What is Macy’s?

Born in 1822, R.H. Macy, the son of a Nantucket-based shopkeeper, left home at 15 to set sail on the whaling ship Emily Morgan.  After four years at sea, he returned to Massachusetts and worked in his father’s shop before opening his own needle-and-thread store in Boston in 1844. This shop failed as did another dry goods store he opened two years later. Macy then worked for a time in his brother-in-law’s Boston shop, followed by a stint in California searching for gold during the 1849 gold rush. After that effort proved disappointing, he came back to Massachusetts and, in 1851, opened yet another dry goods store in downtown Haverhill in partnership with his brother. Though they experienced modest success, Macy left Haverhill for New York City in 1858 to open his own fancy dry goods store—R.H. Macy & Co.—on the corner of 14th Street and 6th Avenue, a low-rent district north of the city’s other dry good stores. Over the years, R.H. Macy & Co. went public, opened regional stores, took over competing retail outlets and, in 1994, was itself acquired by Federated Department Stores, which had operated hundreds of stores across 37 states and, with this purchase, became the largest department store retailer in America. The online Macy’s—macys.com—was launched in 1997, significantly broadening the company’s reach. In 2007, Federated Department Stores changed its corporate name to Macy’s, Inc. and now has over 800 stores across the United States.

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