Frederick & Nelson was the successor to a business founded by two partners, Donald E. Frederick and James Mecham, who had been mining colleagues in
Colorado. They happened to connect shortly after Frederick arrived in Seattle on a steamer in 1890, and they pooled their resources to start a second-hand furniture business. After setting up shop in several locations, the business was named "J. G. Mecham and Co." Over 25,000 shoppers and guests made it through the doors that day. Frederick was forward-thinking enough to make the foundation strong enough to hold ten stories. Even though businessmen and financiers branded the project "Frederick's Folly", his dream was finally realized three decades later.
Marshall Field At the age of 69 in 1929, D. E. Frederick decided to retire, and he sold the store to Marshall Field and Company for $6 million (~$ in ). He was most impressed with the policies of Marshall Field and had even patterned Frederick & Nelson after Marshall Field and Company. They signed a 99-year lease that would pay Frederick (and later his estate) $100,000 a year. , in the west-side suburbs of
Portland, Oregon. In 1943, Frederick & Nelson opened a satellite store at
Boeing Field at the Boeing Airplane Company's Number 2 Plant. They supported the war effort and built a loyalty among the airplane manufacturer's 47,000 employees. Frederick's also established a "Victory Post" on the main floor of the Seattle store, selling War Bonds and stamps. Frederick's was one of a handful of stores in the nation to receive a
U.S. Treasury Department T-Flag. The T-Flag signified that more than 90 percent of the employees invested at least 10 percent of their earnings in War Bonds. D. E. Frederick's dreams for expansion of the original store at Pine Street and Fifth Avenue finally were realized when the grand re-opening was celebrated August 4, 1952. There were ten floors above ground and two below. The building housed a beauty salon, post office, moving picture auditorium, a fully equipped medical facility, and a nursery. There were reading and writing rooms, and the large, elaborately furnished fifth floor tearoom could seat 400. On the tenth floor the company built a modern candy kitchen that could turn out more than 500,000 pounds of Frango chocolates a year. Later the company added a kindergarten and a children's barbershop. (The original Frederick & Nelson store reopened as
Nordstrom's flagship store in 1998.) By 1980, Frederick & Nelson had become one of the fastest growing stores in the nation, nearly quadrupling from four stores to fifteen. Marshall Field's acquired three
Liberty House stores in
Portland, and two in
Tacoma as well as six
Lipman's stores in Oregon from the
Dayton Hudson Corporation. All were converted to Frederick & Nelson stores.
Demise Ownership would change three more times in the next nine years as business went on a downward spiral. Management changes occurred in 1982 when
BATUS Inc. of
Louisville, Kentucky, bought all of the outstanding stock of Marshall Field and Co. BATUS Retail Group now included Marshall Field,
Saks Fifth Avenue, Frederick & Nelson,
Gimbels,
Kohl's and a number of other
department stores. By the mid-1980s they were beginning to close the Oregon stores, one Oregon location at
Washington Square lasted until 1990. BATUS sold the money-losing Frederick & Nelson to local investors in September 1986. Two stores were immediately closed - Portland and Salem Oregon. Poor management decisions led to an overabundance of lower-priced, out-of-season merchandise and large investments in inventory at the wrong prices. Additionally, the inability to pay bills on time led to late deliveries of critical merchandise and empty looking stores. No longer known for fashionable, high-end clothing, Frederick & Nelson became unable to withstand competitive pressures, particularly when the Seattle area entered a recession in the late 1980s. Fading rapidly, the chain filed for bankruptcy, entered a fatal liquidity crisis and closed for the last time in May 1992. ==Frango==