History of Sears, Roebuck and Co. in New York City

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The history of Sears, Roebuck and Co. reaches far beyond New York, but the company’s relationship with New York City became an important part of its rise from mail-order business to national retail giant. Sears maintained major buying offices in Manhattan, used New York buyers to shape its fashion business, operated a catalog-home office on Broadway, and eventually opened one of its most distinctive department stores at Beverley Road and Bedford Avenue in Flatbush, Brooklyn.

That Brooklyn store, which opened in 1932 with Eleanor Roosevelt participating in the opening ceremony, outlived nearly every other large Sears department store of its era. It closed in 2021, ending Sears’s full-line retail presence in New York City. The landmark building itself survived and is now part of the Bedford Square redevelopment, allowing one of the most visible reminders of Sears in New York to remain even after the store disappeared.

How Richard Sears Started the Company

Richard Warren Sears was born in Minnesota in 1863. As a young man, he worked as a railroad station agent in North Redwood, Minnesota. In 1886, after a local jeweler refused a shipment of watches, Sears purchased the watches himself and resold them at a profit. That opportunity led him to establish the R.W. Sears Watch Company as a mail-order business.

Sears soon met watch repairman Alvah Curtis Roebuck. The two moved to Chicago in 1887 and expanded beyond watches into jewelry and other merchandise. Sears later sold the original business and briefly left retailing, but he returned to Chicago and again partnered with Roebuck.

By 1893, the business was operating as Sears, Roebuck and Co. Its rapidly expanding mail-order catalog offered rural Americans an alternative to local general stores, where selection could be limited and prices were often higher. Sears printed its prices openly and gave customers access to an enormous range of merchandise that could be ordered from home.

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From Mail-Order Catalog to National Retail Giant

The company grew rapidly during the 1890s. Alvah Roebuck eventually left the partnership, and Aaron Nusbaum and Julius Rosenwald acquired an interest in the company. Richard Sears and Rosenwald later bought out Nusbaum, leaving Rosenwald as the most important managerial partner in the business.

In 1906, Sears, Roebuck and Co. was incorporated in New York and went public in a major stock offering. The company traded under the symbol “S.” Its huge Chicago mail-order complex became one of the great distribution operations of the early 20th century.

Julius Rosenwald assumed greater control after Richard Sears retired from active management in 1908. Rosenwald helped professionalize the company and continued expanding its product lines, distribution system, and national reach.

Why the Sears Catalog Changed American Shopping

The Sears catalog became one of the most important retail tools in American history. Rural customers could order clothing, tools, furniture, appliances, farm equipment, musical instruments, toys, household goods, and thousands of other products without traveling to a major city.

Sears also sold ready-to-assemble houses through its Modern Homes program. From 1908 through 1940, customers could purchase plans and building materials for homes that were shipped by rail. The company offered hundreds of house designs during the program’s lifetime.

The catalog also gave Black consumers living under Jim Crow segregation access to merchandise through a system that did not require them to rely entirely on local merchants. The degree to which mail-order retail altered racial power relationships varied from place to place, but the catalog unquestionably widened access to nationally priced consumer goods for customers who were often excluded or mistreated in local stores.

Sears Opens Its First Department Stores

As automobile ownership increased during the 1920s, Sears began moving beyond mail order. The company’s first retail store opened at its Chicago complex in 1925. Sears then expanded rapidly into freestanding stores, often choosing locations outside traditional downtown shopping districts where land was less expensive and automobile parking could be provided.

This was a different strategy from older downtown department stores. In New York, stores such as Macy’s, Gimbels, and Lord & Taylor had established enormous urban shopping destinations. Sears increasingly built stores closer to residential neighborhoods and designed them around the growing importance of the automobile.

Sears Comes to New York City

Sears had a New York presence before it opened a New York department store. A historical Sears office chronology lists an early New York buying office at 438 Broadway, managed by Robert P. Sniffen, before the company’s 1907 directory was published.

By 1920, the New York buying office had moved to 115 Fifth Avenue and included seventeen buyers and support employees. The office purchased goods ranging from clothing to housing supplies. As Sears moved into physical stores during the 1920s, its New York buying operation became increasingly important because store customers were more fashion-conscious than many of the company’s traditional catalog customers.

Sears at 881 Broadway and the Modern Homes Program

In 1928, Sears’s New York office became Department 664 and moved to 881 Broadway. The office also served as the New York headquarters for the company’s Modern Homes catalog program.

Sears briefly used a New York construction crew for some of its larger catalog homes and also contracted for home-remodeling work. The company’s mail-order housing business had begun in 1908 and continued until 1940, giving New Yorkers another connection to one of the most unusual chapters in Sears history.

Henry Rose and Sears Fashion Buying in New York

In 1930, Sears purchased a 25 percent interest in Henry Rose Stores, a New York fashion company. Sears understood that a centralized buying operation in Chicago could not always respond quickly enough to changing women’s fashion trends, so the Henry Rose operation became an important part of the company’s ready-to-wear and millinery business.

Henry Rose handled merchandising, displays, restocking, and shipments of women’s clothing to Sears stores around the country. Sears later increased its ownership, and Henry Rose became a wholly owned Sears subsidiary in 1944.

By 1940, Sears’s New York office at 360 West 31st Street had more than 128 buyers and support employees. By the 1960s, the operation included fashion merchandising, merchandise development and design, public relations, and a testing laboratory. A small soft-lines retail operation also existed at the 31st Street location from 1960 until 1965.

By 1977, the New York operation was responsible for more than 70 percent of Sears’s women’s fashion line. Sears then consolidated much of that work in Chicago. By April 1979, nearly all of the New York buyers had relocated.

The Flatbush Sears Opens in 1932

The most important physical Sears location in New York City opened in Flatbush, Brooklyn, on November 5, 1932. Located at 2227-2323 Beverley Road, also known as 2388-2420 Bedford Avenue, the store was designed by the Chicago architectural firm Nimmons, Carr & Wright in association with New York architect Alton L. Craft.

The store opened during the depths of the Great Depression and initially employed approximately 300 people. Eleanor Roosevelt, then New York’s first lady, addressed the crowd at the opening ceremony only days before Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president. Contemporary accounts also reported that she made the store’s first purchase, a pair of baby booties.

The Flatbush store became one of Sears’s most successful metropolitan locations. In 1940, the building was expanded along Beverley Road and at the rear to accommodate its growing business.

Why the Flatbush Sears Building Was So Distinctive

The Flatbush Sears was designed in a restrained Art Deco style that reflected the modern corporate image Sears was developing during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Its most recognizable feature was the tall central tower carrying the SEARS name on all four sides.

The tower was not merely decorative. It concealed mechanical equipment while also functioning as an enormous neighborhood advertisement. The building’s limestone exterior, vertical emphasis, geometric ornament, and broad massing made it stand out dramatically from the surrounding Flatbush streetscape.

The store was also designed for a new generation of automobile shoppers. Its large parking area and service facilities represented a retail model very different from Manhattan’s traditional department-store palaces.

The Flatbush Sears Becomes a New York City Landmark

On May 15, 2012, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the Flatbush Sears building an individual landmark. The New York City Council affirmed the designation that August.

The landmark designation protected the historically significant exterior of the 1932 Art Deco building. This became especially important after the store closed, because the old Sears structure could not simply be demolished as an ordinary former retail property.

The landmarking recognized not only the architecture but also the role Sears had played in Brooklyn’s commercial history. The Flatbush store had opened during the Depression, provided hundreds of jobs, and remained a familiar shopping destination for generations of Brooklyn residents.

Sears Declines and the Brooklyn Store Closes

Sears remained one of America’s dominant retailers for much of the 20th century, but its position weakened as discount chains, suburban malls, specialty retailers, and eventually online shopping changed the marketplace. The company ended publication of its giant general merchandise catalog in 1993.

Sears merged with Kmart in 2005 under Sears Holdings Corporation. After years of declining sales, store closures, asset sales, and financial losses, Sears Holdings filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October 2018. In 2019, Transform Holdco acquired substantially all of Sears Holdings’ remaining go-forward retail assets.

The Flatbush Sears survived longer than most. It temporarily closed during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when its parking lot was used as a drive-through testing location, and later reopened. The store permanently closed in November 2021, ending nearly eighty-nine years of Sears retailing at Beverley Road and Bedford Avenue.

What Happened to the Flatbush Sears Building?

The historic Sears building did not meet the wrecking ball. By 2026, the old Sears site was being incorporated into Bedford Square, a large mixed-use redevelopment led by Clipper Equity.

The landmarked Sears building is being retained and restored for new commercial uses while new residential buildings rise on other portions of the former Sears property. Bedford Square is planned around 877 apartments across multiple buildings, with retail and other amenities integrated into the redevelopment.

This is a very different outcome from the one feared when Sears closed. The store is gone, but the landmark tower and Art Deco building remain part of Flatbush’s streetscape, surrounded by a new development that reflects another generation of change in Brooklyn.

What Remains of Sears Today?

The Sears of the 20th century no longer exists in anything close to its former scale. Transformco continues to operate the Sears brand, Sears.com, Sears Home Services, and a small number of physical retail locations elsewhere in the United States.

No full-line Sears department store remains in New York City. The Flatbush store’s closing therefore marked the end of a long local retail story that had begun not with a department store, but with Manhattan buying offices, catalog operations, fashion merchandising, and a company trying to understand New York shoppers.

More New York Retail History

Readers interested in New York’s department-store era can continue with our histories of Macy’s, Gimbels, Lord & Taylor, and TSS Stores. For a broader look at the city’s vanished retail giants, see our guide to the 10 Most Famous Department Stores in NYC History and What Happened to Them.

Sources

Library of Congress, “Sears, Roebuck, & Co. Goes Public.”
Sears Archives, “Store History – New York.”
New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, Sears Roebuck & Company Department Store designation materials.
Historic Districts Council, “Sears Roebuck & Company Department Store.”
Bedford Square, redevelopment project materials.
History.com, “History of Sears.”

Sears in New York: Key Dates

History of Sears, Roebuck and Co. in New York City article published on ClassicNewYorkHistory.com © 2026