How the Wanamakers Lost Their $60 Million Store

Carved in gold above the Grand Court of the store John Wanamaker built, there is a single name. His. It has stood there for more than a century, above the marble and the bronze and the largest playable organ in the world. And the family that name belonged to has not owned one share of that store since a spring afternoon in 1978. This is the story of how a fortune the papers once put near a hundred million dollars ended as sixty million in cash, split among a crowd of heirs who no longer wanted the store their name was on. John Wanamaker built one of the great American emporiums and one of the great American fortunes. His son locked the store away in a trust meant to keep it in the family for good. The trust held for fifty years. And it was the wall itself that finally handed the store away, because a family spread thin across dozens of heirs, none of whom had ever run it, wanted the one thing the trust forbade: to turn the monument back into money. The public kept the name. The organ still plays under it. The building carries a landmark protection the private fortune never had. A fortune is only ever as safe as the family it is handed to. Sources include the Wanamaker company and estate record, contemporary press coverage of the 1978 sale of the store, a federal appeals-court account of the trust, and standard reference and municipal-landmark records on the Wanamaker building and the Grand Court organ. Chapters: 0:00 A Name Carved in Gold 2:22 The Merchant of Philadelphia 6:55 The Organ from St. Louis 8:04 The Eagle 9:56 Wanamaker's Death 10:44 Rodman and the Trust 16:17 The Heirs Want Out 18:30 The Sale of 1978 19:35 The Bidding War 25:42 The City Kept the Name