare and would have made definite sense in our collection."

Floyd and Hortense Odlum would sell their investment in Bonwit Teller to Walter Hoving's Hoving Corporation. With Bonwit Teller, Hoving would establish a strong retail presence on Fifth Avenue that would also include Tiffany & Co. According to Fintan O'Toole, writing in The New York Review of Books in the mid 20th century, the artists Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol all worked at Bonwit Teller as window dressers (creating window displays). The company would undergo another ownership change just ten years later with the acquisition of Bonwit by Genesco in 1956. At the time, Genesco was a large conglomerate operating 64 apparel and retail companies. While Genesco's portfolio included other upscale brands, including Henri Bendel, the company was largely known as a shoe retailer. Bonwit Teller, which had developed a cutting edge reputation promoting a young Christian Dior and other prominent American designers, gained momentum in its fashion and sales during the mid 1960s following the acquisition by Genesco.

Bonwit Teller had started to expand as early as 1935 when it opened a "season branch" in Palm Beach, then in 1941 it opened a full time branch in White Plains. Another notable opening was the Boston store in 1947 in the Back Bay neighborhood. By the 1960s, there were stores operating in New York, Manhasset, White Plains, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Cleveland, as well as small resort shops in Miami and Palm Beach. During the 1960s, the company built a store in Short Hills and moved its White Plains store next to a large Lord & Taylor in Scarsdale. In the mid 1980s branches were located in Oak Brook, Illinois; Troy, Michigan; Palm Desert, California; Beverly Hills, Bal Harbour, Kansas City, Buffalo, and Columbia, South Carolina. From the mid 1970s to late 1980s, Bonwit competed head on with peer Saks Fifth Avenue, retaining a role on the development of fashion and design, most notably helping to launch the career of Calvin Klein.

In 1964 Bonwit Teller had branch store in a two and‐a‐half‐story building in downtown White Plains, where it had operated since April 1941, on the current site of the Westchester One tower. Bonwit had a 20‐year lease ending in 1976, but local developer Salvatore Pepe wanted Bonwits to move to the Vernon Hills Shopping Center, which he had developed five miles away in Eastchester near Scarsdale. Pepe went to landlord Archie Davidow and bought the property, including the remainder of the lease, thus permitting Bonwits to move; it ceased operations at White Plains at the close of business on April 13, 1967. Five days later, on April 18, 1967, the new Bonwit Teller Scarsdale store opened. Guests included actress Arlene Francis (member of the company's Board of Directors), Princess Marcella Borghese and Mildred Custin, president of Bonwit Teller. Designed by Copeland, Novak & Israel, it consisted of 36 fashion departments, and featured a center court of Italian marble, with a crystal chandelier hanging above. Two additional chandeliers had once hung in the Ambassador Hotel in New York. 518.16 m of murals by artist Richard Neas decorated the walls of the court, and additional Neas murals adorned the shoe salon. 85 employees from White Plains transferred to Vernon Hills, in addition to 40 staff hired specifically for the new store.

In 1979, Allied Stores Corporation acquired the company. Its storied flagship Fifth Avenue store was planned to be rebuilt there opposite the new Trump Tower. Bonwit Teller reopened its store in April 1981 now on 57th Street as the new flagship would be the centerstone to Trump Tower's indoor mall. In 1987, Allied Stores Corporation sold Bonwit Teller for $101 million to Hooker Corporation, an Australian business. Hooker would expand the company's store base from five to sixteen during the period. In 1989, Bonwit was put on the auction block after the LJ Hooker filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. Under the bankruptcy two stores in Cincinnati & Columbia continued to be operated by Hooker Corp under a license whilst five stores (Boston, Buffalo, Manhasset and Short Hills) and the Bonwit Teller name were purchased by The Pyramid Company. The flagship store in Manhattan was closed as part of the deal and left the space vacant until a Galeries Lafayette opened in the building in 1991 which now had a new interior and facade but due to poor sales the store closed in 1994. After The Pyramid Company purchased Bonwit Teller from Hooker in 1990 they opened a store at the Carousel Center complex in Syracuse, New York. During the mid 1990s, a Manhattan branch was shopped around. The venerable institution filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March 2000 after heightened debt, the last store open was the Carousel Center location.

In 2005, River West Brands, a Chicago based brand revitalization company, announced it had formed Avenue Brands LLC to bring back Bonwit Teller. In June 2008, it was announced that Bonwit Teller would be opening with eventually as many as twenty locations, beginning with New York and Los Angeles. Perhaps due to the subsequent recession, this venture never materialized. In March 2020, it was announced that NBT Holdings, a subsidiary of Sugar23, had acquired the rights to the brand and announced that it was planning to bring the store back.

In the film Desk Set (1957), Bunny Watson, played by Katharine Hepburn, stopped by "Bonwits" on her way to her job in the reference department at the fictional Federal Broadcasting Company. She purchased a green dress. In the film Home Before Dark (1958), Charlotte Bronn, played by Jean Simmons, shops at Bonwit's store in Boston during a Christmas shopping spree. She sees a sparkling gold dress in the store's exterior window display, goes inside, tries it on, and purchases it, despite protests from Bonwit Teller saleswomen who tell her the size is much too large. In the opening scene of the film Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), when Audrey Hepburn is being dropped off by a taxi outside Tiffany & Co, the Bonwit Teller store is clearly visible with a flag in front of it. In Episode 22 ("Temporary Duty") of Season 6 of M*A*S*H (TV series) (Feb. 13, 1978), Cpl. Max Klinger tells visiting surgeon Roy Dupree "Don't make fun of my Bonwit Teller!" In the film Oliver's Story (1978), starring Ryan O'Neal and Candice Bergen, Bergen plays the role of Marcie Bonwit. Later in the film, it transpires that Marcie Bonwit is an heiress to the Bonwit Teller fortune. In the film Rocky II (1979), Rocky Balboa shops at Bonwit's store in Philadelphia as part of a spending spree sequence. Rocky purchases an expensive jacket (with a tiger design on the back), a fur coat for his wife, Adrian, and expensive wristwatches, including one for his brother in law Paulie. In the opening sequence of the film Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), Bonwit's Fifth Avenue store was resurrected and is bombed by villain Simon Gruber. Bonwit had been out of business for five years by that time. In 2009, Bonwit Teller was written into a scene in Mad Men, a television series that explores the world of advertising. Peter Campbell, advertising account executive, returns a Bonwit Teller dress to its Fifth Avenue store, where he discovers that Joan Holloway, a former co worker, is now employed there as a sales clerk. In the Hallmark Channel television film Window Wonderland (2013), a window dresser (played by Chyler Leigh) explains how Salvador Dalí dressed windows at Bonwit's in his surrealist style.