{ Red/Blue Stereograph }
The six-story Field & Leiter Store, erected in 1868, was located, as its
successor Marshall Field's is today, at State and Washington. With its marble
columns and elegant decor, it was the biggest enterprise of its kind outside of
New York. The store was a leader in the new style of urban retailing, featuring
a vast array of goods elegantly displayed in separate departments (hence,
department store) staffed by trained sales clerks who treated their fashionable
clientele more like guests than customers. Marshall Field and Levi Z. Leiter,
who had also been partners in an earlier dry goods business, had started this
operation by purchasing Potter Palmer's store in the mid-1860s, shortly after
which Palmer left the firm. Field & Leiter moved the business from Lake Street
to their new showplace. When it was destroyed, they continued operations right
away in a horse-car barn at State and Twentieth and began building both a new
wholesale and a new retail store. The latter was ready to resume business on
State Street by 1873. In 1881 Leiter retired from the business, and the name was
changed.
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