Macy's Union Square (the location of the Macy's department store chain located on San Francisco's Union Square) is one of the retailer's largest and oldest locations, long the flagship of Macy's California, then Macy's West.
Macy's San Francisco roots date back to 1866 and the founding of O'Connor, Moffat, Kean Co. at Second & Market Streets, eventually moving into several buildings on south Post Street, between Grant Avenue and Kearny Street, where it rebuilt after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and reopened in March 1909.[1]
In 1928, the company, by then known as O'Connor, Moffat & Co., commissioned Lewis P. Hobart to design a new eight-story store building at 101 Stockton Street at the northwest corner of O'Farrell Street, with a projected cost of $3,400,000 .
The new O'Connor, Moffatt & Co. store opened to the public on March 4, 1929,[2] clad in cream-colored terra-cotta that incorporated Neo-Gothic details, especially at the top of its façades.[3]
R.H. Macy & Company, New York, New York acquired O'Connor Moffat in 1945[4] for a reported $2,175,000 in stock.[5] On October 16, 1947, the store was rebranded as Macy's.[6]
When announcing the merger, Macy's also announced the purchase of the six-story Brickell Building with of frontage on Geary Street facing Union Square, and took possession on January 1, 1946. At the time it was home to the Santa Fe Railroad ticket office (235 Geary) and the Frank More shoe store (233 Geary).[5] A corridor gave access to Macy's from Union Square.[3]
Macy's followed up with a major expansion of the store, incorporating 170 O'Farrell Street to the west, in 1948, commissioning the original architect of the 1928 building, Louis Parson Hobart.[7]
The new addition, costing a reported $6,500,000 (opened in September 1949, matched the façades of the older store, except at the parapet, where the florid Gothic detail was not replicated. A polished-granite first floor united both new and old parts of the store. In the interior, the 1949 remodeling kept the original square fluted columns, but a drop ceiling and "modern" lighting obscured the elaborate gothic tracery of the older store's street-floor ceiling.[3]
In 1955, the Brickell Building was refurbished, after which Macy's customers could enter the store through the Blum's Confectionery,[3] a candy store that incorporated a café serving desserts and light meals.
Macy's acquired the 76000square feet Dohrmann's home furnishings store, demolished it in 1967 and constructed a building on the site that was added to the main store.[8] The new front incorporated a clock tower worked into the façade design.[3]
Eventually the front of the Brickell Building was also redone so that it matched the 1968 addition on the Dohrmann's site. The floor elevation of the 1968 addition did not align with the main (1929/1948) building, so escalators at the street floor of the Union Square buildings connected down to the main floor and up to the second floor of the older portion of the store.[3]
in 1976, Macy's bought the building at 255 Geary, for decades, home to Frank Werner shoes, sold in 1952 to Bally of Switzerland.[9]
In 1984, Macy's opened a separate separate Men's Store in a building across Stockton Street from its Main Store. The building at 100-120 Stockton Street was built in 1974 and previously a branch of the Hawaii-based Liberty House (department store), bringing the total area of the complex to .
In 1995, Federated Department Stores (now Macy's, Inc.), which owned both Macy's and I. Magnin specialty department stores, closed the I. Magnin chain. Macy's 1929/1948 building and its Union Square-facing buildings formed an "L" shape surrounding the I. Magnin Union Square store at the southwest corner of Stockton and Geary streets, built in 1946. In 1995, Federated decided to incorporate the building as part of Macy's Union Square, which meant that Macy's then occupied the entire block facing Stockton street from O'Farrell Street on the south to Geary Street and Union Square on the north.
The entire complex including the Men's Store thus reached its peak size of approximately, one of the largest department store locations in the world at that time. This was at a time when most other downtown flagship stores in large U.S. cities other than New York and Chicago had already closed, such as May Co. in Los Angeles (1986), Bullock's and J.W. Robinson's in Los Angeles (1983), Rich's in Atlanta (1994), May Co. in Cleveland (1993), and Hudson's in Detroit (1983). Even Macy's Union Square's own local rival Emporium would close its flagship the next year, in 1996.
In the late 1990s Macy's began a multi-year project to rehabilitate the entire complex, remodeling of the 1929/1948 building and the Men's Store; expanding into the upper floors of the Magnin's building, and razing and replacing the two out-of-date buildings on Geary Street facing Union Square (on the Brickell and Dohrmann's sites), giving the store its current signature glass-fronted entry from the Square.
In 2018, Macy's proceeded to sell both of its most recent additions: the former Magnin's building that had been incorporated into the main complex, and the separate Men's Store (former Liberty House) building. The complex, now reduced back to its pre-1984 size, still boasts about of retail space.
On February 27, 2024, it was announced that Macy's be closing this location as part of a plan to close 150 stores nationwide by the end of 2026. Macy's stated that the location would remain open until the property would be sold to a new owner. More than 400 employees will be impacted as part of the closure.[10]
| Opened/ Added | Sold | Building | Address | Area added sq ft | Total area sq ft | Total area sq m | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1929 | open | O'Connor, Moffat & Co. building (Macy's Main Building) | 101 Stockton corrner of O'Farrell | 244,000 | 244,000 | ||
| 1948 | open | Addition to main store, west along O'Farrell plus Brickell Building on Geary | 160‑170 O'Farrell, 233-235 Geary | 244,000 (approx.)[11] | 488,000 (approx.) | (approx.) | |
| 1967 | open | Dohrmann's building (76000square feet) razed; new building on its site added to Macy's main store. | 281 Geary on Union Square | 640,000[12] | |||
| 1976 | open | Bought and expanded into former Frank Werner/Bally Building[13] | 255 Geary on Union Square | 40,000 | 680,000[14] | ||
| [15] | Separate Men's Store in the old Liberty House store | 100-120 Stockton | 180,000 | 860,000 | |||
| 1995* | 2018*[16] | Expansion into former I. Magnin Building[17] | 135 Stockton corner of Geary on Union Square | 240,000 | 1,100,000 | ||
| 1998 | 2024[18] | Reconstruction of 1967/1976 bldgs. on Union Square (263,640 sq ft)[19] | (235)-255-281 Geary on Union Square | ca. 1,100,000 | ca. | ||
| Total current floor area of complex after closing of ex-Magnin and Men's buildings: | |||||||