Marshall Field and Company
The iconic clock on the Marshall Field & Co. flagship store
Corner of State Street and Washington Street, Chicago
Sandwiches for supper turnedinto a trip down memory lane for me. It wasn’t just any sandwich—it was aclassic Marshall Field Turkey Sandwich that actually resembles “classic”sandwiches served in many places. I remember having something similar atColonial Country Club in Fort Worth. An open-faced sandwich with rye topped byturkey, Swiss cheese, and Thousand Island dressing and decorated with tomato,sliced egg, bacon and olive—shh! don’t tell Christian because I didn’t offerhim an olive, which he loves.
Anyway, the sandwich startedme thinking about my many ties and trips to the flagship Marshall Field store indowntown Chicago. Those excursions started when I was very young. My father, anosteopathic physician, had an office on the seventeenth floor of the MarshallField Annex, and Mom would end shopping trips by taking me to the bargain basement where, hidden away in acorner, was a snack bar that far as I can remember only served hot dogs andfrozen malts. I loved it. Then, nearby, was a secret door (I just thought it wasa secret—it really wasn’t) that opened to a staircase. Go up one floor andthrough the door and, like magic, we were in the lobby of the annex without havingto go out of the building and cross the downtown street. We’d take the elevatorto the seventeenth floor. That was in the day when there was a white-gloved,uniformed operator in every elevator.
By the time I was old enoughto be turned loose in the store, I knew every inch of every floor. I could take you to household goods or teenclothes. I knew we came in by the glove counter, and on that pillared first floorwere the hosiery and jewelry counters. On the sixth floor you could choose fromseveral restaurants. The Walnut Room, a bit staid and dignified, was the maindining area, but Mom and I always liked The Verandah, decorated as though it werepart of a southern mansion. In fact, I bet I had the classic sandwich there.And I know at least once, when Mom was nowhere around, my friend Eleanor Leeand I rode up the down escalator and down the up, to the consternation of storeemployees no doubt. Today I’m uncertain of my footing on escalators and avoidthem when I can, so I look back on that adventure with awe.
Eventually I could go downtownby myself, riding the IC or Illinois Central commuter train. And mostly I wentto Marshall Field’s though I did give a bit of business to rival Carson, Pirie& Scott just a block down State Street. I remember once paying twentydollars for a blouse and thinking I was terribly extravagant. By then, Dad hadclosed his downtown office and was full time president of the Chicago Collegeof Osteopathy and administrator of the adjacent hospital, so I had no downtownrefuge.
The last time I was at Field’swas in the nineties, when I visited with a Texas friend who had grown up in anorthwest Chicago suburb. We had lunch in the Walnut Room, and it was a bitshabby. We both felt the magic we remembered from our childhood was gone. Butmy connection to Field’s doesn’t end there.
I can’t remember which camefirst—the book I read or the one I wrote. The one I read was What the Lady Wants:A Novel of Marshall Field and the Gilded Age, by Renée Rosen, which perhapsinspired both the title and subject of my The Gilded Cage: A Novel of Chicago.My novel focused on Bertha (Cissy) Palmer, wife of hotelier Potter Palmerwho built the Palmer House. Marshall Field played a large part in that story,for he and Potter Palmer were prominent among Chicago’s Robber Barons, alongwith Gustavus Swift, Philip Armour, George Pullman and others. Cissy Palmerinterested me because she was the first (or one of them) woman philanthropistand most probably the first marred to a Robber Baron. The fictionalized versionof her life covers Chicago history from the 1840s through the 1893 Columbian Exposition,including the Great Fire, labor troubles, the Civil War, and the Haymarket Riot.You can read a bit more about Cissy and her world here: TheGilded Cage: A Novel of Chicago - Kindle edition by Alter, Judy. Literature& Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com. (That’s called blatant selfpromoton or BSP.)
Last night, Christian likedthe Marshall Field sandwich so much he voted to keep it on the rotation ofdishes we frequently have. I agreed, because not only did I like it, it broughtback happy memories. There has never been another store like Field’s—not even NeimanMarcus—and I miss it. At least you can still get their much-praised Frango Mintsonline.
