Gimbels
defunct department store chain
Gimbel Brothers, commonly known as Gimbels, was an American department store corporation that operated from 1842 until 1987. The company was founded by Adam Gimbel who, in 1842, opened his first general store in Vincennes, Indiana. In 1887, the company moved its operations to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, establishing the first Gimbel Brothers Department Store. It became a chain in 1894 when it opened a second, larger location in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which also served as its headquarters for several years. At the urging of future company president Bernard Gimbel, grandson of the founder, the company expanded to New York City in 1910.
Gimbels established the nation's first department store Thanksgiving parade, the Gimbels Thanksgiving Day Parade, which debuted in Philadelphia in 1920. The company was also a chief rival of Macy's with their feud popularized in American culture. By 1930, Gimbels operated 20 locations and was the largest department store chain in the world by sales revenue. The company expanded to a peak of 53 stores by 1965. In 1973, Gimbels was acquired by Brown & Williamson, which later formed the BATUS retail group to manage its retail holdings.
The public source identifies “Gimbels” as defunct department store chain. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Gimbels, defunct and department.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5562675. VIAF identifies the subject as 142328195. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1842, 1987, 1887 and 1894.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gimbels” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.