Marshall Field and Company

 

The iconic clock on the Marshall Field & Co. flagship store
Corner of State Street and Washington Street, Chicago

Sandwiches for supper turned into a trip down memory lane for me. It wasn’t just any sandwich—it was a classic Marshall Field Turkey Sandwich that actually resembles “classic” sandwiches served in many places. I remember having something similar at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth. An open-faced sandwich with rye topped by turkey, Swiss cheese, and Thousand Island dressing and decorated with tomato, sliced egg, bacon and olive—shh! don’t tell Christian because I didn’t offer him an olive, which he loves.

Anyway, the sandwich started me thinking about my many ties and trips to the flagship Marshall Field store in downtown Chicago. Those excursions started when I was very young. My father, an osteopathic physician, had an office on the seventeenth floor of the Marshall Field Annex, and Mom would end shopping trips by taking me to the bargain basement where, hidden away in a corner, was a snack bar that far as I can remember only served hot dogs and frozen malts. I loved it. Then, nearby, was a secret door (I just thought it was a secret—it really wasn’t) that opened to a staircase. Go up one floor and through the door and, like magic, we were in the lobby of the annex without having to go out of the building and cross the downtown street. We’d take the elevator to the seventeenth floor. That was in the day when there was a white-gloved, uniformed operator in every elevator.

By the time I was old enough to be turned loose in the store, I knew every inch of every floor.  I could take you to household goods or teen clothes. I knew we came in by the glove counter, and on that pillared first floor were the hosiery and jewelry counters. On the sixth floor you could choose from several restaurants. The Walnut Room, a bit staid and dignified, was the main dining area, but Mom and I always liked The Verandah, decorated as though it were part of a southern mansion. In fact, I bet I had the classic sandwich there. And I know at least once, when Mom was nowhere around, my friend Eleanor Lee and I rode up the down escalator and down the up, to the consternation of store employees no doubt. Today I’m uncertain of my footing on escalators and avoid them when I can, so I look back on that adventure with awe.

Eventually I could go downtown by myself, riding the IC or Illinois Central commuter train. And mostly I went to Marshall Field’s though I did give a bit of business to rival Carson, Pirie & Scott just a block down State Street. I remember once paying twenty dollars for a blouse and thinking I was terribly extravagant. By then, Dad had closed his downtown office and was full time president of the Chicago College of Osteopathy and administrator of the adjacent hospital, so I had no downtown refuge.

The last time I was at Field’s was in the nineties, when I visited with a Texas friend who had grown up in a northwest Chicago suburb. We had lunch in the Walnut Room, and it was a bit shabby. We both felt the magic we remembered from our childhood was gone. But my connection to Field’s doesn’t end there.

I can’t remember which came first—the book I read or the one I wrote. The one I read was What the Lady Wants: A Novel of Marshall Field and the Gilded Age, by Renée Rosen, which perhaps inspired both the title and subject of my The Gilded Cage: A Novel of Chicago. My novel focused on Bertha (Cissy) Palmer, wife of hotelier Potter Palmer who built the Palmer House. Marshall Field played a large part in that story, for he and Potter Palmer were prominent among Chicago’s Robber Barons, along with Gustavus Swift, Philip Armour, George Pullman and others. Cissy Palmer interested me because she was the first (or one of them) woman philanthropist and most probably the first marred to a Robber Baron. The fictionalized version of her life covers Chicago history from the 1840s through the 1893 Columbian Exposition, including the Great Fire, labor troubles, the Civil War, and the Haymarket Riot. You can read a bit more about Cissy and her world here: The Gilded Cage: A Novel of Chicago - Kindle edition by Alter, Judy. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com. (That’s called blatant self promoton or BSP.)

Last night, Christian liked the Marshall Field sandwich so much he voted to keep it on the rotation of dishes we frequently have. I agreed, because not only did I like it, it brought back happy memories. There has never been another store like Field’s—not even Neiman Marcus—and I miss it. At least you can still get their much-praised Frango Mints online.

 

Farewell to elegance

 

Marshall Field & Company
State Street, downtown Chicago

Lunch at Neiman Marcus has always been a special treat for me. That demitasse of consommé and the popover with strawberry butter. I once tried to make that and ended with globules of butter floating unattractively in strawberry jam. Clearly, I need the restaurant.

I’ve been doing some research lately on Helen Corbitt, the cook—she never called herself a chef—who oversaw Neiman’s food service from 1955 to 1969 and elevated the food to world class. Inevitably I’ve read a lot about Stanley Marcus and the whole history of that specialty store. So, when the corporations that now own Neiman’s announced almost a year ago that they filed for bankruptcy protection, I felt sad for the demise of yet another of the few bastions of elegance I’ve known in my life.

Years ago, I had a Neiman Marcus charge account, had my hair cut in their salon, dined in Fort Worth Zodiac frequently. For several reasons, I’m not so much of a customer anymore, but Neiman’s will always represent elegance to me. And I find the store’s history as a family business fascinating—sort of the ultimate success of a mom-and-pop store. It was founded in the first decade of the twentieth century by salesman Herbert Marcus and his sister, Carrie Marcus Neiman, and stayed in the family under the legendary Stanley Marcus until the 1970s when Mr. Stanley stepped down as chairman of the board. A series of leveraged buyouts saw it change owners frequently, and my unsubstantiated guess is that prices went up while quality went down. No more the philosophy that any sale was only a good sale for Neiman’s if it was a good sale for the customer. The whole atmosphere changed, and to me became less welcoming.

I’m grateful Fort Worth still has Neiman’s—in a new location, yet—and I can go have a demitasse of consommé and a popover with my chicken salad for lunch. But it isn’t the same. Somehow, I feel quality has become crassly commercial.

I don’t think any such heavy thought occurred to me when Chicago’s Marshall Field & Co. was purchased by Macy’s in 2003 and essentially disappeared. I remember, again, a sense of sadness. I last lunched at the original store with a friend in the ‘90s, and we found the famous Walnut Room, the classic upscale restaurant, a bit shabby. Perhaps elegance doesn’t always last.

But that store on State Street was my childhood playground. My dad, a physician, had his office on the seventeenth floor of the Marshall Field Annex, and you could go under the Wabash Avenue from store to annex. I could roam the store at a fairly young age, and as a teenager, I’d ride the “IC” (Illinois Central commuter train) downtown to Field’s by myself. I could lead you blindfolded to every department in the store, though I was especially fond of the teen apparel section and the restaurants. I liked The Verandah better than the Walnut Room. Then again, I knew where in the budget basement they sold hot dogs and something called a chocolate frosty.

When I wrote The Gilded Cage, about Bertha Honoré (Cissie) Palmer and her husband, Potter, I delved a bit more into the origins of Field’s. The store traces back to a dry goods store on Chicago’s Lake Street, opened in 1857. It went through several iterations, a longtime partner, and at least two devastating fires, before it finally became Marshall Field and Co. in 1881 and later moved into its twelve-story, opulent headquarters at State and Randolph just after the turn of the twentieth century. Want to learn more? Read What the Lady Wants, by Renee Rosen.

Obviously, I learned a lot more about the Palmer House from my research for my novel, The Gilded Cage. Potter Palmer arrived in Chicago in the late 1840s. By the time of the Great Fire, he was a successful hotelier and had just built the Palmer House. It was totally destroyed, but the plans had been saved in an underground vault, and Palmer rebuilt, adding more luxurious detail as he went. Like Field’s store, the hotel catered to the wealthy, fulfilling their every wish from fresh flowers throughout daily to the silver dollars embedded in the floor of the world-renowned barbershop. From writing about the hotel in the late nineteenth century, I felt like I knew it well.

Truth is, I don’t remember ever going to the Palmer House all my years in Chicago, but in late 2016 my four children and I went to the city so I could show them where I grew up. Naturally, after The Gilded Cage, the hotel was high on my list of places to visit. We had lunch there one day and took the historical tour—it’s the only hotel I know of with its own museum inside and a historian on staff. We craned our necks at the ceiling murals and exclaimed in awe over everything from the 24-karat gold Tiffany chandeliers to the souvenir ashtrays in the museum. Want to know more about the Palmer House? Read The Gilded Cage. The hotel also figures in my most recent cozy mystery, Saving Irene.

Maybe it’s a sign of the times, for better or for worse, and elegance is being replaced by comfortable casual, but I will always miss these grand old dames of the past. Next on my list is the Drake Hotel, which as a child I considered the epitome of elegance. My four kids and I stayed there on that visit to Chicago, but I will not go back lest I jinx it. It too was fading just a bit.

Memories and elevators

Strange how a little thing can trigger an old memory. There was one of those rather silly questions on Facebook: “Who remembers when elevators had operators?” And boom! I was ten years old again and riding in an elevator to my dad’s office. A woman wearing a uniform and white gloves operated the elevator—I so remember those white gloves.

During the morning, my dad was the president/hospital administrator at the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine, but in the afternoon he was  in private practice as a manipulative osteopathic physician, with an office on the seventeenth floor of the Marshall Field Annex in downtown Chicago.

A trip to Field’s, as we called it, was a special treat for me. I can’t remember if Mom and I drove or took the Illinois Central—probably a bit of both. But I know I lived in anticipation for days beforehand. I knew, of course, about the “other” store, Carson Pirie Scott & Company, but Field’s was “our” store.

We started on the first floor, with its wide aisles and glass-and-dark wood cases showing everything from nylon hose and stationery to jewelry. At Christmas, it was a fairyland, with Santa driving his reindeer high above our heads, greenery and red bows everywhere, and Christmas music playing.

On an ordinary day we worked our way up, floor by floor. My memory is not clear, but I think housewares were on two or three, and girls clothing, which of course interested me, on four or five. The top floor—was it six or seven?—held restaurants. I particularly remember the Verandah, decorated to look like a southern front porch (or someone’s idea of that) and the more staid Walnut Room. Years later, on a return to Chicago, a friend and I ate in the Walnut Room and found it disappointingly shabby.

I think Mom had a map of Field’s imprinted in her brain, but she knew all the nooks and crannies. My favorite was in the basement were the sale items were—bargain basement had real meaning in those days! Tucked into one corner was a small counter that served hot dogs and chocolate frosted malts. I thought that was the best treat in the world.

Then if you knew where you were going you wound through dry goods to an obscure doorway, went up a flight of stairs, and into a hallway—you had gone under the street and were in the Annex building. Into the elevator and up to the 17^th floor, then around a corner, down a long hall with marble wainscoting (I suppose it was real), and there was the office Dad shared with three colleagues. Spoiled child that I was, I loved going there because the two women who ran the office always fussed over me. Mrs. O’Donnell always wore a starched white uniform and her stiff RN cap. She was a happy, outgoing, but very efficient woman who assisted the doctors who had a more general practice involving office procedures.

Dad’s office was simply two treatment rooms adjacent to the desk where Rose the receptionist sat. Rose was a gentle soul, a spinster I believe, quiet and retiring but most concerned about those around her. She once asked Dad so often if he felt well because, she said, he didn’t look well that he went home a sick man and asked Mom how he looked. But I remember treats from Rose and fine conversations with her.

Then it would be time for all of us to go home for the day. Dad, a proper gentleman in the British style, would put on his Brooks Brothers overcoat and don his fedora, and we headed for the elevators. No matter which operator we got, he or she always said, “Evening, Doc.” It made me think my dad was a really important man. And, of course, he was.