The deal was practically done. A realtor working for the Strauses, the family behind Macy’s, had agreed to buy a tiny corner lot at 34th Street and Broadway from a clergyman named Alfred Duane Pell for $250,000. Then “R. Smith and Company” persuaded Pell to sell to them instead for $375,000, according to the National Park Service‘s landmark nomination for the store.
Untapped New York identifies the buyer as Robert H. Smith, a New York businessman, and says he is largely believed to have acted for Siegel-Cooper, a rival dry goods store. The Strauses suspected the same: that Siegel-Cooper president Henry Siegel engineered the purchase to block Macy’s move or to force a lease transfer. According to 6sqft, the story goes that Siegel held the corner hostage until Macy’s sold him its 14th Street building. Untapped goes further and calls the purchase a ploy to stop the store from becoming the largest in the world.
Macy’s refused to pay the price and kept assembling the rest of the block. The store opened its new Broadway section in 1902 with the corner left out. Macy’s never did acquire the tiny tract.
Holdouts have a long history of making developers build around them, including a Seattle woman who turned down $1 million for her house in 2006 while a five-story building went up around it.
The original corner building did not last, however. Siegel demolished it and put up the five-story building that stands there today. In 1911, it sold for $1 million, a record at the time, which earned it the nickname “Million Dollar Corner.”
Macy’s ended up as a tenant on the wall it had been denied. “Since the early 1960s Macy’s has placed a billboard sign on the building adjacent to our flagship store,” spokesperson Orlando Veras told Commercial Observer in 2021. A large sign reading “This is Macy’s” was there by at least the 1950s, per ABC7 New York, which found photos of a white sign reading “The World’s Largest Store” in 1992 and an early version of the red bag by 1994.
In 2021, Macy’s sued the building’s landlord after learning it was negotiating to lease the billboard to a “prominent online retailer,” which Macy’s said was almost certainly Amazon. Macy’s said a 1963 agreement barred the landlord from leasing the space to retail competitors. The landlord said it had “no communication or negotiations with Amazon,” per Commercial Observer. The case was settled quietly in 2022, according to National Jeweler.
The Department of Buildings issued a removal permit on June 12, and the sign came down in late July. Dan Biederman, president of the 34th Street Partnership, told ABC7 New York: “One firm owns the building, and the other wants to keep an advertising sign up on it.” He added: “They have to make an agreement and evidently that didn’t happen.”
Macy’s said the sign was “outdated and is being removed as part of broader updates by the billboard owner to modernize the space,” and promised “refreshed and dynamic branding” for the flagship soon. Hoodline, citing the New York Post, reported in September that Kaufman Realty plans new four-story digital billboards at the spot, and that Kaufman disagrees with Macy’s reading of the old agreement. For now, the little brick corner that Macy’s never bought is in plain view.
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