Samuel Henry Kress Portrait
painted by
Leopold Seyffert
Circa 1953
S. H. Kress was the second of seven children descending from German and Irish immigrants.
The life of Samuel Henry Kress (1863-1955) falls naturally into three stages, the hard-one-struggles of his youth in rural Cherryville, Pennsylvania, the brillance of his mercantile success with the S. H. Kress & Company variety stores and with the distribution of his incomparable collection of European paintings and sculpture to scores of art museums across the land with the Kress Foundation's philanthropic programs.
The Kress story, once familiar to most Americans, has been said to epitomize American opportunity and the virtues of stern discipline, vigorous hard work and generosity.
Samuel Kress had already passed his 65th birthday when, in 1929, he established the Foundation that bears his name. With the same dedication that marked the creation of his commercial empire, he had recently planed the seeds of what would eventually become a major collection of Italian Renaissance art. Between 1929 and 1961, Samuel Kress and the Kress Foundation (with the participation of his brothers, Claude and Rush) assembled and distributed across the United States the 20th century's foremost collection of Old master paintings and other European works of arts.
Before the establishment of the Kress Foundation in 1929, Kress was already a recognized benefactor to as many as 200 communities in more than half the country. On Main Streets all across the nation, the vast retail empire of S.H. Kress & Company, established in 1896, operated a chain of five-and-ten-cent stores purveying affordable, durable and cheerful domestic merchandise. Designed to exacting company standards, the handsome Kress stores were cherished not only for their quality merchandise, but also as prominent local landmarks. The downtown Kress stores were celebrated beacons of prosperity and progress examples of urban architectural design and sources of municipal pride.
The most distinctive and best remembered Kress stores were a group of more than fifty Art Deco buildings, dating from 1929-1944 and designed by Edward F. Sibbert*, the company's longtime chief architect. Sibbert's buildings streamlined the Kress image by using sleek modern facades, simple yet distinctive ornament and color characteristic of the Kress brand. Curved glass display windows led the shopper through heavy bronze doors into an interior of rich marbles, fine woods and large customized counters set crosswise down a long sales floor. Well-positioned hanging lamps created a bright atmosphere for an endless array of inexpensive items (there were 4,275 different merchandise on sale in 1934). Everything from the constantly restocked merchandise to the popular soda fountain in the basement which encouraged customers to linger.
*Edward F. Sibbert was a Brooklyn born American architect. He is best remembered for the fifty or so retail stores he designed during a 25-year career as the head architect at the S. H. Kress & Co. hain of five-and-dimes. His tenure at Kress coinciced roughly with the company's peak years of success and many of his Art Deco-style buildings have survived beyond the chain's 1980 demise and are in use today utilizing other purposes.
In 1929, Sibbert answered an advertisement in a newspaper and was hired by the S. H. Kress Co. Samuel H. Kress was in the process of dismissing his head architect, George Mackay and it is possible Sibbert worked with MacKay in designing the store for Pueblo, Colorado. Sibbert continued as Kress' chief architect for 25 yeas, designing chain stores across the United States in a consistent format and style, recognizalbe by its use of ornamental terra cotta.
Sibbert was a member of the American Institute of Architects and American Society of Civil Engineers. He retired to Pompano Beach, Florida after living for many years in New York City. Sibbert passed in Pompano Beach May 13, 1982.
Edward F. Sibbert
(1899-1982)
Like the great movie houses of the day, the "dime store" and the Kress store were a popular destination during hard economic times.
Each Kress store was a gift of civic art to its community. Grandest of all was Edward Sibbert's masterpiece, the Kress flagship store at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 39th Street in New York City which opened in 1935.
The seven-story marble structure designed for everything shopping comfort, its Art Deco elegance was graced with Mayan-style hieroglyphs of goods for sale on the exterior and airborne Mayan gods in relief on the sales floor. Awarded a gold medal for architectural quality, the store represented the zenith of the Kress empire in luxury, modernity and retailing capacity. In December 1938, it was also the locale of the most astonishing Christmas display in the history of Fifth Avenue with Samuel Kress' acquisition of Giorgione's Allendale Nativity, placed on view for holidays shoppers. Like most of the Kress stores across the nation, the Fifth Avenue emporium was supremely successful and its demolition in 1980 sadly marked the end of an American era.
Once neglected by architectural historians, the study of 20th-century commercial architecture is now receiving the attention it most certainly deserves. The National Building Musuem in Washington, DC stewards the archives that document the building history of 221 Kress stores in 28 states. It also has published A Guide to the Building Records of S. H. Kress & Co. 5-10-25 Cent Stores.
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