In an era of fast fashion and memes with the life span of a mayfly, it is astonishing to think that, smack in the middle of Midtown Manhattan, there exists a retail institution whose existence reaches from the Gilded Age to the digital. That place is Bloomingdale’s, the retail stalwart anchoring a blocklong stretch of Lexington Avenue at 59th Street, as well as a department store consortium with outposts throughout the country.
Founded in 1872 by the brothers Lyman and Joseph Bloomingdale as the Great East Side Bazaar offering “skirts, corsets, hosiery, millinery, gloves” and a broad array of “fancy stuffs,” Bloomingdale’s set an American template for a modish form
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