Bonwit Teller

Bonwit Teller & Co. was an American luxury department store in New York City, founded by Paul Bonwit in 1895 at Sixth Avenue and 18th Street, and later a chain of luxury department stores.

In 1897, Edmund D. Teller was admitted to the partnership and the store moved to 23rd Street, east of Sixth Avenue.

Bonwit specialized in high-end women's apparel at a time when many of its competitors were diversifying their product lines, and Bonwit Teller became noted within the trade for the quality of its merchandise as well as the above-average salaries paid to both buyers and executives.

The partnership was incorporated in 1907 and the store moved to the corner of Fifth Avenue and 38th Street.

Throughout much of the 20th century, Bonwit was one of a group of upscale department stores on Fifth Avenue that catered to the "carriage trade". Among its most notable peers were Lord & Taylor, and Saks Fifth Avenue.

Distinctive features

The Bonwit Teller's flagship uptown building at Fifth Avenue and 56th Street, originally known as Stewart & Company, was a women's clothing store in the "new luxury retailing district", designed by Whitney Warren and Charles Wetmore, and opened on October 16, 1929, with Eleanor Roosevelt in attendance. It was described by The New York Times as a 12-story emporium of "severe, almost unornamented limestone climbing to a ziggurat of setbacks"—as an "antithesis" of the nearby "conventional 1928 Bergdorf Goodman Building.

The "stupendously luxurious" entrance sharply contrasted the severity of the building itself.