We are in the heart of the holiday season and the streets of Brooklyn are a-buzz with people on thei

We are in the heart of the holiday season and the streets of Brooklyn are a-buzz with people on their way to visit the borough’s popular modern marketplaces. In the middle of all of this activity it’s easy to forget that the act of shopping—and the freedom to choose what to wear, what to buy and how to buy it—is a relatively recent historical development for women.Today, a Brooklynite passing by the block bordered by Fulton Street, Livingston Street, Hoyt Street, and Gallatin Place would see a modern Macy’s store. Most would not suspect that this was the site of one of the first, and grandest, department stores in the country, Abraham & Straus. Founded in Brooklyn in 1865, A&S was a marvel of its time in more ways than one.The store was imposing and elegant, taking up an entire city block. It was also a new and unique place for the women of the city. Here for the first time the ladies of Brooklyn had a public space and a destination that was designed primarily for them. Women could visit the store unescorted—rare in that era. They could escape the confines of hearth and home and look and linger—see and be seen.Unlike men with their clubs and societies, women in the nineteenth century had few places outside of the home to socialize, eat a meal or have a chance encounter with a person not in their immediate social circle. For these women, shopping in a grand department store represented a novel kind of freedom.A&S was not only for ladies of means, the store also provided respectable employment for women of all classes, many of them immigrants. Here, shop girls, seamstresses, and society women were all brought together in an environment dedicated to the feminine, and yet separate and apart from the restrictions of home.The evolution of the department store tracks well with the development of feminism throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Similar stores were being constructed in other great American cities at around the same time—Marshall Field’s in Chicago, Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia. Coincidence? You decide! To explore more material on this fascinating topic check out the Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives rich trove of items including 80th anniversary year Abraham & Straus, 1865-1945,  Abraham & Straus. Spring and summer, 1905 : [catalog] or 1910 Wanamaker catalog. For a social and cultural history of the department store try Give the lady what she wants! … The story of Marshall Field & Company; Victorian shopping : Harrod’s catalogue, 1895 or A history of the department store.Happy Holidays and don’t forget to Tighten your Stays!Posted by Roberta Munoz Photo/GIF by Brooke Baldeschwiler  -- source link

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