In 1945, we carried an account of a prominent San Francisco Jewish family’s graduation party: “Miss Ellen Lois Magnin, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Cyril Magnin, was hostess at a graduation dance in the Italian Room of the St. Francis Hotel Saturday night, June 9. One hundred and fifty young friends were invited. Miss Magnin will be graduated from Lowell High School this semester, and plans [on] entering Stanford University this fall.”
The Magnins, as any old-timer knows, were part of the family that created department store I. Magnin and Co. This grand graduation party took place just a few years before the opening of the massive store on Union Square where Macy’s now sits. The building is still a landmark, even if Macy’s recently announced that it is vacating the site as soon as it finds a buyer.
The story of I. Magnin and the Magnin family retail empire can be framed as a typical Jewish immigration rags-to-riches tale of the time, but with more than a few twists along the way.
Mary Ann and Isaac Magnin came to San Francisco via London, we wrote in 1953. According to the Jewish Women’s Archive, both were immigrants to England from Holland. Isaac was a craftsman who worked in wood. Mary Ann was said to be a natural at business and was the daughter of a rabbi. (There would be more rabbis in the family’s future too.)
The couple opened their first shop around 1876. It catered to a selective upper-class clientele, with handmade baby clothes, lace items and European imports. Business even thrived after the big earthquake in 1906. Three years later, we wrote about the opening of the “beautiful new home.”
“The new store of I. Magnin & Co., which will be thrown open to the women of San Francisco at an elaborate reception Saturday night, will be the largest store devoted exclusively to women’s apparel in the United States. The new quarters of the well known firm, which has been established in the bay cities for thirty-three years, are four stories high, located at Grant Avenue and Geary Street, the heart of the fashionable shopping district,” the story stated.
“The handsome building is finished in pure white tiling exterior, the interior fixtures and fittings being in rich dark red mahogany. The costly marble staircases of the building are a distinct feature.”
That “handsome” building was I. Magnin’s home for the next 40 years. But what people today still think of as the I. Magnin & Co. building is actually the marble-faced Union Square behemoth designed by Timothy Pflueger and built in 1948. (Plueger also designed the Paramount Theatre in Oakland and the Castro Theatre in San Francisco.) By then, I. Magnin also had stores in Oakland and Southern California.
Mary Ann is described in our paper as a “woman of great ability and artistic taste and was the moving spirit of the firm” and by the Jewish Women’s Archives as “energetic” and “stubborn.” Apparently Isaac, despite lending his initial “I” to the firm’s name, very much took a back seat in the business. He died in 1907. Mary Ann lived another 35 years and made daily inspections of the store, even after she retired.
In 1976, the New York Times called I. Magnin the “oldest and perhaps still the most expensive, fashionable clothing store in the West.”
There was actually more than one downtown “Magnin” department store, though. An obituary of Joseph Magnin, Mary Ann and Isaac’s son, appeared in this paper in 1953.
“Funeral services were held last week for Joseph Magnin, widely known San Francisco merchant and member of a prominent local Jewish family, who died April 29 at the age of 86 at his home in Hillsborough.
“A native of London, he came to San Francisco at the age of 10 with his parents, Isaac and Mary Ann Magnin, founders of I. Magnin & Co. He was associated with this firm until 1913, when he established the Joseph Magnin Co.”
The reason Joseph opened his own store was not entrepreneurial. Apparently it came out of anger with his mother after reportedly being passed over for promotion for a younger brother. Joseph opened a shop near I. Magnin to be in direct competition.
While there are no details in our paper about the fight between mother and son, Joseph Magnin Co. did succeed, expanding to a chain of 10 stores, albeit slightly less upscale than I. Magnin and more focused on young women. J. Magnin closed in the 1980s. I. Magnin did the same in the 1990s.
Joseph’s son Cyril was a vice president at his father’s store and went on to become a noted philanthropist and local macher. A 1988 obituary noted that he was known as “Mr. San Francisco.” He served as president of the S.F. Port Authority. And a two-block stretch near Market and Fifth streets is even named for him. Cyril was the father of Ellen, who threw the party in 1945. He reminisced with this paper in 1985.
“Cyril Magnin recalls a whole era of Jewish retailers, many of whom reigned from the turn of the century through the ’60s. They were powers in their day. There was Raphael Weill and the White House. Livingston Brothers — they’re still here. I. Magnin is still here. Joseph Magnin is out of business. There was more — H. Liebes, the Roos Brothers, and Ransohoff’s,” news editor Peggy Isaak Gluck wrote.
“No longer is the family-run business the norm, and the family corporation is an endangered species, Magnin contends. Years ago, he says, ‘when our forefathers were in Europe, they could not get into industry. Retailing was one place they were always let in. There were no restrictions.’ Jews as a group, he feels, ‘are merchants at heart. They’re not in electronics, or public utilities, but seem to be born into retailing. They’re born traders, and retailing is trading.’”
Today those names are echoes of a time when the San Francisco landscape was ruled by Jewish department stores like Magnin, Gump’s and the White House. Cyril Magnin was among the generation to see family-based businesses transition into the new world of large retail conglomerates.
The stores are gone now, though you can still see the sign for I. Magnin on the building in downtown Oakland that housed the retail giant.