38 AUGUST 26, 2019 |^ ADWEEK
®LOOK BACK
When Lord & Taylor locked the doors of its Manhattan
flagship earlier this year, it was the latest chapter
in the long, slow decline of the great American
department store. But few store closings have stung
quite like the demise of Bonwit Teller, and few of
those who remember it have forgiven the man who
demolished it: Donald Trump. A grand emporium that
once counted 16 stores nationally, Bonwit Teller was
the first merchant to import designer men’s fashions
from Europe, and it once hired a window dresser
named Salvador Dalí. In 1954, the year of this photo,
the store’s fashions popped from the pages of Vogue.
But by 1979, a series of poor business decisions forced
the retailer to vacate its flagship at 5th Avenue and
56th Street. Enter Trump, then an enfant terrible of
real-estate development, who bought the old store and
promptly knocked it down. Trump Tower has stood on
the site ever since. —Robert Klara1954
The Jewel of
Fifth Avenue
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