Ohrbach's
| Department store | |
| Industry | Retail |
| Fate | Merged into Steinbach after Amcena acquired Steinbach |
| Founded | 1923 |
| Defunct | 1987 |
| Headquarters | New York, New York |
| Products | Clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, and housewares. |
| Parent | Amcena |
Ohrbach's was a moderate-priced department store with a merchandising focus primarily on clothing and accessories. From its modest start in 1923 until the chain's demise in 1987, Ohrbach's expanded dramatically after World War II, and opened numerous branch locations in the metro areas of New York, New Jersey and Los Angeles. Its original flagship store was located on Union Square in New York City, and they maintained home and administrative offices in Newark as well as in Los Angeles. The retailer would eventually close the Newark offices in the 1970s. Paul László designed the Union Square store as well as many of their other stores.
Ohrbach’s first store opened on October 4, 1923 in the fire-damaged building where Adolph Zukor operated the world’s first nickelodeon. Founder Nathan M. Ohrbach launched his store with partner Max Wiesen, a dress manufacturer. After a time there was a falling-out between the partners. Wiesen refused to sell out so Ohrbach leased quarters nearby to open a second store. This move forced Wiesen to sell out.
When Ohrbach opened his store, he believed in cutting service to the bare essentials and sharing the savings with his customers. He also priced his goods in even numbers, while most of his competitors priced their goods in odd prices. Wiesen brought women’s ready-to-wear in the form of job lots, seconds, manufacturer’s overstocks, and irregulars. Ohrbach sold these in large volume and at low prices. After buying out Wiesen in 1928, he added men’s and children’s furnishings and accessories. He started to “trade up” his women’s wear and offer higher style garments. Other policies formalized at this time were no price advertising, minimum sales force, no alterations, no deliveries, cash and carry, and no special sales periods.
The growth of the fashion industry in California encouraged the company’s expansion to the state. The firm employed the services of a buying office in Los Angeles as early as 1939 and by 1945 opened its own. In 1948, it leased three floors and the mezzanine in a wing of the Welton Becket–William Wurdeman designed Prudential Insurance Company building on Wilshire Boulevard’s Miracle Mile. The success of the Miracle Mile store led the firm in 1953 to open another branch in Downtown Los Angeles when it acquired the twelve-story Milliron's building at 5th and Broadway. The success at this branch was short lived, however; it first closed five floors as an economic move, but finally, in 1959, closed the branch because of poor results. In the 1960s, additional branches were opened in La Mirada and Panorama City. Ohrbach's was a major anchor for the Los Cerritos Center in Cerritos, California in the 1970s. In the mid-1970s, they opened another store in the Glendale Galleria in Glendale, California. The architecture of the Cerritos and Glendale store had an unusual tile front which helped customers know which store was Ohrbach's in these new large malls with several major department stores. In 1965, the Miracle Mile store was relocated in the former Seibu Department Store at Wilshire and Fairfax Avenue. This is the current location of the Petersen Automotive Museum. Ohrbach's supplied clothing for the television soap operas: All My Children, Dark Shadows, The Doctors, the short lived weekly drama Coronet Blue, the comedy Mister Ed, I Love Lucy, The Donna Reed Show and others.
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