The Ruler of Greeley Square
Bernard Feustman Gimbel was in the thirdgeneration of a merchandising family already well established andwealthy when he entered the business in 1907. He was thereforeinevitably tab-loided as "the Merchant Prince." The condescending titlenever fitted the round-faced ruler of New York's Gree ley Square. Inthe 34 years he spent on the throne, first as president of GimbelBros., Inc., and later as chairman, Gimbel personally changed thefamily firm into an empire that this year will sell $600 million worthof merchandise in 27 Gimbels stores and 27 swankier Saks Fifth Avenuestores. Beyond that, with a zest that lasted almost up to his deathlast week at 81 of spinal cancer, Gimbel roamed his adopted city as itsconscience, urging on everything from bigger buildings to bettereducation. "Anyone who lives in this city," he would say, "and doesn'tmake a contribution to it is like a barnacle on a boat."
"Fairness & Equality." For all his civic zeal and his personal flair forthe good life on a 200-acre Connecticut estate and at his Floridamansion, Gimbel was more than anything else a shrewd merchant. He washardly out of the University of Pennsylvania and into the PhiladelphiaGimbels store before he was pushing drastic changes on his father andsix uncles. The family business had started in Vincennes, Ind., in1842. The Gimbel brothers built bigger stores in Milwaukee andPhiladelphia, but "Bernie" insisted that they move to New York, wherethe real action was. He picked out a $9,000,000 site, and he got JuliusRosenwald, his friend, who was Sears, Roebuck chairman, to hint to thefamily that if Gimbels was not interested in the property, Sears wouldbe.
The Greeley Square store, with its two subterranean floors of bargainbasement for subway shoppers, was an immediate success. On the strengthof it, Bernard Gimbel took another chance. In 1923 he negotiated withHorace A. Saks to buy Saks's 34th Street store as well as the FifthAvenue site where Saks was planning an uptown store. The negotiationstook place partly in a railroad baggage car, where the two men sat atopan empty coffin and talked business. Saks's Cadillac-class merchandisenow accounts for half of Gimbel Bros.' earnings.
"Opera Is Too Dangerous." Outside the store, Gimbel was, in his ownwords, "a simple man." Wife Alva, to whom Gimbel was married for 54years, once tried to get him interested in opera. Their first night atthe Met, a pair of opera glasses fell out of a box above them and hitGimbel on the foot. "If that had been my head, I would have beenkilled," he said. "Opera is too dangerous." Instead he settled for ginrummy, frequent trips to nearby race tracks with such intimates asToymaker Louis Marx, and daily sessions at the Biltmore Hotel steambaths, where Gimbel, even as a septuagenarian, impressed friends byswimming the 35-ft. length of the pool underwater.
Among Gimbel's many friends was Gene Tunney. Gimbel met Tunney shortlybefore he won the heavyweight boxing championship of the world, becamean "amateur manager" who advised Tunney how to invest his purses.Tunney, now a millionaire, gave one of two eulogies at Gimbel'sfuneral. Another chum was Joseph P. Kennedy, who, as Columnist JimmyBreslin disclosed in a different kind of eulogy, steered Gimbel to anhonest Manhattan bookie with whom the department-store magnate madefrequent bets in sums as high as $10,000 . "He'd shopfor a gambling price pretty good," the bookie said last week. "This manwas a merchant, you know."
Another old friend was Macy's chairman. Jack I. Straus, who last weekrecalled what Macy's told Gimbels. "We'd often lunch together, just thetwo of us," Straus said, "and laugh about the supposed deadly rivalrybetween Macy's and Gimbels. That Macy-Gimbel feud was our gimmick."
Prev:The Machines ofNext:And Now, Preventicare
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
