The Mart: Giant by Design

Marshall Field's wholesale warehouse was once the largest commercial building in the world

Each week, discover an historic Chicago landmark and meet the people who built the Windy City. Includes audio recorded by Jim Goodrich.

It’s difficult to comprehend just how big the Merchandise Mart is. You can say it’s four million square feet. You can know it was once the largest commercial building in the world.

You can mention that there are six and a half miles of corridors, that the initial plate glass order would stretch for seven miles, and that thirty thousand people enter through its doors every weekday, but none of that sinks in until you stand in front of it and look left, right, and up.

Even then, the sheer scale can escape you.

James Simpson, president of Marshall Field & Company, was the force behind this massive building. Like John Shedd, Harry Selfridge, and Marshall Field himself, he was another top-level executive who started at the bottom as a young man and worked his way up. James was only seventeen when he began working at Marshall Field’s as a clerk. The Scottish immigrant, who’d been in the states since he was six, so impressed Marshall that he made James his confidential clerk (basically a private secretary) within a year.

In 1906, James was promoted to second vice president and assistant to John Shedd, who’d been appointed president after Marshall’s death in January of that year. Eleven years later, James moved up to first vice president, and when John retired in 1923, James took the top spot.

Marshall Field & Company had always had a robust wholesale wing. Marshall’s early partner, Levi Leiter, wanted the company to be wholesale only and get rid of retail altogether. Marshall disagreed, got rid of Levi instead, and managed to grow both.