Why Chicago Really Lost Marshall Field's

Why Chicago Really Lost Marshall Field's Marshall Field's shut its 13th-floor Frango kitchen in 1999, seven years before Macy's ever put up a sign on State Street. Chicago blames Macy's for erasing Marshall Field's in 2006, but Macy's owner was the fourth company to control the store since 1982. We follow the hand-offs: the Merchandise Mart sold to Joseph Kennedy for less than half its cost, the hostile bids from Carter Hawley Hale and Carl Icahn, a London tobacco company, Dayton Hudson and Target, May Department Stores, and finally Federated's $11 billion merger that turned 62 Field's stores into Macy's. We also look at what Field's actually invented, from the Walnut Room to the bridal registry and Harry Gordon Selfridge's Christmas countdown, what the 2003 sales numbers really show, and why Macy's put the Marshall Field's name back on the Walnut Room in 2025. More Chicago history:    / @colinkeylock