page_title: Filene's
section_title: Early history
hierarchical_section_title: Filene's / History / Early history
caption_attribution_description: English: View down Washington street in Boston. Retail giants Jordan Marsh and Filene's stand tall on the right and the Old South Meeting House is seen further down the street.
context_page_description: Filene's was an American department store chain; it was founded by William Filene in 1881. The success of the original full-line store in Boston, Massachusetts was supplemented by the foundation of its off-price sister store Filene's Basement in 1908. Filene's, in partnership with Abraham & Straus, Lazarus, and Shillito's, was an original member of the holding company Federated Department Stores upon its establishment in 1929.
  Filene's expanded into shopping malls throughout New England and New York in the later half of the twentieth century, and was rivaled by fellow Boston-based department store Jordan Marsh. Federated sold Filene's to The May Department Stores Company, and spun off Filene's Basement into a separate company, in 1988. With this reorganization, the Filene's nameplate replaced the Hartford-based G. Fox & Co. in 1992 and Steiger's in 1994; the store assumed control of the Pittsburgh-based department store chain Kaufmann's in 2002.
  May itself was ultimately acquired by Federated in 2005; the Filene's brand was retired and most stores were converted into the Federated-owned, Cincinnati-based Macy's nameplate by September 2006.
context_section_description: The precursor of the main company was a store opened in 1881 by William Filene. William Filene was a German Jewish immigrant from Posen, Prussia, who immigrated to Boston in 1848. Although William Filene is credited with creating Filene’s, it was his sons, Edward Filene and Abraham Lincoln Filene, who expanded the business greatly. Edward and Lincoln were two of the best known businessmen in America and were responsible for converting their father’s clothing store into one of the largest department stores in the country.  The two sons assumed management of the store in 1891 and inherited the store upon their father’s death in 1901; by that the company was known as William Filene's Sons & Company.
  In 1908 Edward Filene opened the automatic bargain annex or Filene's Basement as a way to sell excess merchandise from the upstairs department store.  He also developed an automatic mark-down schedule to reduce the price of merchandise, used thereafter for decades. Edward's influence gave Filene’s an early reputation as a customer oriented store with slogans like “money back if not satisfied.”
  A new main store, Filene's Department Store, was completed in 1912 in Boston on the corner of Washington and Summer streets, by Chicago architect Daniel Burnham as his last major project. By 1929 Filene’s expanded the main building, converting the block around Washington, Summer, Hawley and Franklin streets into one department store.
caption: Shoppers hurry around Filene's (center right) on Washington Street in Boston.
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