What’s in a Name?

I heard on the radio the other day that Federated Department Stores Inc. was going to change the name of the traditional store in Chicago from Marshall Fields to Macy’s. The story was interviewing people from Chicago being upset about the change and then talked to the public relations person for the company who explained that the old name was actually hurting the store and changing it would make it better – and all of the traditions that people liked would stay.

Why does it matter? Why do we care about a name that doesn’t mean anything anymore? I’m sure Marshall and/or Field are long gone.

But we should care. And let me tell you why.

Names do matter. Names give us a connection to history. In Portland the same corporation has bought Meier and Frank in February. They have not announced a change of the name (M&F has been owned by outsiders since 1966) but I can imagine it. But let me preemptively say why we shouldn’t change it.

Aaron Meier, a Jewish emigrant from Germany, worked his way north in the mid-1850s from the Sierra gold fields to new mines in the Rogue River Valley. He carried needles, thread, buttons, and bolts of cloth in his traveling dry goods business. He worked hard, saved, and in 1857 opened a small retail store in Portland, then a town of 1,300 residents. The city's boom during the 1860s with opening of new mining fields in the interior and the flow of capital through the emerging city gave him the chance to expand his business. In time Sigmund Frank, his son-in-law, joined him. Meier & Frank Department Store was on its way to becoming one of the nation's largest retail outlets.
http://bluebook.state.or.us/cultural/history/history13.htm

Meier & Frank's downtown store was a shopping mecca to Portlanders for decades before the advent of suburban and urban malls. An invitation to tea there tended to be formal.
For decades a date to "meet me under the clock" needed no elaboration. It was the one on the main floor of the downtown Meier & Frank.

Work on the current building began in 1913. Over the years other buildings were bought and demolished for additional space, and the building, as it stands on a full city block, was completed in 1932.

http://www.katu.com/stories/75319.html

There are two things that stand out for me. One is the idea of a downtown store that people gathered at in the growing city of Portland. By the time that Portland hosted the World’s Fair in 1905 (The Lewis& Clark Exposition, celebrating the 100 years since the explorers came) Meier & Frank had existed for 50 years. A meeting place where one can imagine people in cool retro clothes shopping and having tea. Eight years ago, while shopping for my sister’s wedding at Meier & Frank, my sister, my mom and I went up and had lunch at the “Georgian Room” and I was amazed at the sense of connection. How many other mother and sisters had been shopping for a wedding and stopped and done the exact same thing for 150 years?

The other thing is one of the few examples of Jewish immigrants to Portland. The community here is very small and Aaron Meier was here at the beginning.

In 1942 Aaron Meier Frank, the son of Sigmund Frank and grandson of Aaron Meier was the head of the company. He was very involved in the Portland community and clearly had a lot of influence on it’s shaping. One major way was that he sold (for a very good deal) his magnificent estate (built by his brother) Fir Acres to what was then Albany College. That means that Lewis & Clark College’s main offices are located in a magnificent house in the Southwest Hills. It has terraces and reflecting pools leading from it’s back door down to a unbelievable view of the Willamette.

The history of Fir Acres and it’s relationship to the Jewish community in Portland (a place for those people not allowed in Waverly Country Club and others) is discussed at the Lewis & Clark Chronicle web site: http://www.lclark.edu/~public/CHRONICLE/Fall1999/specialsection.html

So getting rid of the name Meier & Frank name would mean so much more than just the name of a store. Meier and Frank the men, and their families, made Portland what it is in many ways. So if Federated would like to make all of their department stores to be named Macy’s it would change things a lot. Not that Macy’s doesn’t have history, but it’s not ours. Macy’s can make money off of us, but let us hold onto the memories of the people who shaped out city.