Hess's
 |
|
| Department stores | |
| Industry | Retail |
| Fate | Converted to other department stores |
| Successor |
Dillard's (1992-) Hecht's (1993–2006) Proffitt's (1993–2006) Kaufmann's (1994–2006) The Bon-Ton (1994-) |
| Founded | 1897 (as Hess Brothers) |
| Defunct | 1996 |
| Headquarters | Allentown, PA |
| Products | Clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, electronics and housewares |
Hess's was a department store chain based in Allentown, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania in the United States. The company started in 1897 with one store, originally known as Hess Brothers, and had grown to nearly 80 stores at its peak in the late 1980s. The chain's stores were eventually closed or sold off in a series of deals in the early to mid-1990s.
The department store known as Hess Brothers was founded on February 19, 1897, by Charles and Max Hess. According to the history of the store, it began when Max Hess, Sr., a German-Jewish immigrant from Perth Amboy, New Jersey, visited Allentown during the summer of 1896. At the time, Ninth and Hamilton Streets was about two blocks west of Allentown's retail shopping district, having only the Grand Central Hotel, a few homes, and several lumberyards. He returned to Perth Amboy and told his brother Charles, that Allentown was virgin territory, and was a major business opportunity.
Both Max and his brother Charles grew up in Germany. He was well aware that the Germans in Pennsylvania had limited access to quality dry goods, and if he opened a store that offered quality products, they would be loyal customers. the brothers moved to Allentown in 1897 and leased space inside the Grand Central Hotel, a building erected in 1868 as the Black Bear Hotel at 835 Hamilton Street. In 1890 it was renamed as the Grand Central. On February 19th, 1897, the Allentown Band was playing in front of the new Hess Brothers store to entertain the shoppers. Hess also bought a significant amount of advertising space in the local Allentown newspapers to inform people about his store.
What made Max and Charles Hess different from Henry Leh, the other major dry goods store retailer at the time was that they came from a retail background, while Leh was from a largely rural background. At the turn of the Nineteenth Century, Allentown was in the middle of the Industrial Revolution and was beginning to see itself as a city. Mack Trucks, Lehigh Valley Steel, the Lehigh Valley Railroad and other manufacturing plants were industrializing the area, and people were earning more money with the industrial jobs. The Hess Brothers understood this from their New York City background and brought goods into Allentown to cater to the desires of people for higher quality goods. The Hess Brother's dry goods business became more and more successful and in 1901, the Hess store expanded to take over the entire Grand Central Hotel.
Perhaps the best example of the early Hess Brothers store was Hess's French Room. Created by Charles Hess, he filled it with fashions primarily from France. Charles Hess made frequent trips to Paris, and in Allentown newspaper articles, he wrote what the fashionable woman in the French capitol were wearing for social engagements or to the Paris Opera. However, the real core of the Hess brothers early success was the ability to offer the public quality goods at affordable prices. Also the store's bargain sales were successful from the start.
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Wikipedia