Superior Street, Sept. 11, 1907, Part 6: Gidding’s Department Store

This series takes a detailed look at life on Superior Street on the afternoon of Wednesday, Sept. 11, 1907. The first part of the series provided background details on a photograph shot that day where the street intersects Fifth Avenue West. The parts that followed have gone section by section down south Superior Street, identifying the different businesses that appear in the photo. Part six looks at a single business with a sign that is just barely legible in the far distance: Gidding’s Department Store.

My initial search results for the Gidding Department Store all came up with a shop that used to be on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, suggesting that Gidding’s was a national chain out of New York with a Duluth branch. The opposite is actually true. It was a chain that started in Duluth and ended up opening a store in its own building on the most fashionable street Manhattan. This post looks at the key role that Florence Gidding, the wife of owner Jacob Gidding, played in starting a high end department store in Duluth. It also reveals where her maiden name can be still be found in downtown Duluth.

The story of the J.M. Gidding company was described in a 2016 PDD post. It details how he went from a newspaper vendor in Scranton, Pennsylvania, to a store owner with branches in Duluth, New York, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. and Palm Beach. The building for the New York store location is still standing. The J.M. Gidding & Company Building at 724 Fifth Ave. is located directly across from Trump Tower and currently occupied by the Prada store. Designs from the J.M. Gidding Company are held in the collections of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gidding credits several of his brothers, managers of these other locations, for his success. But the historical record clearly shows that no one had a greater influence on the trajectory of his career than his wife, Florence.

Florence Silberstein was born in Duluth on July 14, 1875. While in high school, she demonstrated her skill in art and music. When she was 15, her painting of Oleander flowers was selected for a city wide public school art exhibit.[90] At 16, she played violin in a concert at the Temple Opera House in Duluth.[91] She graduated in 1893 as one of 32 members of Central High School’s 13^th graduating class. She served as vice-president of the student council her senior year and her class was the first to establish a Central High School alumni association as “a permanent association formed to keep alive the pleasant school associations.”[92]

After graduating, she traveled extensively across the United States. In the fall of 1893, she attended the Chicago World’s Fair.[93] The next two summers she spent in Detroit and Colorado Springs, respectively.[94] All this travel was likely made possible by her father, Bernard Silberstein.

Bernard was a co-owner of Silberstein & Bondy, the premier department store in Duluth in the 1890s. Considered to be the first Jewish person in Duluth when he moved to the city in 1870, he opened Silberstein & Bondy in 1871. In 1884, they opened the store in their new upgraded building at 9 W. Superior St., designed by the architect George Wirth and containing what were likely the first elevators in Duluth. The building is still standing with the name Silberstein & Bondy restored to the top of the structure.

Her father was active in the growing Jewish community in Duluth and became the first president of Temple Emanuel when it incorporated in in 1896. His daughter Florence was also active in Duluth’s early Jewish life. At the age of 20, she was secretary of the Duluth and Superior National Council of Jewish women[95] and helped organize their first charity ball.[96]

Likely having met through her father’s business connections, she became engaged to J.M. Gidding in November 1897. While he may have started as a newspaper dealer in Scranton, by the time of their engagement when she was 22 and he was 25, he was already described as “one of the leading merchants in Northern Pennsylvania.” They married in March 1898 in a small ceremony at the Silberstein home in Duluth with plans to move to Gidding’s home in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, after the wedding. But the paper also noted, “Miss Silberstein is purely a Duluth girl. She was born here and all the years of her life have been spent here. She has always been very popular and a wide circle of friends, while congratulating her upon this happy occasion, will regret that it takes her to another home.”[97]

Her marriage didn’t take her to another home for long. A year later, in March 1899, the Duluth Evening Herald announced that a prominent businessman of the East would be moving to Duluth: J.M. Gidding would be working at Silberstein & Bondy, his father-in-law’s dry goods store. The paper noted, “Mr. Gidding has gained a reputation for himself through his unerring knowledge of the best in his line, and the spring stocks will be finer than any Duluth has ever seen before and as fine as anything in the West.”[98] Gidding lived up to this reputation, and his twice a year trips to the East Coast to bring the latest styles back to Duluth were consistently reported on in the Herald.[99] In addition to keeping the store up to date with the latest fashions, he was also in charge of its advertising, with the artistry of his ads receiving praise locally and in national publications.[100]

In 1903, Jacob Gidding took the experience gained through the work at this father-in-law’s store and opened his own business on Superior Street. The business expanded and he opened new stores back east. The couple was living in Cincinnati in 1908, where they managed a store that had Charles Taft as a regular customer. His brother, judge and future president William Howard Taft, also shopped there on occasion.[101] In 1910, they moved to New York to manage the store there. Jacob Gidding died in Baltimore in 1930.[102] Florence died in Los Angeles in 1958. She’s buried with her husband in Baltimore.

Next month, the journey through downtown in 1907 crosses the street, looking at the many businesses that lined the north side of the street and the stories of the people behind them.

Notes

[90] Duluth Evening Herald, June 16, 1890

[91] Duluth Evening Herald, July 22, 1891

[92] Duluth Evening Herald, May 26, 1893

[93] Duluth Evening Herald, Sept. 16, 1893

[94] Duluth Evening Herald, Jan. 14, 1894; June 19, 1895

[95] Duluth Evening Herald, Jan. 5, 1895

[96] Duluth Evening Herald, Nov. 23, 1894

[97] Duluth Evening, Herald, March 23 1898

[98] Duluth News Tribune, March 7, 1899

[99] Duluth Evening Herarld, March 20, 1900; March 4, 1901; Oct. 14, 1901; Aug. 4, 1902

[100] Duluth Evening Herald, Sept. 3, 1901

[101] Duluth Evening Herald, June 23, 1908

[102] Duluth Herald, May 3, 1940