Wanamaker's Temple

How a pioneering merchant blended religion and business to create a unique American shopping experienceOn Christmas Eve, 1911, John Wanamaker stood in the middle of his elaborately decorated department store building in Philadelphia as shoppers milled around him picking up last minute Christmas presents. On that night, as for years to come, the store was filled with the sound of Christmas carols sung by thousands of shoppers, accompanied by the store’s Great Organ. Wanamaker recalled that moment in his diary, “I said to myself that I was in a temple,” a sentiment quite possibly shared by the thousands who thronged the store that night.Remembered for his store’s extravagant holiday decorations and displays, Wanamaker built one of the largest retailing businesses in the world and helped to define the American retail shopping experience. From the freedom to browse without purchase and the institution of one price for all customers to generous return policies, he helped to implement retailing conventions that continue to define American retail to this day. Wanamaker was also a leading Christian leader, participating in the major Protestant moral reform movements from his youth until his death in 1922. But most notably, he found ways to bring his religious commitments into the life of his store. He focused on the religious and moral development of his employees, developing training programs and summer camps to build their character, while among his clientele he sought to cultivate a Christian morality through decorum and taste.Wanamaker’s Temple examines how and why Wanamaker blended business and religion in his Philadelphia store, offering a historical exploration of the relationships between religion, commerce, and urban life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and illuminating how they merged in unexpected and public ways. Wanamaker's marriage of religion and retail had a pivotal role in the way American Protestantism was expressed and shaped in American life, and opened a new door for the intertwining of personal values with public commerce.

[A]trenchant...study of John Wanamaker and Wanamakers department stores through the lens of evangelical Protestantism at the turn of the 20th century....Kirk persuasively shows that Wanamakers Christian faith and business acumen informed one another within his own life and work., But theres more to this story than simply the evolution of retail: from small shops to department stores to online retailers that mirror the selection of retail palaces without the physical space. Nicole C. Kirks new bookWanamaker's Templedelves into how John Wanamakers religious and political beliefs shaped his retail empire, which at its peak included 16 stores around the mid-Atlantic region., The John Wanamaker Department Store was one of America's first great temples of consumption. Nicole C. Kirk argues that [it] was more than a successful business enterprise, it was also a successful ministry. John Wanamaker was as committed to evangelicalism and the social gospel as he was to selling silks and satins., "In the history of American religion, the intricate relationship between belief and commerce merits the closest attention. Nicole Kirk provides a richly researched and well organized study of one of the high priests of Protestant wealth. And she makes a wonderful contribution to the understanding of religious material culture and the aesthetics of commodity culture as an integral part of the rise of consumerism and the role that Protestantism has played in it., Adds a new chapter to a growing literature on the Protestant contours of American business, ably joining scholarship that has roundly challenged any lingering presumptions of declensionist secular separation between Christianity and capitalism in American history.

Nicole C. Kirk is Associate Professor and the Rev. Dr. J. Frank and Alice Schulman Chair of Unitarian Universalist History at Meadville Lombard Theological School. She is the author of Wanamaker’s Temple: The Business of Religion in an Iconic Department Store (New York University Press, 2018).