Woolworth Coined the Five and Dime

Have you now – a nickel or a dime?
Have you now – a nickel or a dime?
A nickel or a dime to-day good-sir, you-Say!

The store has just now opened up,
And I’ve got things to get!
Tins for pence and knicks and knacks – Oh-my!

Mr. Woolworth sir, have-you any-change?
Mr. Woolworth sir, have-you any-change?
A nickel or a dime to-day good-sir, you-Say!

It’s you young man who should have the coin –
And you’ve got things to get!
Save the rest of it for your – cutie-Pie!

Stock Boy to Stock Holder

A young Frank Winfield Woolworth was attending business school in Watertown, New York and while spending his spare time as a stock boy in a general store he got the idea for his first business. Just a few years later, in 1879, Woolworth borrowed three hundred dollars (more than $6000 today) and saw that idea through by opening Woolworth's Great Five Cent Store in Utica, New York.

Woolworth set up tables with small items on them, and everything on the tables were priced at five pennies per item. Within weeks, the business had failed, but Woolworth carried on. He opened a new store in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Using the same old wooden sign he’d previously hung in Utica – everyone knows that you never blame the first wooden sign you use when attempting to enterprise - the new store added the novelty of merchandise priced at ten cents. Somehow, it clicked this time. Customers turned up in droves to see what type of ‘great’ things they could buy from the “Great Five Cent Store.” A retail brand was born and it didn’t waste much time in its infancy – growth was rapid.

By 1910, The F. W. Woolworth Company was on its way to incorporating nearly 600 stores. In that same year, F.W. Woolworth began scouring the city of New York for the perfect place to set up his corporate headquarters. In its prime, the “Great Five Cent Store,” was the most successful five-and-dime brand worldwide, setting new trends and creating the modern “everything under one roof” retail model.

He settled on the property at 233 Broadway and quickly negotiated to buy the land from the Trenor Luther Park estate, for a cool $2 million dollars (that’s roughly $46,382,626 dollars today… for the land alone).

Woolworth Had Cass

Woolworth knew that even at his company’s peak, he’d never fill an entire building himself. Thus, the building was not only to take the breathe away from people on the street – but serve as a breathtaking place for anyone to have a career. Architect, Cass Gilbert was hired and the two men made plans to create what would be, at the time, the tallest building in New York at 57 floors; a record The Woolworth Building would proudly hold for some seventeen years.

Gilbert, inspired by neo-Gothic style, borrowed liberally from classic European architecture going back to the 16th and 17th centuries and was influenced by England's Houses of Parliament as well as France's grand gothic Chartres Cathedral. In fact, 233 Broadway was eventually dubbed the “Cathedral of Commerce” after FW. It was and remains today as a monument of design as well as the man himself.

About Face

The façade of the building, was constructed with glazed limestone-colored, terra-cotta units sculpted with salamanders, squirrels, trees, owls and the faces of anonymous Native Americans, meant to symbolize the Western hemisphere. These flourishes were designed to draw the eye ever upward, past stained-glass windows and toward copper spires.

The Tower of Power

With the exterior touches set, Gilbert brought on Engineers Gunvald Aus and Kort Berle who designed the steel frame for the structure and came up with the practical concept for supporting a massive tower. To this day, the Woolworth Building remains one of the most structurally secure buildings in the entire city – built with layers of concrete coated steel and wrapped in brick with fire proof plaster to make 24” thick/massive walls…nobody was short changing this nickel-and-dime headquarters.

The tower, raised on a block-base featuring a narrow interior court for light, is supported by caissons (watertight retaining structures), which penetrate deep into the bedrock of Manhattan. This was necessary as the structural weight on the front of the building was immense.

Gilbert had designed the tower to sit flush with the front of the building and Broadway below it, something that had never been done before. Below the tower and just off Broadway, a stunning lobby waits behind elegant glass doors lined with brass.

Often described as one of the most majestic designs of the 20th Century, the lobby features a stunning mosaic covered vaulted ceiling and the world’s largest Tiffany glass mural that depicts the years and countries where Woolworth stores had opened. All of this surrounded with bronze finishing and supported by marble imported from the Greek Island of Skyros. Hidden deeper in the building, is a 55-foot-long swimming pool adjacent to what used to be the building’s health club.

Characters In Design

On the balconies of the mezzanine level, murals of Labor and Commerce overlook sculpted caricatures, including a couple of unusual ones: Cass Gilbert himself is depicted with a model of the building, while a caricature of Gunvald Aus can be found taking measurements. Nearby, a caricature of Mr. Woolworth sits counting nickels - a wink to the five and dime stores which paid for the building’s creation.

Like A Boss

The Woolworth Building opened on April 24, 1913, and overtook the Met Life Tower (the record holder at 700-feet) by some 92-feet, officially making it the world's-tallest building.

In the end, the total cost to complete the building was $13.5 million (nearly $309 million dollars in today’s dollars). Woolworth paid in cash...some believe that he paid in coin.

Woolworth’s owned the building for some 85 years until 1998 when the building was sold for an estimated $155 million. Today, the interior of the building is closed to the public – unless you can win the right raffle, end up in the right business meeting, or even have enough cabbage to buy a place as several upper floors are rumored to be converted into luxury apartments over the next few years. At least you can get a great view of the exterior from City Hall Park at Broadway, Park Row and Chambers St – a view of how people of stature used to create works of art, rather than today’s more common cost-efficient development projects; Woolworth wasn't really about the nickels or dimes at all now, was he.

Confetti

WOOLWORTH TOWER KITCHEN – Looking for the old lobster and mac & cheese combination – who isn’t?! You don’t need to travel many blocks laterally – but you do need to work on your vertical to hit the top of the alluded to downtown skyscraper to enjoy fine food, wine and as rumor has it – very warm hospitality. Nickels and dimes welcome. 233 Broadway (Barclay St.), Right Upstairs. (212) 571-2930

TENT & TRAILS – Not many people are inspired to go camping after visiting the Woolworth building – but if you’re one of the few, you can’t go wrong at this adventure shop. From brand name jackets to pitching gear, ask one of the extraordinarily friendly staff people to help out and you’ll be outta the woods in no time – or into the woods – or really whatever you want…totally your choice. 21 Park Place (Church St.), Financial District. 212.227.1760