Marshall Field Wabash Avenue Annex II
Life Span: 1914-Present
Location:
Architect:
Chicago Examiner, January 5, 1913
The Marshall Field & Co. store, already the biggest retail emporium in the world, is to become, during the year just opening. greater still. Having no outside record to exceed, it has undertaken to exceed in spectacular fashion its own.
With the razing of the Trude and Lemoyne buildings, now occupying a corner of the block otherwise devoted exclusively to the department store, and by the erection of a new twelve-story building on the site of the old ones, the company’s dearest dream will be made fact.
This dream has been for years to control and use for retail business the block bounded by State, Washington, Wabash and Randolph streets. At first the dream sprang from pride—the little corner of foreign business in the block seemed like a sort of intrusion; it was annoying. But in recent years the rapid growth of the company’s business has imperatively demanded the additional space.
Holders of the property held out for a long time against every proposition made by the Field Company. They held out so long, in fact, that when they finally did consent to let go of the site the land was no longer equal to the needs of the Field Company.
And that, is why the company will begin this year the erection of two new buildings instead of one. Already work is under way to clear the site of the old Fisk Building on Washington street, across the street from the present Field structure. And on that site the Field Company is preparing to erect a twenty-story building which will be known as the Marshall Field & Company Annex. The annex will be devoted to the men’s merchandise, thus relieving the situation in the main store.
The structure on the site of the Trude and Lemoyne buildings will be built of steel and granite, uniform architecturally with the present building. This will be finished about May 1, 1914. The twenty-story building on the Fisk site is expected to be finished about January 1, 1914.
The most important aspect of the new enterprise in the eyes of the department store management is the addition of floor space. Twelve years ago the store oceu-pied 600,000 square feet. This space was almost doubled in 1902 by the addition of the north section of the State street bud-ing. Four years later the Wabash avenue section brought the floor space up to 1,762,-792 square feet. And now the two new buildings will increase the floor space to more than 2,400,000 square feet, a total far in excess of any other store in the world.
In land area the enterprise has expanded 55 per cent in twelve years. In floor space the increase is 220 per cent.
- Marshall Field Block
Sanborn Fire Insurance Map
1927
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