In the Knickerbocker days the important shops of the town lined lower Broadway and the adjacent streets.

Then it was to Grand Street that the ladies journeyed to barter and bargain for the latest fashions from the Paris whose styles were dominated by the Empress Eugenie.

When Grand Street had been outgrown the shops moved northward to Fourteenth Street and Union Square.

There are tens of thousands of New Yorkers whose childhood dates back to the early eighties who recall as one of the delights of the Yuletide season the visit to the revolving show in the window of old Macy's at the corner of Fourteenth Street and Sixth Avenue.

For a decade or so Sixth Avenue was the shop paradise.
Above Macy's were O'Neill's, and Simpson, Crawford and Simpson's, and Altman's, and Ehrich's, besides the countless emporiums of lesser magnitude.