Alexander Turney Stewart (October 12, 1803 – April 10, 1876) was an Irish- American entrepreneur who moved to New York and made his multimillion-dollar fortune in the most extensive and lucrative dry goods store in the world.

Stewart was born in Lisburn, Ulster, Ireland, and abandoned his original aspirations of becoming a Presbyterian minister to go to New York City in 1823.

While incubating a desire to move there, the fifteen-year-old Stewart was prevailed upon by Lamb to gain some business experience by earning money as a grocer in Belfast.

He became a $300-a-year tutor at Isaac N. Bragg's Academy, a school for wealthy youths on Roosevelt Street, and joined an Episcopal church run by Reverend Edward Mitchell.

Before marrying, Stewart opened his first store, located at 283 Broadway, which sold Irish fabrics and domestic calicos purchased with funds from his inheritance and earnings as a tutor.

The store opened on September 1, 1823, just across from City Hall Park, north of Chambers Street on the opposite side of Broadway from where his later Marble Palace was to stand.

Unlike other dry goods competitors located along Pearl Street, Stewart placed his store several blocks west on Broadway.

He believed customers would travel to buy goods where they could most easily find the best prices, stating that the key to success was not where the store was placed, but rather where "to obtain wholesale trade to undersell competitors".

The building, originally four stories over a ground floor supported on cast-iron Corinthian columns, survives at 280 Broadway at the corner of Chambers Street,[9] just across from his first store.

The Italianate design, faced with Tuckahoe marble, featured four floors of pedimented windows, the first commercial building in the United States to display an extravagant exterior.

Inside, Stewart wanted not only to display his merchandise, but to emphasize natural light from the structure's central rotunda and high ceilings.

"[11] The Iron Palace building was taken over in 1882 by Hilton, Hughes & Co. (who were associates of Stewart), then by Wanamaker's department store in 1896, ultimately burning down in 1956.

Beginning in 1868, Stewart began receiving letters from women in rural parts of the United States requesting his merchandise.

Stewart promptly replied to these letters and orders by sending out the requested products and even paying the postage.

In March 1869 President Ulysses S. Grant offered Stewart the position of Secretary of the Treasury (after Joseph Seligman had declined it), but he was not confirmed by the United States Senate.

[14] In 1869 and 1870 A. T. Stewart built the first of the grand Fifth Avenue palaces, on the northwest corner of 34th Street, across from the doyenne of New York society, Caroline Schermerhorn Astor.

With these mills, located in New York and New England, Stewart produced his own woolen fabrics and employed thousands of workers.

Before his death he was building at Hempstead Plains, Long Island, the village of Garden City, with the purpose of affording his employees comfortable and airy housing at a moderate cost.

A local legend states that the mausoleum holding his remains is rigged with security devices that will cause the bells of the Cathedral to ring if ever disturbed.

It: Was either wasted in inept business ventures, poured into charities never contemplated by its owner, or frittered away in dissipation, luxurious living, or in fees to a swarm of lawyers during a quarter-century of litigation over the estate.

On May 1, 1890, a notice appeared in the New York Times announcing Joseph Pulitzer, Julius Chambers, et al. had been indicted for posthumous criminal libel against Alexander T. Stewart.

The newspaper reprinted a letter to District Attorney Fellows citing statements in an April 14–19 series of articles in the New York World accusing Stewart of "a dark and secret crime", as the man who "invited guests to meet his mistresses at his table", and as "a pirate of the dry goods ocean.