Irene Jiang / Business Insider
Seattle's iconic downtown Macy's will close after this holiday season.
- Amazon and Seattle are now inextricably linked. But long before Amazon came along, there was a nine-story department store building in the heart of downtown Seattle: Macy's, formerly the Bon Marché.
- The top six floors have been transformed into Amazon office space, while the iconic store has been banished to the bottom three levels until February 2020, when it plans to close for good.
- I visited the department store on Cyber Monday and found a less-than-festive scene. Here's what my visit was like.
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Amazon and Seattle are like holidays and gift-giving: you can't think of one without the other.
But long before Amazon, there was another name that was synonymous with Seattle's retail scene: the Bon Marché. A small shop founded by Josephine and Edward Nordhoff in 1890, the Bon Marché grew over the years into a regional department-store chain.
In 1929, the Bon Marché unveiled its nine-story flagship building in the heart of downtown Seattle. The chain was acquired by the parent company of Macy's in the '90s, and in 2003 it became the Bon Macy's, then later just Macy's.
But over the course of the last century, Seattle's most iconic department store has remained largely the same: nine magnificent stories of retail's best in a one-stop shop.
Now, the top six stories of the art-deco building have been transformed into Amazon office space. Only the bottom three stories remain a Macy's, which will close after this holiday season. The post-Macy's fate of those three floors is still unknown.
I took a look around the store on Cyber Monday and found a less-than-festive scene. Here's what it was like:
