Four hours at the Wanamaker ‘Eagle’ during the last days of the Center City Macy’s

It’s where the price tag was invented, where the 1987 cheesefest of a movie Mannequin was filmed, and where countless generations of Philadelphians worked, shopped, and gathered to get in the holiday spirit — the Wanamaker Building.

The grand ol’ dame of a department store at 13th and Market Streets in Center City not only sold many hats in its 114 years, it has worn many, too. Since John Wanamaker’s closed in 1995, it’s been a Hecht’s, Strawbridge’s, Lord & Taylor, and most recently, a Macy’s.

But after 18 years, Macy’s is closing Sunday, and nobody knows the next time the storied space will be open to the public. After a final day of recitals on Saturday on the Wanamaker Grand Court Organ, it’s unclear when people might be able to hear the instrument — one of the largest working pipe organs in the world — played again for free, as it has been six days a week for decades.

Real estate company TF Cornerstone, which owns part of the building and is expected to buy the rest, said it will preserve the organ. But Macy’s still owns it, along with the Eagle statue in the store’s center court (an iconic meetup spot); the Christmas light show (a holiday staple for nearly seven decades); and the Dickens Village of dead-eyed animatronics (which has fueled Christmas nightmares for almost 40 years).

Macy’s didn’t return requests for comment on what it intends to do with these Philadelphia treasures and as far as I can tell, the company hasn’t told anyone else either, which is kind of a Gimbels move. Here I thought Macy’s was the good guy in Miracle on 34th Street.

With only five days and lots of uncertainty remaining, I spent four hours at the Wanamaker Grand Court on Wednesday to see who I might meet at the Eagle, why people dropped by, and to hear a noon organ performance one last time.

I sit just behind the Eagle in one of a dozen or so well-worn office chairs (for sale at $30 a pop) that are set up in front of the empty jewelry counters. Across the way in what used to be the shoe department, a few folks dig through a hodgepodge of items for sale, including toys, mini muffin pans, several copies of the book The Brave Kitten, and 11 pairs of shoes.

A worker jumps on a rolling rack he pushes by me like it’s a skateboard. Old school hip-hop booms out from the phone in his pocket.

Five folks wearing Temple University visitor stickers show up. I introduce myself to one of them, Beatrice Womack-Scoggins. She tells me they’re taking a class nearby and their instructor urged them to swing by Macy’s on their break.

“I’m grateful they allowed us to come over and reminisce,” said Womack-Scoggins, 53, of University City. “It’s just surreal, but it’s really great to see the community coming back to pay homage to the legacy here.”

Workers wheel a dual industrial oven by me. I wonder what they cooked here because that equipment has seen some things.

Melissa D’Angelo, 52, and her son, Gabriel, 19, of South Philly, walk by with a cart of five large, framed photographs of city sites, from the Philadelphia Museum of Art to Christ Church.

Turns out, the pictures used to decorate the walls of the third floor at Macy’s. It took D’Angelo about five trips here to acquire the photographs for her recently-renovated basement but on Wednesday she finally did, for $40 each.

“I’m grateful and I get a part of the building, too,” she said.

D’Angelo came to the store as a kid, and brought her own children here. The family is most concerned about the fate of the Dickens Village, which they visit with a group of 16 people every Black Friday.

“I want to know where they take it so we can still visit it,” she said.

Somebody walks by and their GPS says from their pocket, “Proceed to route.”

“The store is big, but not that big,” I think.

I need to use the restroom, which is on the third floor and locked. A sign says to ask an employee for the code but there are no employees around. Heck, there’s not even any merchandise. I hear women inside and wait for them to leave to get in. I’m impressed, not only by how big the bathroom is (what are there, like a thousand stalls in here?) but also how clean it is. “People will miss this,” I think.

I return to the Eagle and see Beverly Alleyne, 64, of West Philly, getting her photo taken with it. Alleyne regularly shops here (“It’s my second home,” she said). She worked at Macy’s in 2022.

“They were talking about closing it back then, just about every week they were talking about it, but it never happened and now it’s finally happening,” she said. “I was sad because I was hoping and praying Bloomingdale’s would have stepped in.”

A woman asks me if there’s an organ concert today, I tell here there is one at noon. She sits next to me and then Sue Roman, 77, comes up and starts talking with us both. Roman took SEPTA from her home in Northeast Philly on Wednesday to see the store one more time.

She remembers coming to Wanamaker’s as a kid, riding the children’s monorail on the eighth floor, meeting her parents at the Eagle, and working in the camera department as a teenager.

“Everybody knows the Eagle,” she said.

Howard Rodriguez, 39, of North Philly, takes a photo of his 5-year-old daughter at the Eagle and then gets asked by several strangers to take their photos with the Eagle.

Rodriguez didn’t know the store was closing until Tuesday. He wanted to bring his daughter to see it for the first time and to hear the organ at least once.

“I have memories here since I was a kid because I came from Puerto Rico when I was like 5 myself and my mom always took us to the city and came out here,” he said. “I’m here today for the memories and to sit with the Eagle.”

Rodriguez worries about where he’ll buy his cologne now (“Macy’s is the only ones with real cologne and not that bootleg stuff”) and he worries about how different this Christmas will be without the “holiday spirit that they always brings to the city.”

“Can you imagine Christmas without Macy’s?” he said.

A group of parents take a photo of their kids in front of the Eagle, then the parents ask one of their kids to take a photo of them with the Eagle.

Crowds start to trickle into the Grand Court for the organ show. A little girl pets the Eagle’s tail feathers.

Delores Mills, 67, of Newbold, sits quietly in a chair gazing at the Eagle.

“Everybody knew to meet at the Eagle — the big Eagle,” she said. “But looking at him, he looks so much smaller now.”

Mills grew up in Philly but her family wasn’t always able to shop at Wanamaker’s. Once they could, they stuck to the basement, where the bargains were.

“We couldn’t afford much and when I hit that point [when] I could go shop at Wanamaker’s, I was so excited,” she said. “To be able to come in the department store was a big thing to us.”

As an adult, Mills became a foster parent and often brought the kids in her care to the Macy’s holiday light show.

“A lot of children never experienced a Christmas show, so I used to take them to the show and then we’d go to dinner and have hot chocolate,” she said. “I was just sitting here thinking of one little kid in particular, their eyes were so bright.”

A group of about 20 students from Sandy Spring Friends School, a Quaker school in Maryland, pile in on the floor. Their teacher, Amy Isaacson, tells me it’s the third year she’s brought students to listen to the organ show during their annual Quaker history trip to Philly.

She hopes it’s not the last.

A man who overheard me introduce myself to others as an Inquirer columnist approaches and asks if I’d like to talk to his mother, Suzanne Jones, who feels deeply connected to Wanamaker’s.

When I introduce myself to Jones, 90, she immediately starts crying.

“It’s a tough day,” she said. “This brings back so many memories.”

Jones, of Pitman, said she still has a signed letter from John Wanamaker her mother received as a teen after winning a dressmaking contest. She tells me Wanamaker’s signature looks “exactly” like the one so many Philadelphians know.

As we speak, it’s clear this store brings up many memories Jones has of her mother, whom she recalls meeting up with at the Eagle at all stages of their lives.

“And it was in Wanamaker’s, coming down the escalator on the Chestnut Street side, that she told me she had breast cancer,” Jones said. “It’s just been a part of my life. I’m 90 and I’ve grown up my whole life with the story of John Wanamaker … They don’t make things like this and I just pray that they don’t ruin this building and everything here.”

The organ show starts while I’m still talking to Jones. She begins sobbing. I thank her and walk away so she can enjoy the show.

About 75 people have come to listen to the organ. I don’t recognize any of the songs, like I did last week when I stopped by and the organist played “My Heart Will Go On” and “Circle of Life.” But the organ still sounds incredible and since the store is nearly empty, musicians are playing the massive instrument louder than I’ve ever heard it before. So loud sometimes I swear I can feel the ground shake under my feet.

A few people shop through the mishmash of discounted items in the old shoe department while the organ is playing, like this was just any other Wednesday.

I look above and see folks gathered on edges of the second and third floors listening to the performance, too.

Another woman near me cries while taking a video of the organ show.

Having lost my seat long ago, I stand by a rack of items I think nobody will be interested in, so as not to be in the way.

A man almost immediately asks me to move.

“Oh sh—! Excuse me, I need that,” he says. “It’s a potato peeler!”

A young woman sobs while sitting on the base of the Eagle, taking off her glasses every so often to wipe her eyes.

A silver-haired woman sitting by the Eagle closes her eyes and lifts her face up, as if to the sun, smiling.

I look up at the organist who I can see on the second floor to my left. I wonder what he’s thinking, what he’s feeling, and how many shows he has left to play.

The organist completes his recital, his department store audience applauds, and he turns to thank us as well.

I speak with Luciana Valencia, 19, a sophomore at Swarthmore College who is taking a music history of Philadelphia class in the city with students from other suburban colleges.

For their class today, the group met at the organ and listened to the concert. Valencia, who’s originally from Los Angeles, said she had no idea the organ was here.

“I thought it was really cool,” she said.

Stella Emerson, a student from Bryn Mawr College who is taking the same class as Valencia, walks by with one of the largest hats I’ve ever seen. It’s lime green, lavishly adorned with fake fruits and flowers, and has a brim several feet in diameter.

The hat, which cost $10, was once part of a display and will now hang in Emerson’s dorm. While at the store, Emerson met the hat’s designer and got them to sign the piece, too.

A mom puts her itty-bitty baby between the Eagle’s talons and tells the dad to hold on to her so she can take a photo.

A woman walking through the Grand Court sings “AAAaaaAAAaaa!!!” like she’s an opera singer, and a pretty good one at that.

“I’ve always wondered what my voice would sound like in here,” she says to nobody in particular.

A woman walks through the Grand Court showing someone she’s video chatting with what the store looks like.

“Oh my God, is there anything left?!” the person on the other end says.

An employee walks by holding for-sale baby shoes, never worn.

Workers begin disassembling the jewelry cases behind me.

A woman caresses one of the Eagle’s talons

“He’s got big feet,” she says.

A construction worker takes a photo of the Eagle.

“They selling this, too? Does anybody know?” he jokes.

A worker wearing a T-shirt that reads “I have no idea what I’m doing” directs a customer with a question to another employee.

A tour guide leads a group through the store. He points out the Eagle and tells them that climbing on it “was something all of us did growing up here.”

“You can’t duplicate this,” one of the tourists says, looking around.

Somewhere in the distance, I hear the armchair opera singer testing the acoustics in another part of the store.

During my four hours at the Grand Court I kept three tallies:

While I knew the store held a sentimental place in many people’s hearts, I saw more tears than I expected. As I talked to those who came to pay their respects, I realized that’s because Wanamaker’s — as it will always be known to those who love it best — is more than a store. It’s a piece of Philadelphia.

And despite being the home of the price tag, you could never put one on the greatest gift to ever come out of the store — the memories generations of Philadelphians made there.