G. Fox & Co.
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Industry | Retail |
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Founded | 1847 |
Defunct | 1993 |
Fate | Merged with Filene's |
Successor | Filene's |
Headquarters | Hartford, Connecticut, U.S. |
Products |
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Parent | The May Department Stores Company (1965–1993) |
G. Fox & Co. was a large
History
Early years
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/PostcardHartfordCTMainStGFoxBuilding1905.jpg/220px-PostcardHartfordCTMainStGFoxBuilding1905.jpg)
G. Fox & Co. was established in 1847 by Gerson Fox and his brother, Isaac Fox, and was named I. & G. Fox Co. The first G. Fox store was a single-room storefront opened in Hartford, Connecticut.[1] When Isaac sold his interest to his brother, Gerson renamed the company G. Fox and Company. Gerson's son, Moses, joined the business in 1863, and took over the store in 1880, upon Gerson's death. The early Fox store was famous for home delivery - by wheelbarrow. The store had grown to five floors when it burned to the ground in January 1917.[1] Moses Fox, 66 at the time, announced that work would begin immediately on an 11-story replacement structure.[2] The new flagship store was located at 960 Main Street in downtown Hartford. History has it that the original store and offices, destroyed by fire, were rebuilt because the store's customers rallied and paid approximately 95% of all outstanding bills - voluntarily. Encouraged by the response, Moses Fox had the new store designed by New York architect Cass Gilbert,[1] as an 11-story behemoth, initially dubbed "Fox's folly" in reference to its sheer scale. The new store opened in 1918.[1] The fire served as impetus for Beatrice Fox Auerbach, Moses's daughter, and her husband, George Samuel Auerbach, to return to Hartford from Salt Lake City to help with the business. George died in 1927 and Beatrice then began working alongside her father.
Beatrice Fox Auerbach
In 1938, Gerson's granddaughter, Beatrice Fox Auerbach, took control of the company upon her father's (Moses Fox) death, and helped transform it into a dominant retail store in the southern New England area for most of the twentieth century. Not long after taking over in 1938 after Moses' death, Beatrice Auerbach embarked on a major renovation that added elegant art deco interior details and a signature marquee above the display windows and entrances along Main Street. Mrs. Auerbach became one of the most prominent executives in American retailing and gained much respect in the Hartford area for her civic and philanthropic efforts, which included endowment to the University of Hartford that named Auerbach Hall in her honor.[3]
Mrs. Auerbach fostered fierce loyalty among her employees and became a pioneer in the realm of
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5e/G_Fox_store_Hartford.jpg/190px-G_Fox_store_Hartford.jpg)
Mrs. Auerbach's belief in customer service was so focused that employees were charged with making sure every customer was satisfied, regardless of the cost. While the sales staff was not permitted to make final decisions in this area, Mrs. Auerbach's service managers had the last word, even to the extent that, on rare occasion, they were permitted to override a merchant's decision and take charge to satisfy a customer's need. While no service manager was ever chastised in this effort, an occasional merchant received the dreaded summons to the eleventh floor to be reminded by Mrs. Auerbach personally of her commitment to customer satisfaction. Further evidence of the store's commitment to service had a small staff of the service management personnel and two or three drivers on duty, sometimes until after midnight, on Christmas Eve to dispatch replacements for gifts that had not been received in time to be placed under the tree for Christmas.
Following Mrs. A's (as she was fondly known by the staff) instincts, G. Fox added several major additions to the downtown complex, including a nine-story retail addition to the Market Street (rear) side of the building.[5] To accomplish this addition, a nine-story brick, concrete and steel warehouse had to be moved from one side of a city block to the opposite side - an immense feat at the time. Other additions included a major warehouse (Mrs. Auerbach insisted that it be referred to as the "Service Building") in the 1930s, and a multi-level parking garage in the 1960s[1] to accommodate family cars exiting from the two newly opened Interstate highways into downtown Hartford, and the sixty-station telephone-order department.
The parking garage was situated next to the new interchange of interstate highways
Downtown expansion
Throughout the mid 20th century, the store continued to grow exclusively at its downtown Hartford location. Against prevailing trends, Mrs. Auerbach believed that branch stores only detracted from the appeal of the flagship store. This was, in no small part, due to the failure of Foxmart, a farm equipment and supply "branch" of G. Fox in Connecticut's Tobacco Valley. Instead of creating branch locations and in an effort to reach out to her distant customers, Mrs. Auerbach had about one-third of the 11th floor Toy Department carved out and expanded the store's telephone-order facility. As part of this effort, the company added direct phone lines to every exchange in Connecticut and parts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. In 1947, two years after World War II ended, G. Fox celebrated its 100th birthday.
A final expansion of the downtown store occurred in 1969, when G. Fox took over and expanded into basement and first and second floors of the adjacent historic
The G. Fox flagship store was known for customer attractions, including a large walk-through Christmas display and a talking
May Department stores
After the 1965 sale of the store to the
Prior to the merger with Filene's, two additional G. Fox stores were announced in
Closing
On February 1, 1993, the remaining G. Fox & Co. stores were re-branded as
After being abandoned for almost a decade, the downtown Hartford G. Fox building was re-opened in the fall of 2002 as a mixed-use commercial complex known as 960 Main. The building now houses street-level retail space, office space, meeting facilities the "Gershon Fox Room" in honor of one of the founders of the store, and the campus for Capital Community College.[1] This renovation and adaptive re-use maintained many of the art deco interior and exterior details while adding a large interior atrium and interior circulation space. In addition, a new and much larger parking garage was also built on the site of the original G. Fox garage on Market and Talcott Streets.
The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places within the Department Store Historic District.
See also
References
- ^ a b c d e f "Remembering G.Fox & Company". Connecticut Historical Society. Archived from the original on 2013-02-28., retrieved 2013-06-04.
- ^ G. Fox & Co., Remembering Great American Department Stores website, accessed October 9, 2009 Archived April 25, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ The Fox Family Archived 2009-09-12 at the Wayback Machine, Remembering G. Fox & Co., Connecticut Historical Society, accessed October 9, 2009
- ^ a b "Beatrice Fox Auerbach". Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame. Retrieved 2013-06-04.
- ^ Reisman, Lisa (January 13, 2011). "Thoroughly modern: The story of Beatrice Fox Auerbach". Shoreline Times. New Haven. Retrieved 2020-02-14.
- ^ a b Kennedy, Tom (December 25, 2011). "G. Fox: Revisiting A Magical Place And Time". Hartford Courant.
External links
- Remembering G. Fox & Co., Connecticut Historical Society