Lord & Taylor no longer operates physical department stores, but the famous name is back in business online. The retailer closed all of its remaining stores after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2020, ending nearly two centuries of brick-and-mortar retailing. Its intellectual property changed hands twice after the bankruptcy, and in 2026 Lord & Taylor is operating as an e-commerce brand under Regal Brands Global. The company has also launched a new Heritage Collection and has not ruled out some form of future return to physical retail.
The story of Lord & Taylor is one of the great stories in New York retail history. The company began in Lower Manhattan in 1826, followed New York’s shopping districts northward for generations, became one of Fifth Avenue’s most prestigious department stores, helped pioneer personal shopping and suburban retail, and eventually became a victim of the enormous changes that reshaped the American department-store business.
Former Lord & Taylor store at 901 Broadway in Manhattan. Photo: Ajay Suresh from New York, NY, USA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
What Happened to Lord & Taylor?
Lord & Taylor’s physical department-store business ended after years of declining department-store traffic, repeated ownership changes, growing competition from online retail, the sale and closure of its Fifth Avenue flagship, financial problems under its final store owner, and finally the enormous disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Le Tote, an online clothing-rental company, purchased Lord & Taylor from Hudson’s Bay Company in 2019. Less than a year later, Le Tote and Lord & Taylor filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on August 2, 2020.
The company initially hoped that some stores might survive. That did not happen. By August 27, 2020, liquidation sales had begun at all 38 remaining Lord & Taylor stores. The last physical stores closed in early 2021.
That ended the brick-and-mortar life of a company founded 195 years earlier.
Is Lord & Taylor Still in Business?
Yes, but not as the department-store chain generations of shoppers remember.
Lord & Taylor operates as an online retailer at LordandTaylor.com. The brand currently sells clothing, handbags, shoes, accessories, home products, designer merchandise, and other goods through its website.
The current Lord & Taylor is owned by Regal Brands Global, which acquired the company’s intellectual property from Saadia Group in late 2024. Saadia Group had purchased the Lord & Taylor intellectual property during the 2020 bankruptcy and relaunched the name online in 2021.
In 2026, Lord & Taylor introduced a new private-label Heritage Collection as part of the effort to reconnect the modern online company with its nearly 200-year history. Regal Brands Global has also indicated that it is not ruling out some form of future physical retail, although there is currently no traditional Lord & Taylor department store operating anywhere in the United States.
When Was Lord & Taylor Founded?
Lord & Taylor traces its founding to 1826.
Samuel Lord, a 23-year-old immigrant from Yorkshire, England, opened a small dry-goods store at 47 Catherine Street in Lower Manhattan. He borrowed $1,000 from his wife’s uncle, John Taylor, and entered into partnership with the uncle’s relative George Washington Taylor.
The store sold fabrics, notions, hosiery, shawls, and other ready-made items. Catherine Street was then one of New York City’s important shopping streets, long before Fifth Avenue became synonymous with luxury retail.
The business grew quickly. It expanded into 49 Catherine Street in 1832 and moved to a larger four-story building at 61-63 Catherine Street in 1838.
Lord & Taylor Moves to Grand Street
As New York City grew, Lord & Taylor followed its customers.
In 1853, the company moved into a new building at 255-261 Grand Street at the southeast corner of Chrystie Street. The structure included a domed rotunda and large windows that allowed natural light to fill the interior.
By the late 1850s, Lord & Taylor was ready for another major expansion. In 1859, it opened an imposing five-story marble emporium at 461-467 Broadway near Grand Street. That Broadway store became the company’s flagship and placed Lord & Taylor in the growing commercial district that was transforming Lower Manhattan.
The Famous Lord & Taylor Store at 901 Broadway
New York’s fashionable residential and shopping districts continued moving north after the Civil War. Lord & Taylor followed.
In 1870, the company opened a spectacular cast-iron store at 901 Broadway at East 20th Street. Designed by architect James H. Giles, the building stood at the southwest corner of Broadway and 20th Street and included one of the earliest steam-powered passenger elevators used in a New York retail building.
The 901 Broadway building stood in what became known as the Ladies’ Mile shopping district. Its cast-iron facade, large windows, and corner tower made it one of the most distinctive commercial buildings of the era.
The building still stands today and is a designated New York City landmark. The featured photograph at the top of this article shows this surviving former Lord & Taylor store.
Lord & Taylor Reaches Fifth Avenue
By the end of the nineteenth century, New York’s most fashionable shopping district was moving north again. Fifth Avenue above 34th Street was changing from a largely residential avenue into one of the world’s great retail corridors.
Lord & Taylor began establishing a Fifth Avenue presence during the early 1900s. The company was incorporated in 1904, and its leadership eventually began planning an entirely new flagship that would represent the future of the business.
The site chosen was on Fifth Avenue between West 38th and 39th Streets.
The Lord & Taylor Fifth Avenue Flagship Opens in 1914
The famous Lord & Taylor flagship at 424-434 Fifth Avenue opened on February 24, 1914.
Designed by the architectural firm Starrett & Van Vleck, the building was an Italian Renaissance Revival structure with a dramatic arched Fifth Avenue entrance, large display windows, gray brick upper stories, a two-story colonnade, a deep copper cornice, and a distinctive chamfered corner facing Fifth Avenue and West 38th Street.
The building was more than beautiful. It was designed around the complicated mechanics of operating a huge modern department store.
An inclined driveway allowed merchandise to enter and leave without clogging Fifth Avenue. Display-window platforms could be lowered and raised so the store could change its famous windows efficiently. Conveyors and dumbwaiters moved customer purchases through packaging and shipping areas.
Lord & Taylor also devoted substantial space to services. The store included restaurants, travel assistance, telephone facilities, a concert hall, and departments that went far beyond clothing.
Lord & Taylor Took Care of Its Employees Too
One of the more remarkable elements of the 1914 flagship was the attention paid to employees.
The building included employee dining rooms, a gymnasium, a solarium, medical services, dental services, and other facilities. Cork flooring was installed behind sales counters to reduce the physical strain on employees who stood throughout the workday.
These features were unusually progressive for a department store of the period and became part of the reason the building was later recognized for its architectural and social history.
The Fifth Avenue Building Becomes a New York City Landmark
New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the Lord & Taylor Building an individual landmark on October 30, 2007.
The commission cited both the architecture of the Starrett & Van Vleck building and Lord & Taylor’s extraordinary role in the history of American retailing.
The landmark designation became extremely important after the department store itself disappeared because it helped ensure that the historic exterior would survive even after the building found an entirely new use.
Dorothy Shaver Changes American Retailing
No person is more important to the twentieth-century history of Lord & Taylor than Dorothy Shaver.
Shaver first became associated with Lord & Taylor in the early 1920s while promoting dolls created by her sister Elsie. She joined the company full time in 1924 and steadily rose through its management ranks.
In 1945, Dorothy Shaver became president of Lord & Taylor. She was the first woman to serve as president of a major American retail company.
That achievement alone would have secured her place in business history, but her impact went much further.
Dorothy Shaver Promotes American Fashion
Shaver believed American fashion designers deserved far more attention than they were receiving. At a time when many American stores looked almost automatically toward Paris for fashion leadership, she promoted designers including Bonnie Cashin, Claire McCardell, and Vera Maxwell.
She also helped modernize Lord & Taylor’s selling floors and expanded the store’s fashion departments for different groups of customers, including juniors, misses, petites, maternity wear, and bridal fashion.
Shaver’s influence also extended into customer service. She developed the Red Rose Personal Shopping Service, strengthening the idea that a department store could provide individualized help rather than simply place merchandise on racks and counters.
The famous handwritten Lord & Taylor logo and American Beauty Rose emblem also became closely associated with the Shaver era.
Lord & Taylor Moves Into the Suburbs
Lord & Taylor was also an early leader in another retail revolution: the movement of major department stores into the suburbs.
The company’s Manhasset store opened on Long Island in 1941. The building was designed by Starrett & Van Vleck in partnership with industrial designer Raymond Loewy.
That Manhasset store represented a major shift in department-store strategy. Instead of expecting every shopper to travel into Manhattan, Lord & Taylor followed its customers as families increasingly moved into suburban communities.
Additional suburban stores followed, including Westchester County in 1948, Millburn, New Jersey, in 1949, West Hartford in 1953, and suburban Philadelphia in 1955.
The Manhasset store would eventually become one of the chain’s most famous suburban locations and remained open until the final companywide liquidation.
The Lord & Taylor Christmas Windows
Lord & Taylor became famous for its holiday windows on Fifth Avenue.
The annual Christmas displays began during the early twentieth century and became one of the traditional stops for New Yorkers walking Fifth Avenue during the holiday season.
The company is often credited with creating one of the earliest animated holiday windows in 1938, when mechanical effects and fan-blown material were used to create the appearance of a snowstorm.
For generations, the Lord & Taylor windows belonged to the same New York holiday tradition as the famous displays at Macy’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Bloomingdale’s.
Who Owned Lord & Taylor Over the Years?
Lord & Taylor went through a long series of corporate owners during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
The company became part of United Dry Goods Company in 1910. A reorganization in 1915 created Associated Dry Goods Company, which remained Lord & Taylor’s parent for decades.
May Department Stores acquired Associated Dry Goods in 1986. Federated Department Stores then acquired May in 2005.
Federated, which later became Macy’s, Inc., decided Lord & Taylor did not fit its long-term strategy and sold the chain to NRDC Equity Partners in 2006.
NRDC acquired Hudson’s Bay Company in 2008, and Lord & Taylor eventually became part of the Hudson’s Bay corporate structure.
Hudson’s Bay sold Lord & Taylor’s operating business to Le Tote in 2019. Le Tote filed for bankruptcy with Lord & Taylor in 2020. Saadia Group then purchased the Lord & Taylor intellectual property during the bankruptcy proceedings for $12 million and relaunched the brand online in 2021.
Regal Brands Global acquired the Lord & Taylor intellectual property from Saadia Group in late 2024 and owns the online brand today.
Why Did Lord & Taylor Close?
It would be too simple to say Lord & Taylor closed because of COVID-19.
The pandemic delivered a devastating final blow, but the problems had been building for years.
Traditional department stores were losing shoppers to specialty chains, discount retailers, online shopping, and changing consumer habits. Lord & Taylor also went through repeated ownership changes that made it difficult to establish a consistent long-term strategy.
The company’s most famous asset, the Fifth Avenue flagship, was sold before the pandemic. The store closed permanently on January 2, 2019, more than a year before COVID-19 forced American retailers to shut their doors.
Le Tote hoped to combine its clothing-rental platform with Lord & Taylor’s established department-store business, but the company had limited time and capital to make the idea work. When the pandemic shut stores in 2020, the already fragile operation could not withstand the financial shock.
COVID-19 accelerated Lord & Taylor’s collapse. It did not create every problem that caused it.
When Did the Fifth Avenue Lord & Taylor Close?
The Lord & Taylor flagship on Fifth Avenue closed on January 2, 2019.
The closing was deeply symbolic. The store had occupied the building since 1914 and had been one of the defining anchors of the Fifth Avenue shopping district for more than a century.
Hudson’s Bay had agreed to sell the landmark property as part of a real-estate transaction involving WeWork. Amazon later purchased the building in 2020.
What Is in the Old Lord & Taylor Building Today?
The former Lord & Taylor flagship at 424 Fifth Avenue is now owned and occupied by Amazon.
Amazon completed a major restoration and opened its Midtown office in the building in 2023. The office, known as Hank, was designed to preserve important architectural details from the old department store while adapting the landmark for more than 2,000 Amazon employees.
In June 2026, the building gained another remarkable connection to its retail past when Shaver Hall opened on the ground floor.
The 35,000-square-foot food and dining hall is named for Dorothy Shaver. It includes restaurants, food counters, bars, and public gathering space, once again bringing the public through the doors of the former Lord & Taylor flagship.
There is something especially fitting about that name. The woman who helped make Lord & Taylor one of America’s most innovative department stores is now remembered inside the building where she spent so much of her career.
Is Lord & Taylor Coming Back?
In one sense, Lord & Taylor has already come back.
The name is active online again, the familiar logo is being used, merchandise is being sold, and Regal Brands Global launched the Lord & Taylor Heritage Collection in 2026.
That does not mean the old department-store chain has returned. There are no traditional Lord & Taylor stores currently operating.
Regal Brands Global has said it is open to possibilities involving physical retail in the future, including smaller concepts, licensing, wholesale partnerships, or other formats. Whether Lord & Taylor will ever again open a permanent store remains unknown.
For now, the comeback is digital.
The Lord & Taylor Legacy
Lord & Taylor lasted long enough to experience almost the entire history of the American department store.
It began when Lower Manhattan was New York’s principal shopping district. It followed fashionable New Yorkers north to Broadway, Ladies’ Mile, and eventually Fifth Avenue. It survived the Civil War, financial panics, two world wars, the Great Depression, enormous changes in fashion, suburbanization, shopping malls, corporate mergers, and the rise of the internet.
It also helped change retail itself.
Lord & Taylor was an early user of passenger elevators, built one of Fifth Avenue’s great purpose-designed department stores, promoted American fashion designers, expanded personal-shopping services, helped pioneer suburban department-store locations, and placed a woman in charge of a major retail company decades before that was common in American business.
The stores are gone, but the story is not over. The 901 Broadway building still stands. The landmark Fifth Avenue flagship survives as Amazon’s Midtown office and Shaver Hall. The Lord & Taylor name is selling merchandise online again.
That is a very different ending from saying the company simply disappeared.
More New York Department Store History
Readers who remember Lord & Taylor can continue exploring New York City’s department-store history with our stories on Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, Gimbels, and B. Altman & Co.. Our history of New York City’s most famous department stores brings many of these legendary retailers together in one place.
Sources
New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, Lord & Taylor Building Designation Report
Retail Dive, A Look Back at the Long History of Lord & Taylor
Retail Dive, Lord & Taylor Relaunches Online Only
Retail Dive, Lord & Taylor Revives Private Label Strategy
Amazon, Restoration and Opening of the Former Lord & Taylor Fifth Avenue Building
Lord & Taylor History at a Glance
| Year | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 1826 | Samuel Lord and George Washington Taylor establish a dry-goods store on Catherine Street in Lower Manhattan |
| 1853 | Lord & Taylor opens a new store at Grand and Chrystie Streets |
| 1859 | A five-story marble flagship opens at 461-467 Broadway |
| 1870 | The landmark cast-iron store at 901 Broadway and East 20th Street opens |
| 1904 | Lord & Taylor becomes a stock corporation |
| 1914 | The famous Fifth Avenue flagship opens at 424-434 Fifth Avenue on February 24 |
| 1941 | The suburban Manhasset store opens on Long Island |
| 1945 | Dorothy Shaver becomes president, the first woman to lead a major American retail company |
| 1986 | May Department Stores acquires Associated Dry Goods, including Lord & Taylor |
| 2006 | NRDC Equity Partners acquires Lord & Taylor |
| 2007 | The Fifth Avenue flagship is designated a New York City landmark |
| 2019 | The Fifth Avenue flagship closes on January 2; Le Tote acquires the operating business later that year |
| 2020 | Lord & Taylor files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and begins liquidating all remaining stores |
| 2021 | The last physical stores close; Saadia Group relaunches Lord & Taylor online |
| 2023 | Amazon opens its restored Hank office in the former Fifth Avenue flagship |
| 2024 | Regal Brands Global acquires the Lord & Taylor intellectual property |
| 2026 | Lord & Taylor launches its Heritage Collection online; Shaver Hall opens in the former Fifth Avenue flagship |
What Happened to Lord & Taylor? History of New York’s Famous Department Store article published on ClassicNewYorkHistory.com © 2026
Shopping is my favorite sport…literally.
Nothing to me is comparative.
I love your article…at the time
I was in Display at several Dept stores..fashion merchandising…interior store displays…Window Dressing…
Visual Merchandising
A Brilliant career…sadly those days are a distant memory..
.”” Tragic”” nothing compares to the flair for Decorating that those stores Evoked…I loved being there as a Fashion Stylist and Everything else…Bon Voyage to All who will never forget the Glamour…Excitement and the Artistry of that Career…..