A GROUP OF THIRTY ONE ASSORTED PHOTOGRAPHS OF WOOLWORTH STORE FRONT WINDOW DISPLAYS

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PROPERTY OF THE VENATOR GROUP, FORMERLY F.W. WOOLWORTH & CO., REMOVED FROM THE OFFICES OF THE WOOLWORTH BUILDING, NEW YORK CITY (LOTS 216-260) The following forty-four lots form part of the furnishings and fixtures removed from the offices of Cass Gilbert's 1913 "Cathedral of Commerce", the Woolworth Building, New York City, centre of Frank Winfield Woolworth's multi-million dollar "nickel and dime" empire. Born in 1852 and raised on his father's farm in Rodman, New York, it was an early ambition of Woolworth to enter the dry goods business. His first step on the ladder to the lofty heights of commerce, to which he would rapidly ascend, came in 1873 when, for no salary, he became an errand boy for a dry goods firm in upstate New York. Six years later, with $50 to his name and a small amount of credit from a former employer, Woolworth opened his first Five and Ten Cents store in Utica, New York. Thirty-three years later, the firm was incorporated with an astonishing value of $65 million and, by the time of Woolworth's death in 1919, a total of 1,068 stores were in operation throughout the USA and Canada. Erected at a cost of $14 million - characteristically paid for by Woolworth entirely in cash - and opened in 1912, the Woolworth Building was for many years the world's tallest business structure. The company's own offices were located on the upper floors, while the vast remainder of the building was occupied by tenants at a total annual rent of approximately $2.5 million. The following selection of items includes company-related ephemera, boardroom and other general office furniture and, finally, the private 'Empire' office suite of Frank Woolworth himself, including, fittingly for a man who built his own commercial Empire, the pair of throne chairs, copies of the model supplied to Napoleon I for the Palais de Saint-Cloud.

Details

A GROUP OF THIRTY ONE ASSORTED PHOTOGRAPHS OF WOOLWORTH STORE FRONT WINDOW DISPLAYS
Framed and matted
The larges 14 x 11in. (35.5 x 28cm.) overall (31)

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