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Science, Industry and Business Library > B. Altman & Co. 
 The greatness of a city is measured always, in the minds of men, by its commercial importance. Where the central marts of business are, there are also to be found all that is most admirable, because most progressive, in human experience. The world we live in is essentially a vital world, pulsating with vigorous life. It is a world of workers; of men who dream great deeds, and do them before the dream is finished. It is a world in which nothing is too insignificant to merit man's consideration; no goal too exalted to be beyond his attainment. And it is the men who have possessed the intuition to recognize these sublime truths, and the courage to pattern their lives thereby, who have achieved success.  Such a man was Benjamin Altman, who, in the days when the city of York was scarcely out of its infancy, gave to the dry goods house which proudly bears his name -- and as proudly the impress of his dominating personality -- the impetus which forced it onward and upward, through years of patient, unremitting labor, to its present prosperity. Mr. Altman, even in those early days, fully grasped the potentialities of the upright, honest merchant who could make fair dealing and impeccable reliability the watchwords of his life in and out of business; and, throughout his long and eventful career, never did he deviate from the path of integrity that he had mapped out for himself in the beginning. The foundations of the Altman business were laid in a small store on Third Avenue, near Tenth Street. Here Benjamin Altman, then little more than a youth, but already equipped with the keen discernment and balanced judgment of maturity, began to carve out his great future. Selecting his merchandise with the fine artistic taste and the infallible sense of values which were among his most salient characteristics, and paying cash for every bill of goods he purchased, he early established, both for himself and his store, a reputation for reliability which has never been assailed because it is unassailable.  Toiling early and late, dedicating all that he had and was to his work, he was rewarded by the steady growth of his business. In the early seventies he removed it from Third Avenue to Sixth Avenue -- then important shopping center -- where he occupied an unpretentious store between Twenty-first and Twenty-second Streets. In 1876 he took possession of more spacious quarters on Sixth Avenue at Nineteenth Street, where the Altman store made history for itself for thirty years. It was during these eventful years that the store came to be recognized as the leading dry goods house of the city of New York. Its elegant appointments, its atmosphere of refinement, appealed to the most "elusive members of society, not only of its own city, but far afield; while the superiority of its varied merchandise became a household word in the world of fashion. 
Meanwhile Mr. Altman, with unerring prescience of the
inevitable northward trend of mercantile New York, and urged by the
rapid and persistent increase of his business, began to plan for an
uptown store whose commodiousness should be commensurate with the
constantly growing demand. In 1905-6 the firm of B. Altman &
Co. erected their new store on the east side of Fifth Avenue,
between Thirty-fourth and Thirty-fifth Streets. The first parcel of
land for its site had been acquired by Mr. Altman some ten years
earlier; and from time to time thereafter other lots had been
purchased or leased from their various owners until Mr. Altman
possess what he believed to be an ideal site for the imposing store
he purposed to erect in the heart of New York's most exclusive
shopping district. |