Bonwit Teller

Bonwit Tellerdepartment store in New York City was founded by Paul Bonwit

Horace Hagedorn,founder of Miracle Gro, says of his mother Blanche:

"had a great deal to do with my success. An entrepreneur herself, she had her own business in the early 1900's as a dressmaker and launched her own ready-to-wear business. At the time, if a woman was invited to an affair, she would have to plan four to six weeks in advance to get the dress she wanted. My mother, who was very enterprising, would find out about upcoming events and then call friends of guests, saying, "I understand Mrs. So and So is going to this affair, are you going?" Often the woman would respond that she didn’t have time to get a dress, and my mother would say, "If you have a few hours, you can have a new dress." She would bring a valise full of new dresses to the woman's home and adapt a ready-to-wear dress to the woman's measurements. In a much shorter time than the four to six weeks for a custom made dress, these "ready-to-wear" dresses would be finished. My mother saw a need and filled it—that was the reason for her success. After she established her business, she opened a shop for her dresses; years later, Paul Bonwit made an offer to buy her out, and Bonwit Teller was born. She passed along to me her sense of independence.

Bonwit opened a store at Sixth Avenue and Eighteenth Street in 1895. Two years later he now in partnership with Edmund D. Teller, relocated their establishment (now known as Bonwit Teller) to Sixth Avenue and Twenty-third Street. The firm was incorporated in 1907 as Bonwit Teller & Company and in 1911 relocated yet again, this time to the corner of Fifth Avenue and Thirty-eighth Street. They announced that this new location would provide consumers with:

"an uncommon display of wearing apparel from foreign and domestic sources . . . which will appeal to those who desire the unusual and exclusive at moderate prices."

The firm continued to specialize in high-end women's apparel at a time when many of its competitors were diversifying their product lines, and Bonwit Teller became noted within the trade for the quality of its merchandise as well as the above-average salaries paid to both buyers and executives.

In 1930, the retail trade in New York City was moving uptown. A new address on Fifth Avenue--the former Stewart & Company building at Fifty-sixth Street. In 1931 noted financier Floyd Odlum, who had cashed in his stock holdings just prior to the stock market crash of 1929 and was acquiring and turning around solid firms that were in financial distress. Bonwit agreed to let Odlum's wife Hortense serve as a consultant to the company in 1932, and two years later--poor health and the death of his wife--he sold the firm to Atlas Corporation. Odlum promptly named his wife as the new president (she became the first woman to hold such a position in New York), with Bonwit's son Walter Bonwit staying on as vice president and general manager.

Sold to the Hoving Corporation in 1946, the store underwent several changes of ownership, beginning with Genesco in 1956, then Allied Stores Corporation in 1979, and finally the Hooker Corporation in 1987. In May 1990 the developer Donald Trump demolished the Fifth Avenue store in order to make room for the Trump Tower, and the firm of Bonwit Teller no longer was in business.

In the history of retail trade, the name Bonwit Teller has remained synonymous with high quality in women's apparel, and through that association Paul Bonwit secured his niche in the annals of New York business.