THE SUMMER HOME OF THE MACY FAMILY
THE SUMMER HOME OF THE MACY FAMILY
Recreation in the modern store stands side by side with education inperfecting the individual employee
Just off the corner of the recreation room on the third floor is the private office of the assistant superintendent of training. Her title sounds rather formidable and does justice neither to her job nor to her personality: for in reality she combines the qualities of a charming hostess, an efficient manager and a mother confessor.
In the Macy book of information for employees there is a paragraph under the heading, "Department of Training," which says: "It is the purpose of this department to interest itself in all the employees of this organization. Do not hesitate to go with your troubles to the assistant superintendent of training, whose duty it is to interest herself in you: both in the store and at your home. She will be glad to give you advice, both in business and in personal matters."
And so she has her hands full, and sometimes herheart as well; for, among five thousand folk of every sort and kind, there are bound to be many perplexing personal problems and troubles, to which the very best kind of help is the kindly and disinterested advice of a sympathetic and understanding person. And when that person is a woman—a woman of rare tact—the problem is generally apt to approach its solution. Which makes for friendship, not merely between the worker and that woman, but between the worker and the store. And so still another rivet is clinched in the great morale bridge between the business machine and the human units that enable it to function so very well indeed. And the Macy spirit becomes an even more tangible thing.
As one goes through the store he finds many evidences of the things that go to upbuild that spirit. It may be only a printed sign cautioning courtesy and cheerfulness, not merely between the store workers and its patrons, but between the members of the Macy family, themselves. "A smile with every package and a 'thank you' as good-bye," rings one. And remember that other, again more cautious: "In speaking say 'we' and 'our,' not 'I' and 'mine.'" It may be the warm hand of friendship from the member of the reception committee to the new girl that comes to work under the Herald Square roof, or it may be any of the long-planned, coolly devised methods of social justice to the store employee. These last are never to be overlooked.
For instance, three months after the day that a new employee first arrives to work at Macy's, membershipin the Macy Mutual Aid Association becomes automatic. In no small way it becomes a real part of his job. It is the object of the M. M. A. A. to provide and maintain a fund for the assistance of its members during sickness and of their families or dependents in case of death. Dues in this association are graded according to the worker's salary, consist of one per cent. of the salary up to thirty dollars; while the sick benefits are two-thirds of the salary, limited by a benefit of twenty dollars. The death benefits are five times the weekly salary, with a minimum of sixty dollars and a maximum of one hundred and fifty dollars.
It is obvious that these dues do not of themselves pay the benefits. The house "chips in." Yet not through sympathy, but through one of the tenets of good business as we moderns have now begun to know it.
"It would be poor business for me, indeed," said a silk manufacturer of Connecticut to me not long ago, "to let my people become sick. I want no germ diseases in my mills. Neither do I want the mills to cease their continuous operation. That, too, is poor business. And so the sickness that may cost my worker ten dollars may easily cost me twenty-five—in the stoppage of my plant, alone."
The control of the Macy Mutual Aid Association is, moreover, vested solely in the hands of the store employees. An itemized statement of its receipts and its disbursements as well as its proceedings is posted each month on the store bulletin boards and printed inSparks, so that every member of the organization mayknow its exact affairs. It decidedly does not work in the dark.
I should be derelict, indeed, in regard to this whole question of health in modern industry—and of the particular modern industry of which this book treats—if I neglected in these pages that corner of the high-set eighth floor—flooded by sunshine during the greater part of each pleasant day—where sits the Macy hospital, conducted by the Macy Mutual Aid Association. It is, of course, solely an emergency hospital, yet one where doctors, nurses, dentists and a chiropodist are constantly on duty. Three doctors—two men and one woman—consult with and prescribe for the patients, two dentists look after their teeth, and a chiropodist takes care of that prime asset to all salespeople—the feet. Those members of the hospital staff are professional men and women of the first rank and they work with the best and latest equipment. Although the emergency hospital is primarily for the services of the store workers it stands also at the service of any one who may come into the building and need its services. For instance, in case a customer becomes ill, a wheelchair is sent, and he or she, as the case may be, is taken to the hospital for immediate restorative treatment.
One or two final phases of this family life upon a huge scale in the very heart of New York and I am done with it. Thrift, in the Macy category of the making of a good worker, comes only next to good health. Under that same widespread roof there is asavings bank for the sole use of Macy folk. Any amount from five cents upward is accepted as a deposit and the fact that good use is made of this constant incentive to thrift is evidenced by the continued and prosperous operation of the institution. It has not been necessary to organize it as a full-fledged savings bank. At the end of each day it transfers its funds, by means of a special messenger, to one of the largest of New York savings banks which handles the accounts directly. The law does not permit a savings bank in the State of New York to open branches—else that would have been done at Macy's long ago. The messenger method was the only feasible substitute.
Believing that even the most provident may occasionally have good reasons, indeed, for wishing to borrow money, the heads of the house have set aside a permanent fund as a loan reserve for the Macy folk. Any one who has been in the store's employ for at least three months may, upon advancing even ordinarily satisfactory reasons, borrow from this fund. The limit is a sum which can be repaid in ten weekly installments. No security is required nor is any interest charged. The employee is bound by nothing but his honor.
That sixty-four years of continuous operation have established the commercial success of Macy's should be patent to you by this time. But now that you have known of the present-day family that dwells beneath its roof, you may ask: Has this policy toward its personnel worked out in hard practice? The question is indeed a fair one. To carry it still further, is thismachine of modern business humanized and inspired in fact as well as in theory? One cannot help but think of the machine. Machinesarehard. Generally they are fabricated in that hardest of all metals—steel. Can steel be warmed and tempered? Can the fact be recognized that the units of the Macy store are human and warm; and not steel and cold?
I think so. I imagine that you would have the answer to all these questions if you could talk for a little time with Jimmie Woods, whom we saw, but a short time hence, as a push-cart horse for the early Macy's and who has come today to be the assistant superintendent of the store's delivery department. His new job requires much more push than that old-time one. As a caption-line in a recent issue ofSparksaptly said: "Jimmie Woods delivers the goods." Metaphorically speaking, the house of Macy does the same thing. And at no point more than in its treatment of its human factors.
The day was not so very long ago when the life of a salesperson, even in a New York store of the better class, was not a particularly enviable thing. We saw, when we discussed the earlier Macy's, the long hours and the low wages of the rank and file of the organization. These things have changed today—in all department-stores that are worthy of the name. Public opinion was partly responsible for the change. But I think quite as large a factor was the realization that gradually was forced upon the minds of the merchants themselves that the old methods were poor business methods. Macy's knows that today. We have seenthe man who came to New York fifteen years ago with eleven dollars and a suitcase come to a high-salaried position with the house today; the retail furniture salesman earning over six thousand dollars a year, the twenty-five buyers at ten thousand a year and upward, as well as those at twenty-five thousand a year and upward. And we know that every one of these men and women have been the product of the Macy organization—from the moment that they began at the very bottom of the ladder.
And, lest you still think I befog the question, permit me to add that the minimum weekly wage of the woman employee in Macy's today is $14.00; and the average pay—apart from that of the executives and sub-executives—the men and women who, in the store's own nomenclature, are classed as "specials" and exempted from the time-disc record of their comings and their goings—is $25.00.
Have I now answered your question fairly? If still you wobble and are uncertain, permit me to call your attention to the service records of the store. They speak more eloquently than aught else can of the loyalty and the interest of its workers. Qualities such as these are not generated under bad working practices of any sort.
The records tell—and tell accurately, as well as eloquently. A Macy man was recently retired on a pension—the store's list of pensioners runs to a considerable length—after a round half-century of service. Others will soon follow in his footsteps. There are today upon the rolls ninety-two men and women whohave been with it for more than twenty-five years. In the delivery department alone there are twenty-three men who have records of twenty years or more; and of these there are three who have been there more than forty years. Three hundred members of the Macy family have records of fifteen years or over, fifteen hundred have been with it upwards of five years and—despite the recent after-the-war difficulties of maintaining labor morale and organization—only about one-quarter of the force have come within the twelvemonth. The labor turnover in Macy's is low indeed—and constantly is growing lower.
These figures, it seems to me, are the surest indication that the store's workers are treated fairly. Moreover, they alone show clearly the workings of its announced policy to give its own people every possible opportunity to grow within its ranks. In fact, no man or woman can stand still long at Macy's and continue to hold his or her job. Progress is a very necessary requisite there. And in order that progress may be recognized, steadily and fairly, system comes in once again to stabilize a very natural phase of human development. As the Macy employee shows new capabilities or additional industry, recommendations for increases in his remuneration are made by his department manager to a salary committee, appointed for this sole purpose. Periodically this committee receives a list of all the store folk who have not received an increase for a period of six months. The list is carefully reviewed and, whenever and wherever it can be justified, the pay envelope of the employee is fattened.
Macy's is, after all, a very human institution. The machine may be steel-like, but it is not steel. It is flesh and blood and human understanding. I sometimes think of it as a country town, rather than as a family—one of those nice, old-fashioned sorts of country towns, where most of the residents know one another, where there is an efficient governing body and where the community spirit is one of the strongest factors in its progress. Being human it is fallible, being fallible it still has something for which to work; and in fulfilling this obligation of work it is carrying out its destiny.
Yesterday, when Milady of Manhattan went for her shopping along the tree-lined reaches of Fourteenth Street, and found her way into that perennially fascinating shop at the corner of Sixth Avenue which specialized in its ribbons and its gloves and its rare exotic imported perfumes, she dreamed but little, if indeed she dreamed at all, of a Macy's that some day should stand intrenched at Herald Square and embrace a whole block-front of Broadway. Today Milady, finding her way into that small triangular "Square" in the very heart of Manhattan—still on the sharp lookout for ribbons and gloves and rare exotic perfumes—and Heaven only knows what else beside—may little dream of the changes that a tomorrow—
Tomorrow—what business has a book such as this to be talking of tomorrow; a vague, fantastic thing that only fools may seek to interpret in advance?
We have seen between these covers quite a number of things—some of them passing odd things—yet classified among the factors of good business, according to all of its modern definitions. And to them we shall now add another—the understanding and the correct interpretation of tomorrow. I think that when I depicted Mr. Macy standing with his daughter,Florence, at the corner of Thirty-fourth Street and Broadway half a century ago and explaining how there would be the business center of New York fifty years hence, I called attention to the sharp commercial fact that a great machine of modern business goes ahead quite as much upon the vision and the foresight of the men that guide it as upon their prudence. Which means in still another way, the proper understanding of tomorrows. And that understanding today is quite as much an asset of Macy's as its real estate, its cash balances in the banks, or the millions of dollars standing in the stock upon its shelves.
More than a decade ago the big store in Herald Square first began to feel its own growing pains. The fact that ten years before that it had been planned as the largest single department-store building in the United States, if not in the entire world, availed nothing when business came in even greater measure than the most far-sighted of its planners had dared to dream. Within three or four years after the time that the caravans of trucks and drays had moved Macy's the mile uptown from the old store to the new, changes were under way in the new building, changes seeking to make an economy of space here, another economy there—everywhere that an odd corner could be utilized to the better advantage of the store and its patrons, it was at once so used. Finally it became necessary to abandon the exhibition hall that was originally located on the ninth floor and thrust that great space into one of the larger non-selling departments of theenterprise; and two or three years later an entire extra floor was added atop of the big building—adding a goodly ten per cent. to its million square feet of floor space already existing.
Yet even these changes could not solve the final problem. Macy's still refused to stay put. Its growth was relentless, unending. Each fresh provision made for its expansion was quickly swallowed up, with the result that the proprietors of the store finally faced the inevitable: the need of making a real addition to their plant, not a series of picayune little extensions, but one fine, sweeping move which should be as distinct a step forward in Macy progress as the mighty hegira that occurred when the store moved north from Fourteenth Street to Thirty-fourth—a little more than eighteen years ago.
And, facing the inevitable, Macy's quickly made up its mind. It never has been noted for any particular hesitancy. It decided to step ahead.
Forecasting tomorrow in New York is not, after all, so vast a task as it might seem to be at a careless first glance. That is, if you do not put your tomorrow too far ahead—say more than ten or a dozen years at the most. I am perfectly willing to sit in these beginning days of 1922 and to assert that to attempt to forecast 1952 or even 1942 is not a particularly alluring pastime—if one has any real desire for accuracy. But 1932 is not so difficult. It is the business of skilled experts to interpret 1932 in 1922; a business which incidentally is rendered vastly easier in New York todaythan it was ten years ago by two hard and settled facts—the one, the wonderfully efficient new zoning plan of the city, and the other, the construction of the Pennsylvania Railroad Station on Seventh and Eighth Avenues, from Thirty-first to Thirty-third Streets.
The first of these factors should hold the strictly commercial development of the city—save for local outlying hubs or centers—south of Fifty-ninth Street. The block-a-year uptown movement of Manhattan for whole decades past has finally been halted; and halted effectually. Central Park has of course proved no little barrier in fixing Fifty-ninth Street as the arbitrary point of stoppage. But the zoning law, protecting the fine residence streets north of that point, and the Pennsylvania Station are also factors not to be overlooked.
True it is that at the very moment that these paragraphs are being written whole groups of new business buildings are being opened, in Fifty-seventh, Fifty-eighth and Fifty-ninth Streets, in the center of Manhattan. But other and bigger buildings are going up in the cross-streets far to the south of these. Count that much for the Pennsylvania Station. For it, and it alone, has proved the salvation of Thirty-fourth Street. Macy's, Altman's, McCreery's, the Waldorf-Astoria, the Hotel McAlpin—none of these alone nor all of them together—might have been able to save Thirty-fourth Street from becoming another Fourteenth, or another Twenty-third—a dull, wide thoroughfare given almost entirely in its later days to wholesale trade of one sort or another.
The Pennsylvania Station could do, and did do, the trick. Opened in 1910—but eight years after Macy's came first to Thirty-fourth Street and that brisk thoroughfare of today was in the very youth of its prosperity—the traffic which it handled day by day and month by month at that time was more than doubled in 1920. Not only has the business of the parent road that occupies it practically doubled in that decade, but the inclusion of the important through trains of the Baltimore & Ohio and the Lehigh Valley Railroads, to say nothing of the traffic of the huge suburban Long Island system increasing by leaps and bounds each twelvemonth, has begun at last to tax the facilities of a structure seemingly far too big ever to be severely taxed. In recent months the cementing of a closer traffic alliance between the New Haven and the Pennsylvania systems renders it a foregone conclusion that more and more of the through trains from New England will be brought to the big white-pillared station in Seventh Avenue.
You cannot down a street on which there stands a city gateway, particularly if the city gateway be one through which there sweeps all the way from fifty to sixty thousand folk a day. Thirty-fourth Street cannot be downed. Remember that, if you will. It will not be compelled to share the rather bitter fate of its former wide-set compeers just to the south. This much is known today.
And being known, it settles forever even the possibility of Macy's moving uptown once again. It, too, is fixed. It has cast its die with the street calledThirty-fourth and with Thirty-fourth it is going to remain. So Macy's buys the realty to the west of its present building and prepares thereon to erect, in connection with its present edifice, a great new store building—in ground space one hundred and twenty-five by two hundred feet—in height, nineteen full floors above the street (and two basements beneath)—in all, some 500,000 square feet of floor-space or close to fifty per cent. added to the 1,100,000 square feet of the present store.
Offhand, it would seem to be a comparatively easy matter for the proprietors of a store, such as Macy's, to go to their architect and say to him:
"Here is a fine plot, one hundred and twenty-five feet by two hundred. We want you to design and build for us upon it a modern retail building—high enough to provide all necessary facilities and scientific enough to bring it not merely abreast of other stores across the land, but a good long jump ahead of them."
After which the architect would call for his young men and their draughting-boards and proceed, upon white paper, to erect his department-store.
But his problem in this case is not white paper—at least white paper undefiled. The real problem is a perfectly good store building at the east end of the Macy plot—a building far too good and far too modern to be "scrapped"—in any recognized sense of the word. It was built to last all the way from half a century to a full century and its owners have not the slightest intention of pulling it down. It must remain the chief front of the enlarged Macy store. The caryatidesupon either side of its main doors, the red star that surmounts them, must continue to look down into busy Broadway, as they have been looking for nearly two decades past.
It happens, too, that the store itself was never designed for extensions toward the west. In the conception of its original architect there was a distinct section set out at the west end of the present building for purely service and non-selling purposes. These included, upon the ground-floor, the great tunnel and merchandise unloading docks for incoming trucks, similar ones for the outgoing merchandise, freight elevators a-plenty; and in between them and through them a truly vast variety of working provision, shops, offices, school and comfort rooms, and the like. A good feature, this section—which occupies almost the exact site of the former Koster & Bial Theater—but tremendously in the way when one comes to consider the extension of the store toward the west.
A final factor of this particular reconstruction problem—and perhaps the greatest of all—lies in the fact that it must be carried forward while the store is doing its regular business. Even when the peak load of its traffic is reached—those fearfully hard weeks that immediately precede the Christmas holiday—the workaday routine of Macy's must not be seriously disturbed. Which complicates vastly the architect's problem. It is one thing to design and to erect a store building whose tenant does not approach the structure with his wares for sale until the merchant has given his final release, and another—infinitely harder—thing to build,and build efficiently, as business goes forward all the while. The machine as it grinds must be rebuilded. And all the while it must lose none of its efficiency.
Yet, when all is said and done, an architect's life is made up of a number of things of this sort. And the associated architects of the new Macy store—Messrs. Robert D. Kohn and William S. Holden—have not permitted the overwhelming problem of its reconstruction to fill them with anything even remotely approaching a state of panic. For that is not an architect's way.
They have, from the beginning, come toward the big problem quietly, sanely and efficiently. At the very beginning and in company with two of the officers of the corporation they went upon an extended trip through the more modern department-stores across the land. Here, there, everywhere, they found features worth noting and collating. When they were done with their journeys they had, as a foundation for their studies upon the new Macy store, a sort of standardized practice of most of its fellows across the land.
This preliminary completed, the engineering member of the partnership, Mr. Holden, began an intensive study of the fundamental factors of the business machine that he was to enlarge. To begin with there was its traffic—divided, as we have seen in earlier chapters, into three great and fairly distinct avenues: the merchandise, the shoppers who come to purchase it, and the employees who wait upon their needs.
It is fairly essential that these three streams of traffic be kept separate, save at such points where, for theconduct of the business, they must be brought together.
Here, then, was a real opportunity for study. Mr. Holden began with the traffic streams of the shoppers.
Obviously, and despite the growing importance and activity of the Pennsylvania Station, to say nothing of the west side subway, which runs down Seventh Avenue in front of it, the main traffic streams of shoppers must continue to come into Macy's from Broadway. The star of Broadway is even more firmly set in the heavens of New York than that of Thirty-fourth Street.
These main traffic streams within the store are, then, roughly speaking, three in number; one comes from the northeast corner—at Thirty-fifth Street—another from the southeast corner at Thirty-fourth Street—the third still shows a decided fondness for the impressive center doors upon Broadway. Within the store they unite and then separate into a variety of smaller currents. A goodly portion of these violate all the similes of streams and proceed upstairs at the rate of about 10,300 folk an hour at the busiest times of busy days. And there are an astonishingly large number of these times. Of these 10,300, about 7,400 will ascend upon the great escalator, which reaches up into the sixth, or last selling floor, of the present store.
When this escalator was first built, eighteen years ago, it was looked upon as hardly less than a transportation marvel. Every similar device that had preceded it was known as a single-file moving-stairway, with the capacity estimated at sixty persons a minute, or 3,600 an hour. By making its escalator double-file, Macy's not only slightly more than doubled its capacity butrendered it the full equivalent of at least twenty-five passenger elevators of the largest size.
The man whose business it is to have a sort of first-hand acquaintance with 1932 said that by that year Macy's would need to take close to twenty thousand folk an hour to its upper floors. He was not only estimating upon the growth of New York, but upon the growth of the store itself.
"You will have to add another of the double escalators," said he, "that will bring your lifting capacity upon the two moving stairways up to almost fifteen thousand persons an hour."
An elevator of modern size and speed in a department-store with seven or eight selling floors ought to lift two hundred and forty persons an hour. This, as you can quickly find out for yourself, means that there will be needed for the new store but twenty passenger elevators to make good that deficit between increased escalator capacity and the total number of folk to be carried upstairs. And this, in itself, is a most moderate increase. The store already has fourteen modern passenger elevators. Credit this much, if you will, to the escalator.
So it goes, then, that the new Macy's will have a second double-file escalator on the opposite side of the main aisle, which is the store's own Broadway, and in the same relative relation to it. It will run as far as the fourth floor which in the new scheme of Macy things is to be devoted to the important business of toy selling.
What goes up must come down. Shoppers are no exception to this old rule. If you still think that they are, stand late some busy afternoon at the main stair of Macy's and watch them descend. They frequently come at the rate of one hundred to the minute. And yet this is but a single stair!
It is neither practical nor modern greatly to increase stairway capacity in remodeling Macy's and so the question of a descending escalator thrusts itself upon the architects' attention. Despite a certain old-fashioned prejudice against it on the part of some old-fashioned New Yorkers, a descending escalator is not only practicable but entirely safe. Otherwise Macy's would not even consider its installation. The store planning experts went out to Chicago a few months ago, however, and into a great retail establishment there which boasts twelve selling floors. Escalators were its one salvation—descending, as well as ascending. The Macy party saw old ladies, women with children in their arms—everyone who walked, save only those walking upon crutches, using this quick and constant method of descent. They found the same devices in Boston—in subway stations as well as department-stores—and being used with equal facility. Straightway they decided that the New York shopper was neither more timid nor more reluctant to use a new idea than was her Boston or her Chicago sister. A descending escalator was placed in the plans for the new Macy's—for the use of the store's patrons.
Still another ascending and descending escalator; this time for the store's own family. Remember thathere is a second stream, whose prompt and efficient handling is quite as important as that of the shoppers. The broad stair in Thirty-fourth Street at which the majority of the family arrives, between eight-thirty and eight-forty-five of the business morning, is frequently choked with the rush of incoming employees. It will never be choked once the new Macy's is done. For then the workers will be handled in great volume upon a double escalator, not merely double-file, but double in the sense that ascent and descent are handled simultaneously and in compact space, very much as the double stairways that are installed in modern school-houses and industrial plants.
In the enlarged building the locker rooms and the other facilities of the arrival of the store's employees will be placed upon the second floor and the first and second mezzanines; retained from the present plan, but very greatly enlarged. The Macy worker comes to them by means of the escalator, quickly and easily, and in a similar fashion ascends or descends to his or her department. It sounds simple and easy but it is not quite so easy when one comes to plan for a maximum of 8,800 employees—in 1932.
A third traffic stream remains for our consideration—and the architect's. In many respects it is the most difficult. Human beings, to a large extent at least, can move themselves. Goods cannot. Yet obviously the great stream of merchandise into the building and then out again must never be permitted to clog its arteries—not for a day, nor even for an hour. This means thatthere must be not only plenty of channels and conduits for it, but ample reservoir space as well. Which, being translated, means of course generous warehousing rooms, of one sort or another.
Perhaps it would be well before we come to the ingenious plans for making this inanimate stream most animate indeed, to consider the general plan of Macy's as it will be after its structural renaissance. The exterior of the present great building will remain practically unchanged. Just back of it and to the west of it on the new plot, one hundred and twenty-five feet in depth in both Thirty-fourth and Thirty-fifth Streets, and extending the full two hundred feet between them, will be erected a new steel and concrete building, harmonizing in its façade and of the most modern type of construction; as we have already seen, nineteen stories in height with two sub-basements in addition. The first ten stories of this structure, at the exact floor levels of the old, will be thrown into the existing building and the lower seven of them used for selling purposes. The uppermost three stories of the combined building—covering the entire Macy site—will be used, as we shall see in a moment or two, for the reception and the warehousing of the merchandise, and other non-selling activities of the store.
The nine stories of the new addition which will rise tower-like above the parent building are destined to be used entirely for non-selling functions. Thus from the architects' plans we see the executive and financial offices, including that of advertising upon the thirteenth and the fifteenth floors of this super-cupola;and the store's own great laundry upon the high nineteenth. The department of training and the bureau of planning, with an assembly room, will share the sixteenth. The more purely recreational features, however, the Men's Club and the Community Club and the lounging rooms and library, are placed as low as the accessible eighth floor. The general manager's and employment offices will be as low as the second mezzanine—for obvious reasons of convenience.
None of these departments will be hampered for a long time to come, as they have been hampered for a number of years past, by a fearful lack of elbow room. The new plans have provided for abundant facilities of this and every other sort. The employees' cafeterias also are to go into the new section—also upon the eighth, or public restaurant floor. They will be greatly enlarged over their present capacity.
These non-selling facilities are given their own elevator service from the street; a separate and distinct entrance there. The purpose of this last quickly becomes evident. There are many occasions—nights and Sundays even—when some or all of the recreation facilities are in use far beyond the regular store hours. Access to them, entirely free and separate from the store itself, is an enormous working convenience, and the new Macy's has been planned to be filled with working conveniences.
The elevator as well as the escalator will play a vastly important part in the fabrication of the new Macy's. The one has by no means been overshadowed by thegrowing importance of the other. There are to be in all fifty-six elevators, of one type or another, in the reconstructed building. Of all these none is more interesting than the ingenious lifts by which whole motor trucks, laden as well as empty, are carried into the structure, up eleven floors to the merchandising reception rooms and down into the basement and sub-basement for filling for the city delivery.
Now are we back again to the handling of that merchandise stream which we first began to consider but a moment ago. At the beginning we can make assertion that in the entire history of retail selling no more ingenious scheme has been devised for the orderly and rapid movement of goods in and out of a department-store.
This flow is kept normal and downward by the simple process of first taking the loaded incoming trucks up to the eleventh floor of the building for unloading. In the present store—as well as in a good many other stores—a great amount of immensely valuable ground floor space is given over to the various functions of receiving and distributing merchandise. We have seen long ago how a modern store values this ground floor space. For instance, in relation to the value of, let us say, the third floor, it is about as ten to one.
Neither does Macy's propose to clutter the sidewalk frontage of even the least important of its frontage streets—Thirty-fifth Street—by long lines of motor trucks or drays, receiving or discharging goods. In fact this sort of thing has become practically impossible in the really important cities of the America of today.If municipal ordinance permits it, public sentiment rarely does. And the keen merchant of today—to say nothing of tomorrow—never ignores public sentiment.
So, to the eleventh floor the motor trucks must go—on two huge high-speed freight elevators which open directly into Thirty-fifth Street. Our horseless age makes this possible. The modern architect, planning for the congested heart of the island of Manhattan, can indeed and reverently thank God for the coming of the gasoline engine and the electric storage battery—to say nothing of the engineers who helped to make them possible.
Upon that eleventh floor there will extend, for the full width of the building, a giant quay, or high-level platform, with its stout floor at the exact level of the floors of the standardized motor trucks of Macy's (the comparatively small proportion of "foreign" or outside vehicles that bring merchandise to the store are to be unloaded at the Thirty-fifth Street doorways and not admitted within the building). The unloading under the present well-developed system is a short matter; the trucks may quickly be despatched back to the street once again; while the refuse and debris of the packers goes to appropriate bins behind them.
Through chutes and sliding-ways the merchandise descends a single floor to the great tenth story—extending through both the present building and the new one to come. Here it will be quickly classified and placed upon a conveyor which moves at the level of and between the two sides of a double table some five orsix hundred feet in length which will extend the greater part of the length of the enlarged store. From this center table—the backbone of the whole scheme of this particular distribution—will extend in parallel aisles at right angles to it, whole hundreds of bins and shelves and compartments. The entire arrangement will resemble nothing so much as a huge double gridiron, with many tiny interstices.
Now do you begin to see the operation of this scheme? If not, let me endeavor to make it more clear to you. This miniature and silent city, whose straight and regular streets are lined in turn with miniature apartment houses of merchandise, is zoned—into six great zones. Every selling department of the store—118 in the present one—is assigned to one or the other of these zones. There it keeps its reserve stock. It is, in truth, a reservoir.
Now, see the plan function! The men's shoe department is out of a certain small part of its highly diversified stock. It sends a requisition up to its representative upon the tenth floor. It is a matter of minutes—almost of seconds—to locate the necessary cartons in the simplified and scientifically arranged compartments and shelves; a matter certainly of mere seconds to despatch them down to the selling department.
For this, the second thrust of the goods-stream through the new Macy's, especial provisions have been made by the installation of six so-called utility units. Three of these are placed at equal intervals along the Thirty-fourth Street wall of the enlarged building;the other three at equal intervals upon its Thirty-fifth Street edge. Each unit consists of one elevator (large enough to hold two of the rolling-carts, standardized for the floor movement of merchandise through the aisles of the selling departments of the store), one small dummy elevator (for the handling of single packages of unusual size or type), and a spiral chute (this last for the despatch of sold goods).
The selling-floor location of these utility units determines the zoning system of the warehouses on the tenth. There is a zone to each unit. While from that zone the requisitioned merchandise descends to the selling department which has asked for it by its own unit—which always is closest to it. Haul is reduced to a minimum. And system becomes simplicity.
With the actual selling of the goods in the store that is to come we have no concern at this moment. It is quite enough to say that the methods and the ideals that have brought Macy selling up to its present point are to be continued there, in the main at least, although broadened and advanced as future necessity may dictate. But with the despatch of the goods once sold in the new store we have an intimate and personal interest.
We have bought our pair of shoes. The financial end of the transaction is concluded. We have asked—as most of us ask—to have them delivered. Now follow their movement:
The clerk takes them to the packer. This, however, is but a mere detail. It is their future course that interests us. And if we had eyes properly X-rayedand farseeing we might observe that from the hands of the packer they will go presently to the spiral descending chute of the nearest utility unit.
Now we shall indeed need our new X-ray eyes. They follow the package for us—down the chute—with its gradients and curvatures so cleverly devised as to bring our purchase to the basement in just the right time and in just the right order—and into and upon the next stage of its progress.
Steadily moving conveyor-belts along each outer wall of the building receive the constant droppage of the packages from the six spirals of the utility units. Together these two long belts converge upon a terminal, the revolving-table, in the terminology of the present store. And here our packages receive fresh personal attention.
In the chapter upon Macy's delivery department we paid a careful attention to this revolving-table—which really is not a table at all and does not revolve. We saw it, then, as the very heart of the complex clearing-house of Macy distributions. It is, however, in itself a wonderfully simple thing, and yet when it was first installed it was regarded as nothing less than a triumph of efficiency.
Fortunately we do progress in this gray old world. Today we see how the revolving-table can be improved. For one thing, today we see it cramped and inelastic—no more than eight men may work at it at a single shift. Yet when it was built no one in Macy's dreamed that more than eight men would ever be required to workat it at a single time. And even in times of great emergency, but eight!
At the revolving-table in the new store, not eight but forty men may work simultaneously—when necessity dictates. The change has been effected by the simple process of elongating the "table." If a revolving-ring may be changed from round to square—and this was the very thing that Macy's accomplished in its present basement—why not from square to oblong? There is no negative answer to this question. And oblong it will become. And a present handling capacity of forty thousand packages a day can be increased to all the way from seventy-five thousand to ninety thousand.
Yet the main principle changes not. It is only in detail that one sees one's shoes traveling outward on a different path in 1931 from that of 1921. The great conveyors that lead from the revolving-table of today to the various delivery classifications as they are now made, will so lead in the new arrangement of things to such classifications as may then be made: only they will no longer be revolving-tables, but will in due time become the moving backbone of very long tables in the basement mezzanine, similar to the one which we saw extending the full length of the great tenth floor. And from those long tables, running the entire width of the building and up just under the basement ceiling, the sheet-writers will recognize their individual group of packages (by means of the clearly written numerals upon them), lift them off the slowly moving belt and make record of them, for the delivery department's own protection. After which, it is but the twist of thewrist to thrust them into the bins, separately assigned to each driver's run.
So go our shoes, or come, if you prefer to have it that way. Rapidly, orderly, systematically. System never departs from their handling. Even in the driver's own little compartment-bin there are four levels, or shelves, and each is inclined gently and floored with rollers so that he can pick out the packages for his run with greater facility. And in placing the packages upon each of these levels, the sheet-writer, well trained to his job, begins a rough process of assortment by streets.
Now we are come to wagon delivery, itself. Now we shall see why Macy's will not have to clutter Thirty-fourth Street with a long row of its delivery trucks. The length of such a row may easily be estimated when one realizes that sixty electric trucks will stand simultaneously at sixty loading stations in the new basement, with a reserve or reservoir space there for twenty-two more. Moreover, this basement will serve as a garage at night and on Sundays for these trucks. There is no fire risk whatsoever in the storage of an electrically driven motor vehicle. So the new Macy basement will not only be able to store this considerable fleet but to charge its batteries and make necessary light repairs upon it from time to time.
Access to and from this basement—and the sub-basement—is by means of elevators; not only the two which we have seen reaching aloft to the eleventh floor, but two more just beside them for sole service betweenthe level and the two basements. As a matter of operating expediency it will be easy indeed to arrange in the early morning rush, or at any other time when emergency may so demand, to operate all four elevators in exclusive service between the street and basements. With such a battery Macy's can perform a genuine rapid-fire of discharging merchandise.
To the mind of the novice there immediately flashes the thought: why not use ramps—long, sloping driveways—from the street level to the basement? Long ago the architects of the new building asked themselves that very question. It was, in this particular case at least, rather hard to answer. The main basement of Macy's is very high. To install a ramp—double-tracked, of course, for vehicles both ascending and descending—of any easy practical grade would therefore have required a great deal of valuable floor-space. So, for the moment, they dismissed the ramp idea for motor trucks and held to that of elevators. The Boston Store in Chicago solved the problem. It is the same store that has successfully installed descending escalators, floor upon floor.
Out of the sub-basement of that Chicago store the Macy investigators saw thirty-two cars come, all inside of eight minutes; and all upon elevators. That settled the question for the big shop in Herald Square. Elevators it should have for this service, and elevators it will have, even for the big five-ton trucks that go into the deep sub-basement for the hampers for suburban delivery as well as large special packages. Furniture, however, as in the present store, will be both sold andpacked and shipped from an upper floor of its own, the large truck elevators to the eleventh floor being also used for this purpose.
The sub-basement of the new plan is in so many respects a replica of the main basement delivery service that it requires no special description here. It, too, has been designed, not only amply large enough for the present needs of Macy's, but for that mythical traffic of 1932, which we now know is really not mythical at all, but a matter of rather exact scientific reckoning.
Architects' drawings are indeed fascinating things; doubly fascinating when one comes to consider all the infinite thought and labor and patience which have entered into their fabrication. I shall not, however, carry you further into the details of the plans for the new Macy's. You now have seen enough to give you at least a fair idea of the main structure for the enlarged store. You have seen how carefully and how ingeniously the great main traffic streams through the huge edifice are to be carried—to be brought together, when they needs must be brought together, and kept apart when properly they should be kept apart. Add, in your own mind, to this fundamental structure, all of the refinements which you expect to find in the modern retail establishment today and you may begin to depict for yourself the Macy's that is to come—to construct for yourself at least a partial vision of the year 1932 in Herald Square.
Yesterday Milady of Manhattan in her hoopskirt and crinoline; today Milady in thick furs above her knees and thin silk stockings and high-heeled pumps below them: tomorrow....
Why will you persist in dragging in tomorrow? Is it not enough to know that tomorrow Milady of the great metropolis of the Americas will still be shopping? You may set tomorrow a year hence, twenty years hence, fifty years in the misty future that is to come upon us and still make that statement in perfect safety. And twenty years, fifty years, a hundred years hence, even, Macy's should still be in Herald Square ready to wait upon her needs and upon the needs of her men and children, too.
To forecast far into the future is indeed dangerous. Only rash men undertake it. We know that 1932 is one thing, but that 1952 or even 1942 is quite another one. A savant of uptown Manhattan, who has a nice facility for handling census figures, not long ago predicted that by 1950 little old New York would hold within its boundaries sixteen million people. He may know. I don't. And you are privileged to take your guess—with one man's guess almost if not quite as good as another's.
A New York of sixteen million souls is an alluringpicture, if a bewildering one, withal. It is a fairly bewildering town with its six million of today. But I have not the slightest doubt that Rowland Hussey Macy said the selfsame thing of the New York of six hundred and fifty thousand souls, to which he first came, away back there in 1858.
And the Macy's of 1952, serving its fair and goodly portion of those sixteen million souls, is indeed an alluring picture, which you may best construct for yourself. The store, itself, does well when it plans so definitely for 1932. Nevertheless, before you finally close the pages of this book, I should like to have it record a final picture upon your mind. It is the picture of a really great store. It runs from Broadway to Seventh Avenue, perhaps all the way to Eighth. It begins at Thirty-fourth Street and runs north—one, two, possibly even three or four blocks, or goodly portions of them. It employs ten, twelve, fifteen thousand workers. There are a thousand motor trucks in its delivery service—and a hundred aëroplanes as well. It has sixteen sub-stations, instead of six. Its own delivery limits run north to Peekskill and east to Bridgeport and to Huntington and west and south through at least half of New Jersey.
Yet, above all this new enterprise there still towers the high addition which 1923 saw completed and added to the edifice, with the huge and flaming word "MACY'S" emblazoned by white electricity upon the blackened skies of night, visible all the way from Seventh Avenue to the thickly peopled range of the Orange mountains.
"Macy's," whistles the small boy upon the North River ferryboat, who has traveled afar with his geography book. "Macy's! That's a regular Gibraltar of a store!"
THE END