For generations of New Yorkers, Woolworth’s was much more than a department store. It was where families shopped for everyday essentials, children bought their first records and toys, and busy lunch counters became neighborhood gathering places. From its humble beginnings as the original five-and-dime store to its role in the Civil Rights Movement and the creation of one of New York City’s most iconic skyscrapers, the history of Woolworth’s reflects the changing story of retail, culture, and everyday life in America.
Photo: Joe+Jeanette Archie / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)
There are a handful of shopping stores that are forever etched in the memories of New Yorkers who grew up in the 1900s. One way up on this list is undoubtedly Woolworth’s. Many people loved Woolworth stores and shopped there almost daily. Of course, there were many others who were not too fond of the stores for various reasons, including its controversial history. Regardless of one’s feelings towards the stores, the company infiltrated neighborhoods in every borough of New York City. They were also spread out across Long Island and upstate New York. The company had stores all across the United States and around the world. By 1979. Woolworth’s was the largest department store chain worldwide.
We all have memories of shopping in Woolworth’s. I bought my first 45 rpm record at Woolworth’s in 1971. You don’t forget moments like that. It was the Partridge Family’s big hit “I Think I Love You.” I purchased it at the Woolworth’s on 204th Street in The Bronx. I was ten years old, and I still remember like it was yesterday. Woolworth’s had their own top 100 list. Its where many people brought records. There weren’t many record stores around in the 1960s and 70s, and I don’t remember any in our neighborhood in the Bronx. That’s one of the reasons why Woolworth’s was so successful. Woolworth’s was a one-stop shop where you could find almost anything at very low prices. Known as the original five-and-dime stores, Woolworth’s was incredibly groundbreaking in so many ways… both good and bad.
Woolworth’s History
Woolworth’s stores were founded by Frank Winfield Woolworth. In the late 1870’s, Frank Woolworth was working as a clerk in a small grocery store when he came up with the idea of selling cheap 5-cent items at the counter. The idea proved very successful. It was so successful that it led Frank Woolworth to open up his own store selling 5-cent items in Utica, New York. The store failed to be successful. If there were ever an example to teach young entrepreneurs not to quit after their first failed attempt at starting a business, it would be Frank Woolworth’s decision to try again after his Utica failure.
Four months after his Utica store closed, Frank Woolworth opened up a new store in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. This time he expanded to selling 5 and 10 cent items. With a handful of partners by his side and sheer will to succeed, the Lancaster store proved to be a winner. Soon, Woolworth and his partners were opening up stores all over Pennsylvania. With success in Pennsylvania, the group quickly expanded to New York.
Photo: Woolworth’s second store in Pennsylvania. Public Domain
Frank Woolworth’s success started slowly but then expanded rapidly. In 1912, there were almost 600 stores associated with Frank Woolworth in some capacity. In a remarkable move, Frank Woolworth had all his partners and associated stores incorporated under the name “F. W. Woolworth Company.” One year later, in 1913, Frank Woolworth would move his executive offices in New York to a new building he had commissioned a few years earlier. That new building would stand at 233 Broadway in Manhattan. It would come to be known as the Woolworth Building. However, this was no ordinary building. By 1930, the Woolworth Building would become the tallest building in the world. While it has obviously been eclipsed by modern skyscrapers, the Woolworth Building still ranks in the top 100 tallest buildings in the world as of 2020.
Photo: Copyright by The Pictorial News Co., N.Y. No. NN 98. {{PD-US}}; cropped by Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:01, 27 September 2011 (UTC) / Public domain
The advertising of Woolworth’s as a five-and-dime store was taken quite literally. Woolworth actually had a price limit in their early stores. Unlike the 99-cent stores we frequent today, where many items are sold for more than 99 cents, Woolworth’s had an actual price limit: nothing was sold for more than 5 or 10 cents. However, in 1932, the store added a 20-cent line of goods. With that line becoming very successful, three years later, the company’s corporate offices decided to do away with price limits in the stores altogether.
When most people speak of the city of Liverpool, England, they are almost always applying the city’s name in a discussion about The Beatles. However, the city of Liverpool is also known as the first city to incorporate a lunch counter inside a Woolworth store. If we look at all the coffee counters in Barnes & Noble stores and even the restaurants that would later open in places like Macy’s and Abraham & Straus, the idea started with Woolworth’s in Liverpool.
Greensboro
The concept of the lunch counter inside Woolworth’s would play a role not only in economic history but also in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s in the United States. That role occurred in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960. At the time, Woolworth’s had been utilizing a policy of racial segregation in their store’s luncheonettes. Horrifically, like many other places in the South, there were “whites only” sections at Woolworth’s lunch counters. Four men named David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Ezell A. Blair, Jr., and Joseph McNeil, who were also known as the Greensboro Four, decided to sit at the whites-only section of the Woolworth’s luncheonette in Greensboro.
The four young African American men would continue to go to the Woolworth luncheonette every day until the store finally agreed to serve them while they sat in the whites-only section. As each day passed, more students joined them until the protest reached a capacity of 1000 students in the store. Their brave actions, captured by the media, fueled a change in Woolworth’s policy, which ended racial segregation in Woolworth Stores. It was an important moment in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
The Greensboro Store
Photo: dbking from Washington, DC / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)
Expansion and Competition
The 1960s would present many challenges to Woolworth. In 1962, three new stores that would become legends in their own right opened. K-Mart, Wal-Mart, and Target all opened their first stores in 1962, providing direct competition to Woolworth’s. In response, Woolworth decided to open a new chain of larger-sized stores under the name Woolco. Woolworth continued to expand into the 1960s and 1970s by opening specialty stores in shopping malls across the United States. They were often opened under different names. There were also Woolworth Express stores that opened in malls that focused on personal care items.
Eventually, competition from larger chain stores and changing social dynamics would lead Woolworth to begin closing and selling its stores. The Woolco chain stores were sold to Wal-Mart. By 1997, Woolworth had closed all its stores opened under the Woolworth name. The company would also change its corporate name to Venator. However, the company continued, specializing in mail-order sporting goods and focusing on some of the specialty stores it had opened in the 1960s and 1970s. In 2001, the company changed its name one final time… it was now called Foot Locker, Inc. Most people never knew that Foot Locker, Inc. was a company Woolworth had started in 1974.
The history of Woolworth’s is far-reaching. It played a pivotal role in the development of retail stores in the United States and around the world. It was a store that eventually proved too competitive for many smaller mom-and-pop shops in neighborhoods to survive. It was a store that practiced racial discrimination that was upended by the people. In the end, it was a store that just could not compete with the Wal-Marts of the world, the way neighborhood candy stores could not compete with them. Yet ask anyone over the age of forty if they have ever visited a Woolworth’s, and 99 out of 100 would probably answer… yes!
Photo: Steve Morgan / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)
Updated June 30, 2026.
Continue exploring the history of New York City’s legendary retailers and landmarks with our articles on Macy’s, Penn Station, Grand Central Terminal, The Flatiron Building, Radio City Music Hall, and discover more stories celebrating the businesses, landmarks, and people that shaped New York City.
Sources:
Borugh, James. The Woolworths (New York: McGraw Hill, l 1982)
