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Part Eighty-Six: Business is Booming

The Growth of Department Stores:
Throughout the 19th century, production of goods was shifting from the small-scale individual process of cottage industries to the large-scale continuous industrial production of factories. During that century, a similar transition also occurred in the sale of goods. As the country grew more urbanized, large retail stores grew up in the bigger cities. Technological advancements such as refrigeration, the spread of railroads, and mechanized factories themselves allowed goods to be kept for sale longer, lowered the costs of production, and provided more goods to wider markets. Additionally, advances in construction techniques allowed for larger retail spaces and the sale of a wider variety of goods within a single location. This expansion of production all led to the growth of department stores in the United States and around the world.

Many of the first successful department stores in the United States had their flagship stores in New York City. The first department store in the city was the Marble Palace on east Broadway. The Marble Palace was founded by Alexander Turney Stewart in the 1840s on east Broadway[1]. The Marble Palace featured large glass windows in the storefronts and offered a wide variety of dry goods at fixed prices. Stewart and other businessmen started numerous department store chains over the next few decades, such as Kronecke's, G. H. Hartford, Taylor and Dart's, and several others. The original stone building that house the original Kronecke's store at Houston Street and 2nd Avenue in New York City led to a number of stores opening in the area. The building also still contains one of the few Kronecke's department stores left under the original name.

However, the real boom in national department stores did not begin until the latter decades of the 19th century. This is when now well known department stores sprang up and started expanding their stores throughout the country. One of the largest retail chains that began in this era is Gauguin's. The chain was begun by Frenchman Paul Gauguin after he became a successful stockbroker in Paris and New York[2]. In the 1870s, Gauguin started the first store in the chain in New York. Offering a number of both American and European goods, the store was successful and Gauguin soon opened other department stores in Philadelphia, Boston, and Buffalo under the same company. While expansion slowed to a crawl during the Silver Depression, Gauguin's survived the economic downturn unlike many of the earlier department stores. The success of Gauguin's department stores skyrocketed during the 1890s and by the beginning of the 20th century, Gauguin opened chains as far away as New Orleans and Saint Louis. Gauguin's and other department store chains would help to create a culture of consumerism in the early 20th century.


The Founding of Coca-Cola:
While the industry of the region along the Mississippi River recovered relatively quickly from the National War and had a decent manufacturing sector by the beginning of the 20th century, much of the rest of the South continued to lag behind in development and remained reliant on cash crops and an agrarian economy. The major exceptions to this sluggish economic development were along the Gulf Coast in such port cities as Mobile and Pensacola, but one inland region also managed to recover quickly from the National War. Supplied by the mineral wealth of the southern Appalachians, the region stretching from Birmingham in Alabama to Atlanta in Georgia grew into an industrial epicenter in contrast to the rest of the Inland South.

One of the major companies to be established in the Birmingham-Atlanta region in the late 19th century was the Coca-Cola soft drink company. Coca-Cola was first created and marketed by north Georgia entrepreneur Andrew Wallace and later grew as a product and company under the watch of businessman Asa Candler[3]. The name Coca-Cola derives from the original formula, which contained a mixture of coca leaf extract and the west African cola nut. Popularity of the soft drink took off in the 1890s during the growing Temperance Movement when it was marketed as an alternative to alcohol. The first bottling plant was constructed in Birmingham, Alabama in 1896, by which time Coca-Cola had become extremely popular at drug stores across the South.

[1] The Marble Palace existed and exists in OTL at 280 Broadway, and was one of the first department stores in NYC.
[2] Yes, that Gauguin. He was a stockbroker in Paris in OTL too, but after a recession became an artist.
[3] Andrew Wallace is a fictional figure, Asa Candler helped Coca-Cola's growth in OTL as well as TTL.