In the ensuing months, the nickel table caught on among upstate merchants, and it soon became a full-blown craze. One enterprising farmer purchased fifty dollars worth of nickel goods, carried his stock to Adams Center, New York, and placed it on sale outside his barn. It appeared that Frank Woolworth’s five-cent sales counter spawned one of the first garage sales in America.
The success of the cut-rate sale gave Frank a new dream. He would establish his own five-cent store, perhaps an entire chain of such establishments. He would simply make a steady profit through bulk sales. He’d certainly experienced moments when one penny made the difference in what he couldn’t buy. In turn, a penny or two of profits from items anyone could buy would surely add up to dimes and quarters and dollars, perhaps even hundreds of dollars.
Frank rushed home to discuss his idea with Jennie, who was completely supportive. The problem, as usual, was money. Mr. Moore had said a man in the nickel business would need at least a few hundred dollars of capital. Frank approached his uncle Albon McBrier, but Albon turned him down. He said it was all “stuff and nonsense” and that Frank should stick with his steady job.
Frank was too far along in his scheme to let this rebuke stop him, and he promptly sought out other backers. In the end, it was William Moore who came through for Woolworth. Moore told Frank that if he could find a good location, he would give him a note to finance his own store. To add credence to the deal, Frank’s father, John, agreed to endorse the note.
Frank and Jennie were grateful and promised to do all they could to make a go of the new business. Back at Moore & Smith’s Drygoods, and throughout the town of Watertown, Frank’s coworkers wished him well. Several of his old Watertown friends, including Mrs. Coons and Harry Moody, would one day form the foundation of his five-and-dime empire. Frank W. Woolworth never forgot those who were kind and supportive to him as he reached for the stars.
It was a good time for Frank to branch out on his own. Lifestyles were changing rapidly. The last World Exhibition, held in Philadelphia, had showcased marvels unheard of twenty years before, and there were rumors that New York City had started to install some newfangled communication device called a telephone. As New Year’s Day 1879, approached, great fortunes were being made across America. P. T. Barnum had his circus, Rockefeller had Standard Oil, Hartford had A&P, and Frank Woolworth would have his five-cent store.
Frank was ready to pounce on the entrepreneurial bandwagon, not only for his own fulfillment, but for the sake of Jennie and their seven-month-old daughter, Helena. In February, Frank bid his loved ones good-bye, then trudged through the snow to the train depot. A few five-cent stores had already sprouted up in large cities such as Syracuse, and he planned to check them out, first-hand, to assess the lay of the retail land. Then, he vowed, he would find the perfect site for “Woolworth’s Great Five-Cent Store.”
Frank’s First Store Opens in Utica
The next few weeks were bittersweet for Frank. He scouted out several different cities between Watertown and Rome, New York, looking for the ideal site for his first store. The results there were disappointing, so, on a hunch, he took the train into Utica. He was not in the best frame of mind when he stepped off the depot, having just spent a bleak Sunday visiting one of his aunts, who, he recalled sadly, “did not try to encourage me.”
TIME CAPSULE MEMORY
“Frank’s First Landlords in Utica, New York”
The store was owned by a couple of bankers. One of them had a little faith in me, the other had none; and I had great difficulty in renting the store for $30 a month … I showed them the bill for how much merchandise I had coming, and everything was all right to start in the 5¢ business; yet I lacked courage … I would have given up all the old boots I ever had in life to be back in my old position, as I never had much experience in the cold, cruel world before. All I had to do was send a telegram …
—Frank W. Woolworth, 22 Feb., 1919, recalling the establishment of his first store in Utica, N.Y.
Fortunately, Utica was hopping when he arrived, which energized his spirits. He watched the flow of traffic, both pedestrian and carriage, his mind reeling with possibilities. Utica was full of hard-working factory workers, all potential customers. The five-cent craze had somehow missed Utica, so he would be operating on virgin sales ground. After using up a fair amount of shoe leather, Frank spotted a “To Let” sign on the corner of Bleeker and Genesee. The storefront measured thirteen feet wide and twenty feet deep; it was not a large space, but it would be ample for his needs.
The landlords were bankers who drove a hard bargain. They wanted thirty dollars per month for rent, a year’s lease, and the first month paid in advance—with cash. Combining his charm and tenacity, Frank talked the landlords into deleting the “year lease” clause, and into waiting until the end of the month for the first rent installment. When asked to explain the nature of his business, Frank hedged. “Oh, notions and general merchandise,” he replied lightly. He feared that, being bankers, they might smell a cheap-goods fad with no hope of making a long-term profit.
Twenty-seven-year-old Frank Woolworth had achieved his preliminary goals. He had the place. He had the means. He had the energy. All he had to do was wire William Moore back in Watertown and tell him which stock to set aside for transfer to Utica. Still he hesitated, realizing the ramifications of such an action. This would mean leaving a steady job, uprooting his family, and risking everything. If he didn’t play his cards right, he would soon be back to hoeing potatoes. Years later, Frank recalled this moment of truth in one of his general letters to his staff. He wrote: “That telegram seemed to mean a definite casting of the die. I kept it in my pocket and walked past the telegraph office many times before summoning courage to send it. I didn’t wire my wife because I wanted to tell her myself.”
Faith in himself finally superseded his doubts, and he did send that wire. Consequently, the first merchandise bill from William Moore turned out to be much more than Frank had expected: $315.41. That left only $34.59 to purchase wood for counters, a cash box for the money, board in a rooming house, and money for cleaning supplies. The leased space was rather dilapidated, full of dust and grime, and needed to be thoroughly revamped.
At this point in the story, the Woolworth chronicles grow cloudy. There are two different versions of how the milestone emporium actually came to be. John Winkler’s biography, Five and Ten, relied on an unpublished autobiography that Woolworth imparted (shortly before his death in 1919) to confidante Edwin Mott Woolley. Frank reportedly told Woolley that after he sent the wire to Moore and Smith, he caught a train back to Watertown. Upon arrival, he stopped home to share the latest news with an excited Jennie. Then he walked to Moore & Smith’s to oversee the shipment of stock to Utica. Once that was accomplished, he quickly returned to Utica to get the store prepared for opening day.
Frank worked like a Trojan, and scrubbed and cleaned the place all by himself. He shrewdly arranged for two thousand flyers to be distributed by a young boy. The handbills read, in part: “Grand Opening—Eight O’Clock on the evening of Saturday, February 22, 1879.” Even though the boy dumped piles of a hundred at a time on local doorsteps, enough were scattered about to spread the word. All was going well, but Frank had underestimated the amount of work required to get his business organized. Years later, he reportedly told Edwin Woolley:
“On Friday evening I had the goods all in the store, but everything was in a great litter, with loose paper scattered about on the floor and the goods in a general mix up on the counters and shelves. To keep people from satisfying their curiosity and thus anticipating the grand opening, I had fastened paper at the doors and windows. While I was working in this muss, about nine o’clock, somebody knocked at the door …”
An older woman, who’d seen his flyer, wanted to purchase a five-cent fire shovel. Hence, Frank made his first official sale on Friday night, and then locked the door behind her. The store opened, as scheduled, the next evening at eight o’clock. He di
d not have a rush of customers, but business was steady. At midnight, when he counted his receipts, he’d found he had made an even nine dollars.
There is, however, another version of the story, which was taken directly from a General Letter that Frank sent to all his stores on February 22, 1919. It was entitled: “Fortieth Anniversary of the Five and Ten Cent Business. Ancient History.” In this memo, Frank explained that after he had secured the Utica lease and wired Moore & Smith, he felt suddenly invigorated, on the brink of a new life. The goods quickly arrived, and he was on his way. Contrary to the prior account, Frank didn’t stop back at Watertown to visit his family, nor did he say he shouldered the store preparations alone. Instead, he headed back to his Utica store and hired his first employees: two young people (probably teenagers) known to historians as Miss Stebbins and Mr. Edwins.
“We worked all day Friday and all day Saturday,” wrote Frank, “but we did not open for business, as the store was not ready. In the meantime, we sent out some circulars, giving the list of all the goods we would sell for 5¢. For fear the customers would get there before the store was ready for business, we sent the first circulars out to New Hartford, a place about two or three miles outside the City. Along about six o’clock on Saturday evening a woman came into the store….”
Frank told the woman that they weren’t quite ready for customers, but she was insistent. She’d seen the circular and she wanted a five-cent fire shovel! Frank quickly dealt with his very first customer, forever regretful that he didn’t learn her name. He then locked the door, finished his preparations, and reopened, as scheduled, at eight o’clock P.M. “By then,” he enthused, “there was a great crowd outside the front door, demanding to get in … !”
After reviewing these two accounts, we may presume that somewhere along the line, Frank’s original version was altered, edited, or enhanced by his various biographers or secretaries. The most accurate story of his first opening day is probably a combination of the two, but the truth died with him.
One thing is certain. In setting up his first store, he used his capital mindfully, limiting his personal spending money to a mere five dollars per week. His records show only two notable business indulgences. The first was ten dollars’ worth of a proven best-seller—painted red jewelry (composed of sour milk)—which added color to his displays and lured in the town’s ladies. The second was a large, three-dollar sign which read:
“THE GREAT FIVE CENT STORE.”
A Glory Short-Lived
During Frank Woolworth’s opening day in Utica he netted just under ten dollars in toy dustpans, biscuit cutters, apple corers, ribbons, and cheap necklaces. Monday’s sales totaled $50.20. By week’s end he’d made $244.44. Within three weeks he was able to pay back William Moore, satisfy his landlord, pay his staff, and purchase his wife’s first luxury item: a $45 fur Dolman.
Frank always referred to his Utica enterprise as his “five-cent” store, but in reality, he could have called it “Frank’s Great Five Shinplaster Store.” Most of the money he received came in the form of shinplasters (Civil War-era paper currency), which were issued in cent denominations of 2, 3, 5, 10 and 25. Regardless of whether cents or shinplasters passed hands that spring, by April 1879, his business was booming. Back in Watertown, Jennie was happily packing. She was ready to move to Utica, to fulfill her own dream of renting out an entire house, with a small play area for daughter Helena.
Then, unexpectedly, the bottom dropped out of the market.
Ladies’ hair ribbons and accessories were best-sellers at Frank’s Utica store, and remained so for the company’s 118-year-old history.
There were only so many items Frank could sell for a nickel, and after the patrons had seen them all, the store’s novelty waned. He tried to boost business by distributing more handbills, but by mid-May, Woolworth knew he had to close down voluntarily, or his debtors would do it for him.
Frank was dismayed, but not yet ready to toss in the shinplasters. He absolutely disagreed with the critics who insisted the cut-rate trade was just a fad. Frank suspected the primary problem was a lack of variety. Until then, he’d been content to stock his store from the rather limited supply of “stickers” and cheap excess merchandise that Moore & Smith had left over from their wholesale lot. The next time, Frank would carry what was left of those items (he hated to waste anything) along with new commodities, including a wider selection of the brightly colored hair ribbons that had proven so popular with his female customers. Frank admitted that most of the other five-centers had failed, but he was just “regrouping.”
Frank swallowed his pride and sent the unsold merchandise back to Moore & Smith’s for storage. William Moore promised to give Frank another note, if he found a better location. Woolworth closed his doors in Utica in May 1879, but it was not the last the Mohawk Valley would see of him.
The successor to the Genesee Street store would open in 1888 (under the banner “Woolworth & Peck”). In the meantime, Frank stopped at the neighborhood bank on May 28, 1879, and made a modest withdrawal. On a hunch, he was off to northeastern Pennsylvania; a land lush and green, populated by a simple Amish people with a nose for thrift. His long, exhausting trip to Lancaster would prove to be a road well traveled. Frank Woolworth left Utica with only thirty dollars in his pocket, but forty years later, he could boast that his store chain was making one hundred and seven million dollars!
The first permanent five-and-ten-cent store was about to be born.
Chapter Three
Frank Sires a Million-Dollar Baby in Pennsylvania
Dear Father: I opened my store here (in Lancaster) for trade yesterday. We managed to sell $127.65, which is the most I ever sold in one day. I had 7 clerks and they had to work—you bet!”
—Excerpt from a letter from Frank W. Woolworth to his father, John. Dated 22 June 1879.
Woolworth “skyscraper” and roof garden c. 1903
Watertown, New York, will always be remembered as the city where Frank Woolworth began his legendary career, testing out the five-cent counter at Moore & Smith’s emporium. Genesee Street in Utica will always be known as the site of Store Number One, a failure financially, but worth its weight in gold in terms of grit experience.
Yet, it is Lancaster, Pennsylvania, that reigns as Woolworth’s inaugural commercial success. There, in 1879, smack in the middle of Pennsylvania Dutch country, young Frank opened his first successful store, one that would prevail as the home of America’s first permanent five-and-dime.
In many ways, Lancaster still remains “Woolworth country.” A marble plaque in North Queen Street Park commemorates the site of the inaugural store. Just down the road, one can see the remains of the remodeled store, dedicated in 1950, which still has the “Woolworth” name imbedded into the sidewalk. From that central part of town, one can stroll into any eatery, enter any bookstore, pause at any bus stop—and meet up with someone with a unique Woolworth tale to share. Equally important, Lancaster’s fine Historical Society, libraries, and newspaper archives all work to preserve the Woolworth legacy.
Plaque commemorating Frank’s first permanent 5&10 on North Queen Street in Lancaster, Pa.
Indeed, the archives house hundreds of newspaper articles recounting Frank’s adventures. In 1900, in particular, columnists waxed prolific about the unprecedented splendor of the magnificent new six-story “skyscraper” on the corner of Queen and Grant, erected just in time for Christmas. Reportedly, during the grand opening, thousands of people streamed through the glass doors of this architectural wonder, oohing and ahhing at the marbled stairways and gold-tiered roof garden. The 100th anniversary in 1979 was no less exalted. Frank himself had long ago passed away, but his corporate descendants threw a week-long extravaganza, featuring live entertainment and special sales, with VIPs from coast to coast gathering for the annual stockholder’s meeting. In the window, a colorful array of items from 1879 was displayed for one and all to see, and the governor of Pennsylvania declared June 11 the official “Woolwort
h Day.”
One hundred and twenty years ago, Lancaster took Frank Woolworth into its heart, and he, in turn, added to its already rich history, by highlighting it prominently in the archives of his mercantile empire. The Lancaster chapter in F. W. Woolworth’s life involved a series of financial ups and downs and emotional round-robins that would have broken a lesser man. But Frank Woolworth persevered … and won.
Lancaster City: Birthplace of an Empire
Shortly before the demise of his Utica store, Woolworth received a tip from a traveling man, encouraging him to consider Lancaster City for his next enterprise. He was told that the thrifty German immigrants and the established Pennsylvania Dutch would appreciate good wares at inexpensive prices. There was even a depot in town, which brought hundreds of people into the city for market days. Frank was intrigued enough to take a shot at it. He was certainly far from ready to give up his dream of opening a chain of successful stores.
The train ride from Utica to Lancaster took an entire day. Given the fact that he’d only allowed himself thirty dollars, and that the round trip fare cost twenty, Frank ate sparingly on the trip. He arrived in Lancaster at dusk on May 30, tired, hungry and somewhat subdued. His mood quickly changed to elation when he noticed that the sidewalks were still thronged with people. Gaslights were blazing and horse-drawn wagons jammed the thoroughfares. “Everywhere,” wrote twenty-seven-year-old Frank with awe, “there was an amazing air of business and prosperity! Right away, I felt that Lancaster was the place for me.” After hours of strolling the streets, he checked into what he termed “a vile old hotel.” Bright and early the next morning, he set out in search of a site. In his customary manner, Frank didn’t waste any time. By that very evening, he’d made preliminary arrangements to lease a fourteen-foot storefront at 170 North Queen Street for thirty dollars per month.
Remembering Woolworth’s Page 6