page_title: Meier & Frank
section_title: Early 1900s
hierarchical_section_title: Meier & Frank / History / Early 1900s
caption_attribution_description: The historic Meier &amp; Frank Building, in downtown Portland, Oregon, viewed from across Pioneer Courthouse Square. This is an image of a place or building that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the United States of America. Its reference number is 00001021
context_page_description: Meier & Frank was a prominent chain of department stores founded in Portland, Oregon, and later bought by The May Department Stores Company. Meier & Frank operated in the Pacific Northwest from 1857 to 2006.
context_section_description: Ten years later, the store erected an adjacent annex of 130 by 100 feet (40 m × 30 m), ten stories above the street, with two basements, making it the tallest store in the Pacific Northwest and Portland's lone skyscraper.   Designed by architect A. E. Doyle, its white terra-cotta exterior set a design trend in downtown Portland, leading to the famed "wall of white" on S.W. Alder.  At Sigmund Frank's death, Aaron Meier's elder son Abe Meier (1868–1930) became president, serving as the store's greeter, while his younger son, Julius (1874–1937), became vice president and general manager—running the store.  The store's green delivery wagons (later its delivery trucks) were ubiquitous in Portland, with the company willing to deliver purchases of any size—even a spool of thread.
  The company provided the furnishings for the Fairmount Hotel, constructed to serve out-of-town visitors to the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition.
  In 1913, the five-story building on Fifth Street was demolished, and construction began on a new sixteen-story building, which opened in 1915, giving the store 11 acres (45,000 m²) of retail space.  Early on, Meier & Frank was one of the few stores to maintain a buying office in New York. Sales representatives there would joke that there were four major markets on the West Coast: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Meier & Frank. In 1920, a full square-block garage and stockroom facility, four stories high, opened on N.W. 14th and 15th between Everett and Flanders.  The Retail Reserve Building, eight stories high, opened at N.W. Irving between 14th and 15th in 1923. A year earlier, Meier & Frank's radio station KFEC, with its antenna atop the 16-story building, began broadcasting from its studio on the fifth floor.  The station's slogan was "KFEC--The Meier & Frank Station".  Meanwhile, Clark Gable worked at Meier & Frank selling neckties.
  The president of Meier & Frank, Julius L. Meier, was elected governor of Oregon as an independent, and served from 1931 to 1935.
  Combining the 1909 and 1915 buildings with construction on the final quarter-block and topping the consolidated building off at 17 stories, Meier & Frank now filled the entire block bounded by S.W. Alder, Morrison, 5th, and 6th.  Locals jocularly referred to the store as "Murphy & Finnigan's".  For a time, Meier & Frank reigned as the largest retail outlet west of the Mississippi and one of the largest stores in the nation in the early 1930s.  When President Roosevelt closed banks country-wide, Meier & Frank took out a full-page newspaper ad with a single word: "Confidence".  Hundreds of people brought their savings to the store for safekeeping.  The store cancelled interest charges on all customers' credit accounts.
  When Julius Meier died in 1937, his nephew, Aaron (Bud) Meier Frank (1891–1968) became president of the store, a position he would hold for nearly 40 years, becoming the most important businessman in Portland for decades.
caption: The Meier & Frank Building, the company's longtime flagship store, in downtown Portland (in 2014)
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