Wanamaker’s
- City
- Philadelphia, PA
The John Wanamaker Store on Market Street opened in 1911, designed by Chicago architect Daniel Burnham to replace John Wanamaker's original 1876 Grand Depot on the same site. Built in the Florentine style with granite walls, the 12-floor building held nine floors of retail and nearly two million square feet of space, and it was the flagship of the Wanamaker's department store chain. It contains the Wanamaker Organ, the largest functional organ in the world.
the building
The Wanamaker Organ. The store houses the Wanamaker Organ, the largest fully functioning pipe organ in the world, installed within the building's central court.
Granite Florentine facade. Burnham clad the building's walls in granite and modeled its exterior on a Florentine palazzo, a monumental treatment meant to give a department store the gravity of a civic building.
the style
Burnham designed the store in the Florentine style, borrowing the massing and materials of a Renaissance Italian palazzo to lend a retail building the weight and permanence of a public institution.
the architect
Daniel H. Burnham was a Chicago architect known for large-scale commercial and civic commissions; the Wanamaker store was among his major department-store designs, replacing the original Grand Depot that had stood on the site since 1876.
significance
Designated a National Historic Landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the building passed from Wanamaker's ownership through May Department Stores in 1994 and Federated Department Stores in 2005, becoming a Macy's in 2006. Macy's closed the store without replacement in 2025.
nearby
- One South Broad
- Loews Philadelphia Hotel
- Philadelphia City Hall
- Ritz-Carlton Philadelphia
- North American Building
- Land Title Building