Macy's Union Square

The new 244,000 sq ft (22,700 m2) O'Connor, Moffatt & Co. store opened to the public on March 4, 1929,[2] clad in cream-colored terra-cotta that incorporated Neo-Gothic details, especially at the top of its façades.

[3] Macy's followed up with a major expansion of the store, incorporating 170 O'Farrell Street to the west, in 1948, commissioning the original architect of the 1928 building, Louis Parson Hobart.

[7] The new addition, costing a reported $6,500,000 (($82.4 million in 2023) opened in September 1949, matched the façades of the older store, except at the parapet, where the florid Gothic detail was not replicated.

[3] in 1976, Macy's bought the 40,000 sq ft (3,700 m2) building at 255 Geary,[9] for decades, home to Frank Werner shoes, sold in 1952 to Bally of Switzerland.

The building at 100-120 Stockton Street was built in 1974 and previously a branch of the Hawaii-based Liberty House (department store),[11] bringing the total area of the complex to 860,000 sq ft (80,000 m2).

This was at a time when most other downtown flagship stores in large U.S. cities other than New York and Chicago had already closed, such as May Co. in Los Angeles (1986), Bullock's and J.W.

Even Macy's Union Square's own local rival Emporium would close its flagship the next year, in 1996.