History
The chain was founded in 1928 by George Farkas, a Brooklyn native who opened a store on Third Avenue in the Bronx and named it for his deceased father. The store managed to thrive during the following Depression, and another location was opened at Fordham Road (also in the Bronx) in 1933. Post-war prosperity further increased the company's fortunes, and led to a steady increase of locations throughout the area.
The company's hold on the marketplace began to slip in the 1970s, as customers defected to larger competitors and specialty retailers. In 1980, Interstate Properties took a major stake in the ailing chain, seeking to convert its real estate to more profitable ventures. Throughout the 1980s, Alexander's management struggled to expand the retailer's offerings beyond leisure apparel, but was often distracted by real estate sell-offs, and the stores' physical appearance and merchandise quality suffered. The company made a last-ditch effort to modernize in the early 1990s by expanding its activewear, electronics, housewares, sports equipment, and toy departments. It also began to update its infrastructure by replacing aging mechanical cash registers which could no longer be repaired with computerized registers (an earlier attempt in the 1980s had failed due to poor planning). Unfortunately, these changes came too late, and Alexander's finally declared bankruptcy in 1992 as debts to vendors mounted and inventories dwindled.
After being reorganized into a real estate company, Alexander's began selling off its valuable properties to developers (the company had owned all the real estate its large stores sat on aside from the World Trade Center location). Vornado, a realty trust firm (which itself in a previous form was another discount department store chain, Two Guys), bought a controlling share of Alexander's at bargain prices and refocused the company on development of its land holdings.
Read more about this topic: Alexander's
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)