B. Altman and Company
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Flagship Fifth Avenue store circa 1920
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| Industry | Retail Department Store |
|---|---|
| Fate | Bankruptcy |
| Founded | New York City, USA (1865) |
| Founder | Benjamin Altman |
| Defunct | January 29, 1990 |
| Headquarters | New York, USA |
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Number of locations
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Four was the maximum number of branches |
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Area served
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New York Metropolitan Area |
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Key people
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Benjamin Altman |
| Products | High Fashion, upscale clothing |
B. Altman and Company was an American department store and chain, founded in 1865 in New York City, New York, by Benjamin Altman. It had its flagship store at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street in Midtown Manhattan from 1906 until the company closed on its flagship store on Fifth Avenue at the end of 1989. Branch stores were all shuttered by the end of January, 1990.
One of the first American department stores to open out-of-town branches, Altman's eventually opened locations in Pennsylvania (St. Davids in 1965 and Willow Grove in 1983), New Jersey (Short Hills in 1958—replacing an earlier nearby East Orange store—and Ridgewood/Paramus in 1967); and New York state (Manhasset in 1947 and White Plains in 1930). A short-lived location in Cincinnati, Ohio, opened during the L.J. Hooker ownership period (1987–1989), and two mall locations in Buffalo and Syracuse, New York, were physically completed but never occupied by Altman's during that same time.
The store that would become B. Altman and Company began on Manhattan's Lower East Side as a family-owned store, which by 1865 had come to be solely owned by Benjamin Altman, one of the brothers in the family, and was located at Third Avenue and 10th Street. In 1877, the store, wanting to expand, relocated to 621 Sixth Avenue between 18th and 19th Streets. This neo-Grec building was put up in four stages, and was designed by David and John Jardine (the original building, 1876–77, and the 1880 extension), William Hume (1887) and Buchman & Fox (1909–1910).
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