1922 | Retail, Trade
Retail, Trade
R. H. Macy Co. sells shares to the public for the first time after 64 years of private ownership (see 1912).
Marks & Spencer opens its first department store under that name at Darlington (see 1894). "Marks & Sparks" will grow to become Britain's leading retail enterprise.
Kansas City's Country Club Plaza Shopping Center is the world's first large decentralized shopping center (see Lake Forest, 1916). Developer Jesse Clyde Nichols, 42, wrote a Harvard graduate thesis on the economics of land development, visited English "garden city" developments, collected architectural ideas in Spain, and now pursues construction of the 6,000-acre Country Club district that will occupy 10 percent of Kansas City, Missouri, before the city expands through annexation. Stores in his shopping mall conform in their architecture to small-town shopping districts, facing the street with parking lots in the rear (see Dallas, 1931).
National Cash Register founder John H. Patterson dies en route to Atlantic City May 7 at age 77; merchant John Wanamaker dies at his native Philadelphia December 12 at age 84 (he is credited with having said, "I know that half my advertising budget is wasted, but I have never been able to discover which half").